Social Inequality and Poverty Analysis - Essay Example

As such, they are perceived to be entrepreneurs and owners of businesses that could generate more income and could access or buy more resources. On the other hand, people from the low-income group could not afford to send their children to school or to avail of appropriate health care which aggravates their situation and subjects them to the circle of poverty where it is deemed challenging to improve their social class into higher levels of stratification. Likewise, society has set stereotypes that perceive people from a particular race or ethnic background to manifest defined traits or behavior (African Americans are bolder and more aggressive or Asians are more enterprising). Finally, social inequality affects gender according to women's lesser status or access to promotions in the work setting and generates lesser incomes than men.

Racial, gender, and class inequality are interrelated because, as noted, “one aspect of identity can change another” (Croteau and Hoynes, 124-125). For example, the inability of lower-income earners to access various resources is also related to the parallel difficulties of minorities (the elder and women) to support and sustain their living. If women could assert their social identities as being more competent to assume higher roles in organizations and society, then, the transformation could affect perceptions of inequality based on gender and social classes – more so, if these women come from distinct racial or ethnic groups.

The two types of poverty are absolute and relative. Absolute poverty means that the people are barely able to support and sustain their daily needs due to the lack of income and resources. On the other hand, relative poverty relates to the inability of people to support and sustain daily needs with the general economic condition of society.

The common misconceptions about poverty in the United States are: (1) poverty does not exist in America. It has been proven from the statistics taken by the U.S. Bureau of Census that there are in fact “46.2 million Americans living in poverty” (Beckmann 1); (2) that extreme poverty in the US is nonexistent. The same discourse revealed that the “number of people in America living in extreme poverty has reached a record high: 20.5 million in 2010” (Beckmann, 1); (3) the understanding is that when people live within the federal poverty line of $23,000 they are still doing fine. It was disclosed that most people who earn only the minimum wage generate $14,000 which is below the federal poverty line and even those within the stipulated level were reported to barely make ends meet; (4) safety net programs cost Americans money. This is reportedly not true since these programs barely enable people below poverty to live by; and (5) that almost half of the American population do not pay taxes – which was refuted since taxation efforts justifiable tax people according to earnings.