In my Sociology class yesterday, we talked about social class, that ended up helping my English paper. During the class we talked about alot of things but one that really stuck with me was that America is considered the richest country in the world. Poor families are considered to have $24,000/yr or less, yet this would be a doctors income in other parts of the world. US consumes about 90% of the resources consumed globally and yet in my book was a chart of the countries with poverty-stricked children and the US was ranked 2nd...2nd right next to Mexico.
Mexico - 21.3%
US - 18.4%
Italy - 14.3%
Japan - 12.9%
Canada - 11.5%
Germany - 10.4%
France - 6.7%
Sweden - 3.2%
Denmark - 2.1%
The next big group is woman, but a good thing my teacher mentioned is that 80-90% of people in poverty are only in poverty for 3 years or less. Usually people that fall under bad times and get out of it. Out of all the usual things we think of for poor people (lack of education, family upbringing, drugs/alcohol, debt trap, etc) are things rich people also face. The only thing was that rich people have social connections and resources to draw on. Weird.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Interesting statistics. We have to keep in mind that many, many people in America are struggling, are poor, are hungry. We may be a rich country, but not everyone is rich. Let's count our blessings and help others if we can.
ReplyDeleteA very good post. Helps us all realize how lucky we are during the holidays to have what we have.
ReplyDelete