WASHINGTON, Nov 12: The United States ranks 27th in a study of social progress world wide due to social service budget cuts and chronic poverty plaguing major US cities, a University of Pennsylvania report said on Thursday.

"The United States has gone from 18th in the world to 27th. We are now at the same level as Poland and Slovenia," said Prof Richard Estes, author of the 2004 Report Card on World Social Progress, a quality of life ranking.

Topping the list of more than 160 countries were Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Luxembourg, Germany, Austria, Iceland, Italy and Belgium, the report found. The bottom 10, according to the study, were Afghanistan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Angola, Liberia, Guinea, Chad and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The ranking, based on data governments relay to the United Nations and the World Bank, measures countries' capacity to meet citizens' needs in terms of healthcare, education, human rights, and cultural diversity among other factors.

"Chronic poverty is the greatest threat to social progress in the United States," the professor said. "Today, more than 36 million Americans, almost 13 million of them children, are poor. And the total numbers of (US) poor have increased by nearly 4.3 million since 2000 and by 1.3 million since just 2002."

"The last decade has seen a sharp deterioration in overall life quality for vast segments of the world's population, especially for people living in the poorest nations of Africa and Asia," he added. -AFP