13.2 Social inequality



 1. Summary 

The definition of social inequality and some informations

What is social inequality means? The social inequality means the unequal allocation of the resources such as wealth made by social factors such as power, religion, kinship, prestige, race, ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation, and class.

The social inequality is linked to economic inequality and many sociologist and economist although their field and the method they use in the research is quite different they both actively researching about this.

Various people argue that social inequality is linked to inequality of opportunity, meritocracy and so on. 

History of social inequality

The social inequality was existed in every society but inequality in the hunter gather society is much lower than today's inequality and the some people argue that globalization in the modern era caused more social inequality.

The statics related with social inequality

Many people use the GDP per capita when they talked about global inequality. But Gini coefficient is more sophisticated analysis of the inequality of the certain country. There is the "Palma" measure which measures the economic inequality by the percentage of people living with under US$1.25 or $2 a day(world bank's poverty criteria) and the share of national wealth owned by the richest 10% of the population. 

"If we look at the Gini coefficient for world income, over time, after World War II the global Gini coefficient sat at just under .45. From around 1959 to 1966, the global Gini increased sharply, to a peak of around .48 in 1966. After falling and leveling off a couple of times during a period from around 1967 to 1984, the Gini began to climb again in the mid-eighties until reaching a high or around .54 in 2000 then jumped again to around .70 in 2002." So according to Gini Coefficient the inequality of wealth between the world is growing so high.

Other inequalities

Social inequalities caused by things like gender, racial and ethnicity is a common topic. But the age inequality(or ageism), health inequality and food inequality is also an serious topics. Inequality made by age is also serious issue the poverty of elderly people are well focused than the the poverty of the younger generations. So the government cannot made well to handle the younger generations poverty compared with old generations. Health is important thing but as many of us seen in the documentary like SiCKO by Michael Moore the health inequality in untied states of America is a serious issue. Food inequality is also an important topic. There is a term 'food desert' the area that has a limited access of the fresh and healthy foods. This happened in the one of the wealthiest nation in the earth like USA.

2. Discussion

Do u know that each year almost 119 billion pounds of food, the 40% of the food in the United states is wasted? More surprising thing is that according to the USDA, more than 34 million people, including 9 million children, in the United States are food insecure. And the over 70 million adults in USA are obese (35 million men and 35 million women).

This shows that free market is not always an efficient or a good tool to allocate the resources. And we need the programs not just relying on the 'free market'.  

The poverty and inequality of the world is growing. The ridiculous thing is the rich man like Bill Gates and scholars funded by his money are claiming that the poverty and the inequality of the world is decreasing thanks to the neoliberalism and globalization. 

As british economic anthropologist Jason Hickle said this is a propaganda. The wealth inequality and the poverty of the world is worsen or unchanged if we except China. And the criteria that meacusing the exterme poverty is so low.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/29/bill-gates-davos-global-poverty-infographic-neoliberal

There is a term called Kuznets curve. This mean the high social inequality will be lowered naturally under the capitalism but the economist lime Thomas Piketty revealed that is not true. 

The people who have the power always want to tell people that system can fix the problems. But this is not true I think. We should act rather than wait. So we should be more careful to look and analyze the social inequality.

3. Questions

1. What makes social inequality worsen?

2. What kinds of social inequality do you care more than others?



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