Social Issues

1
Social Issues

• Poverty

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Introductory Remarks

• Serial Eater
• Question
• Is poverty a social problem (the responsibility
  of society), or is it an individual problem that
  the poor themselves must overcome?

3
Cont

• Poverty can only be understood in the larger
  context of the social system
• Material deprivation is not the main cause of
  most social problems
• Poverty breeds poverty

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Defining Poverty and its Relationship with Social
Stratification

• Social Stratification
• Ranking of people into a hierarchy in which the
  resources considered valuable by society are
  unequally distributed

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So what is it?

• Precondition
• Social differentiation
• People having distinctive individual qualities
  and social roles

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Cont

• Cause of social differentiation
• Increased technology and industrialization
  creating more divisions of labor

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Cont

• Social differentiation leads to social
  inequality, resulting from divisions of labor,
  that leads to social stratification

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Cont

• Social inequality
• The condition whereby people have unequal access
  to valued resources, services, and positions in
  society

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Why does social inequality emerge?

• Emerges from social differentiation b/c some
  roles or social positions place some people in a
  position to acquire a greater share of valued
  goods and services

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Another definition of Social Stratification

• Inequality that has been hardened or
  institutionalized, and there is a system of
  social relationships that determines who gets
  what and why

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Relationship of Poverty toSocial Stratification

• Poverty is not a lack of resources but the uneven
  distribution of resources and services

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Ways to Determine the Poor

• Absolute Deprivation of Poverty
• relies on the income as the determinanta
  minimum amount of money to secure the basic
  necessities of life (Parrillo 1999196).

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Cont

• Relative Definition of Poverty
• based on some standard shaped by the lifestyle of
  a society

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Put Another Way

• Absolute poverty means money below what is
  necessary to buy basic necessities,

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Cont

• and relative poverty defined as people below 50
  percent of the median income in a country (Kerbo
  2000247)
• Can comparisons be made between countries?

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Poverty Thresholds Poverty Guidelines

• Poverty Thresholds
• statistical version
• Poverty Guidelines
• administrative version
• Why two measures?

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Four General Categories of Explanations/Theories

• Research mains quite clear Being born into
  poverty and growing up in poverty make a person
  more likely to be poor as an adult (Kerbo
  2000262).

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Popular View
Individual characteristics of poor
Poverty
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Culture of Poverty View

• Based on 5 propositions
• 1
• poverty presents unique problems in living
• 2
• unique problems lead to lifestyle

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cont

• 3
• unique lifestyle becomes the norm
• 4
• self-perpetuating

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cont

• 5
• poor not able to adjust to new situations

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Culture of Poverty View
Political-economic forces
Individual characteristics of poor
Poverty
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Situational View

• Poor are responding realistically to their
  situation because they are poor
• Differing values from main culture

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Situational View
Political-economic forces
Individual characteristics of poor
Poverty
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Structural View

• Poverty and Occupational Structure
• poor at the bottom of occupational structure
• periphery industries

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cont

• Poverty Property Structure
• Poverty and Authority Structures

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Structural View
Political-economic forces
Poverty
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Poverty and Inequality
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