Final answer:
Deep poverty in the early twenty-first century primarily affected the United States, Western Europe, and Japan, with vulnerable groups like children, the elderly, and discriminated minorities, particularly African Americans, facing the most severe challenges.
Step-by-step explanation:
In the first decades of the twenty-first century, the United States, Western Europe, and Japan experienced a combination of financial crises and deep recessions, resulting in high unemployment and long-term economic hardship. Children, the elderly, and discriminated minorities like African Americans bore the brunt of deep poverty. This situation was a stark contrast to earlier historical periods, such as the 1960s, when the poverty rate had declined significantly.
Despite the economic boom of the mid-1990s through mid-2000s, the aftermath of the recession in the early 2010s saw poverty rates surge to levels close to those of the 1960s, at one point reaching 15.9% in 2011. While certain regions in the U.S. boasted significant wealth, cities like Detroit and Cleveland, which suffered from deindustrialization, faced severe poverty and population decline.