Social Stratification and Poverty

A 1979 Carnegie study ("Small Futures: Children, Inequality, and the Limits of Liberal Reform", Richard de Lone principal investigator) found a child's future to be largely determined by social status, not brains (ôExplorations in Social Inequalityö). Furthermore, the gap between the rich and the poor in the United States is larger now than it has been at any point in the last 75 years and greater than in any other industrialized nation (ôExplorations in Social Inequalityö). In 1989, Federal Reserve figures found that the top 1% of wealthiest American househ

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yö). According to Marx, social evolution came about as a result of class conflict in which the strong and the rich exploit the poor and the weak (ôSocial-conflict theoryö). In this way, the rich factory owner makes money by exploiting the factory worker, and in order for him to become rich, he must pay his workers less than they actually deserve (ôSocial-conflict theoryö). All of the social structures of a stratified society serve the rich and powerful and take advantage of the poor and powerless in just the same way. Renting housing, for example, is another inequitable arrangement that benefits the rich housing owner and exploits the poor renter, who can pay rent for the rest of his life and still have nothing to show for it at the end (ôSocial-conflict theoryö). It is the unfair imbalance between these groups that creates the ôsocial conflictö in social conflict theory (ôSocial Conflict Theoryö). As if being poor were not enough torment, the poor must also suffer the handicap of ôthe glass ceilingöùthe invisible social barriers that exclude them from the opportunities and advantages open to the rich. This glass ceiling applies not just to the poor but to anyone disadvantaged by reason of race, gender, age, or other factors
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1464
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)