other OECD countries, with the exception of Chile: the income Gini index for the United States in 2013 was 40.8, compared to Sweden with the lowest index of 25.0, Chile 52.1, and South Africa and Namibia (non‐OECD) scoring >60.0 (China not included) (World Bank 2013). High income inequality indicates high poverty rates among certain segments of society as the flipside to extreme affluence in other social strata.

Here are examples from some major cities in the United States. San Francisco (total population 805,235) and Seattle (total population 608,660) are two large cities with relatively high median household income, $75,604 and $65,277, respectively. In San Francisco, 46% of all households in the city make more than US $100,000/year and 32% in Seattle. If we consider mean income in US$ for married couples, San Francisco reports $151,993 and Seattle $142,827. These numbers are consistently higher than equivalents for New York and Los Angeles. However, with 1.5% of its entire population, Seattle has the highest rate of homeless people compared to San Francisco (0.87%) and New York (0.78%) although only slightly higher than Los Angeles (1.42%). In absolute numbers, not surprisingly, New York and Los Angeles have the highest numbers of homeless people in the country, 64,060 and 53,798, respectively. Yet, the concentration of homeless people in Seattle, a city of relative wealth, is surprising. Seattle also has the highest number of Black or African Americans living below the poverty level (32.7%) compared to New York (22.7%) and Los Angeles (27.8%) (HUD 2013; US Census Bureau Fact Finder), which further complicates the picture of privilege and marginalization along the line of race.

Why do such statistics matter for understanding the impacts of climate change on poverty? They matter because, in comparison with burgeoning case studies and comparative analyses on poor people in poor countries, the climate change literature and debates on poor people in developed countries and their experiences with a changing climate have been astoundingly mute. The poor in upper MICs (e.g. China, Brazil, South Africa) and HICs (e.g. OECD countries) have been largely invisible, insufficiently accounted and represented in international poverty metrics and in‐depth climate change inquiries. The same is true for growing inequalities behind cloaked processes of impoverishment (‘falling into poverty’) and marginalization. Even progressive poverty measures, such as the Multidimensional Poverty Index (UNDP, 2010) do not capture poverty in HICs. In fact, Chapter 13 on Livelihoods and Poverty in the AR5 noted the limited research on climate change impacts on poor people in more affluent nations as a major gap in knowledge (Olsson et al. 2014a). The exception stems from extreme events, especially hurricanes and heat waves, during which the ugly face of western/northern poverty all of a sudden becomes shockingly visible. Vignette 1 exposes differential merit in protecting socially vulnerable versus affluent people and regions against sea level rise in the United States. A closer look at the 1995 Chicago and 2003 European heat waves, provided in Vignette 4, reveals disproportionate and premature death among poor, disadvantaged, and socially isolated segments in society.

One of the prime reasons why poverty and inequality in MICs and HICs have been understudied is related to the narratives that encapsulate the essence of ‘the poor’ in affluent nations. In the United States, the dominant narrative about poor people in general, including single mothers on food stamps, and homeless people in specific, is imbued with notions of individual failure – lack, laziness, wretched early upbringing, even genetics – or ill‐fated circumstances such as a tornado or landslide that must 7