President Trump will have a tough crowd when he addresses the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Friday.

Stock markets have reached record highs and some economists predict U.S. unemployment is on track to hit a 50-year low. “Over the past year, we have made extraordinary strides in the U.S.,” Trump said in his speech on Friday. “We’re lifting up forgotten communities, creating exciting new opportunities and helping every American find their path to the American dream: The dream of a great job, a safe home and a better life for their children.”

“We’ve massively cut taxes for the middle class and small businesses to let working families keep more of their hard-earned money,” the president added.

Politicians speaking at Davos have a fine line to walk between promoting economic policies at home and highlighting the challenges faced by the growing gap between rich and poor. Davos has not always been a flattering backdrop for world leaders schmoozing with billionaires in private jets. Other world leaders hit a different note. In his own speech at Davos, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke of the “staggering” gap between rich and poor.

Case in point: Oxfam released a report this week timed with Davos saying eight billionaires have as much wealth as 3.6 billion people — the poorest half of the world. And Bart van Ark, chief economist at The Conference Board, wrote on CNBC: “This year, CEOs expressed heightened concern over the potential impact of income inequality on social and business environments.”

The gap between rich and poor is increasing in the U.S.

This is one area where there’s been huge growth in the U.S. A team of researchers recently examined mortality in the U.S. and other wealthy nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development for children from birth to age 19 from 1961 to 2010.

Child mortality is closely linked to income inequality. From 2001 to 2010 the risk of death in the U.S. was 76% greater for infants and 57% greater for children ages 1 to 19, according to the study, “Child Mortality In The US And 19 OECD Comparator Nations: A 50-Year Time-Trend Analysis,” published in Health Affairs journal.

“ From 2001 to 2010 the risk of death in the U.S. was 76% greater for infants and 57% greater for children ages 1 to 19. ”

“During this decade, children ages 15 to 19 were 82 times more likely to die from gun homicide in the U.S.,” the study found. “Over the 50-year study period, the lagging U.S. performance amounted to over 600,000 excess deaths. Policy interventions should focus on infants and on children ages 15 to 19, the two age groups with the greatest disparities, by addressing perinatal causes of death, automobile accidents, and assaults by firearm.”

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The study follows criticisms last month made by Professor Philip Alston, the United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. He released a report heaping scorn on what he described as the Trump administration’s “dramatic change of direction in U.S. policies relating to inequality and extreme poverty.” He cited the administration’s current tax proposals and “dramatic cuts in welfare.”

Among his list of criticisms:

• Child poverty rates in the U.S. are the highest amongst the six richest countries — Canada, the U.K., Ireland, Sweden and Norway.

• U.S. infant mortality rates are among the highest in the developed world, but have fallen 15% in the last decade.

• Health care expenditure per capita is double the average of the 35-member Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, but there are fewer doctors and hospital beds per person.

On the upside, he said most children living in poverty have medical insurance. Due to the expansion of Medicaid and the creation of the Children’s Health Insurance Program in 1997, 95% of children had health insurance last year. Medicaid and CHIP have lowered the rate of children without health coverage to 5.3% in 2015 from 14% in 1997. The latter program, however, was recently threatened with funding cuts.

Philip Alston, UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. AFP/Getty Images

UN special rapporteur took aim at Trump administration’s tax policies

Alston spent two weeks traveling through California, Alabama, Georgia, Puerto Rico, West Virginia, and Washington D.C. and spoke with dozens of experts and civil society groups, met with senior state and federal government officials and talked with many people who are homeless or living in deep poverty. Contrasts between private wealth and public squalor abound, he said.

“The proposed tax reform package stakes out America’s bid to become the most unequal society in the world, and will greatly increase the already high levels of wealth and income inequality between the richest 1% and the poorest 50% of Americans,” Alston said. More should be done to address the 40 million people who continue to live in poverty, he added. (Trump signed a version of that tax plan into law in December.)

“Successive administrations, including the present one, have determinedly rejected the idea that economic and social rights are full-fledged human rights, despite their clear recognition not only in key treaties that the U.S. has ratified, and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which the U.S. has long insisted other countries must respect,” Alston wrote.

A separate report also cites ‘extreme’ gap between rich and poor

The divergence in the levels of inequality has been “extreme” between Western Europe and the U.S., according to a separate report, released last month by the World Inequality Lab, a research project in over 70 countries based at the Paris School of Economics, and co-authored by the French economist Thomas Piketty. “The global middle class has been squeezed,” it said.

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In 1980, the U.S. and Western Europe had similar levels of inequality. And today? Not so much. While the top 1% of earners made up just 10% in both regions in 1980, it increased slightly to 12% in 2016 in Western Europe, but doubled to 20% in the U.S. “Since 1980, income inequality has increased rapidly in North America, China, India, and Russia,” it said.

“The income-inequality trajectory observed in the U.S. is largely due to massive educational inequalities, combined with a tax system that grew less progressive despite a surge in top labor compensation since the 1980s,” it found. In Europe, tax and wage inequality was moderated by educational and wage-setting policies that were more favorable to low and middle-income groups.

In the U.S., out of 100 children whose parents are among the bottom 10% of income earners, only 20 to 30 of them actually go to college. However, closer to 90 out of 100 children go to college if their parents are within the top 10% earners. What’s more, research has shown that when elite colleges open their doors to students from poor backgrounds, academic performance at the institution doesn’t decline.