![]() Life expectancy in Harlem is shorter than in Bangladesh.Half of American children will reside in a household that uses food stamps at some point during childhood.They are the four children who inherited Sam Walton’s company Wal-Mart. Four of the wealthiest people in the world come from one family, the Walton’s.In 2007, CEOs in the fortune 500 received an average of $10.5 million, 344 times the pay of the average worker.citizens, or 12.5 percent of the population, were classified as poor by the Census Bureau. Just 25 Americans have a combined income almost as great as the combined income of 2 billion of the world’s poor.Just 400 Americans have the same wealth as half of all Americans combined.Statistics on United States and global inequality are widespread and alarming. These resources might be economic or political, such as health care, education, jobs, property and land ownership, housing, and ability to influence government policy. Inequality means people have unequal access to scarce and valued resources in society. ![]() Sociology has a long history of studying stratification and teaching about various kinds of inequality, including economic inequality, racial/ethnic inequality, gender inequality, and other types of inequality. This chapter focuses on economic stratification meaning how people are differentiated based upon their wealth (and/or power). Stratification refers to the hierarchical arrangement of people in a society. Stratification affects our everyday lives. Women’s daily chores in the rural areas consist of crushing corn, collecting water, cleaning fish, and washing clothes by hand. Corn is crushed with pestle and mortar in Cape Verde. Most of the population in Cape Verde collects water at public water channels. Cape Verde is geographically and economically isolated from the rest of the world. 9.4 The New International Division of Labor theory.8.3 Macro-Level Factors Influencing Stratification.7 Capitalism, race and gender inequality.6 Capitalism, class, privilege, and oppression.5 Intersections of Class, Race, and Gender.4.2 Conflict Theorists on Stratification.4.1 Structural-Functionalism on Stratification.3.1 Origins of Inequality and Private Property.Finally, I ask them how the money their families had (or didn’t have) contributed to the difference between them sitting in a college classroom and starting their own meth lab. While this exercise is rudimentary and will not actually cause them any real world trouble, I find it fascinating that the most “just work harder,” “self made American,” and “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” students very quickly decide they will run meth labs out of their houses, figure out ways to scam other people out of money, beg for money on the streets, or otherwise suggest the only way they could survive managing wages and costs typical among the working poor of America would be by breaking the law or (in the words of more than one student so far) “living like an animal.” After a bit of discussion, I ask them why don’t they “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” and they very quickly realize that’s not really possible when you can’t even afford the bootstraps. After they are finished, we discuss their budgets as a class. ![]() Finally, I have the students design a budget for their family based upon the combination of average costs and their total income. The household income I give them varies due to official variations, but it is always just barely above the cutoff for receiving aid so the students have to try to “make due” without any handouts. Then, I assign each group a household income (i.e., an income the 3 – 5 of them make together and must live off of as a family). Next, I put a series of average costs for living in our county on the board in the form of an easily readable Powerpoint slide (i.e., average rent, average cost of transportation with and without a car, average utility bill, average health insurance cost, etc., etc.). First, I split them into groups of 3 to 5 people. ![]() Every semester, I use an activity to introduce my students to economic inequalities.
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