Search

What does it mean to be poor? Or, more precisely, what material things comprise “What is enough?” This is the central question to scholars who study poverty. The number of people living in poverty varies by the agency that collects the data and the percentage of poor used by governmental agencies is only a general estimate. This chapter considers the definition of poverty and how this construction affects who is considered poor and eligible to receive assistance. We then turn to the determinants of poverty and sociological theories that seek to explain who are the poor and predict how many people will fall below the poverty line in any given period. We conclude with the consequences associated with poverty as well as broad national policies and their effectiveness at reducing poverty. What Is Poverty? Poverty is a dearth of resources such as money or material possessions that are needed for survival. In modern society, it is defined as the lack of both income and wealth. The official poverty measure reveals that about 14.3 percent of the nation or 1 in 7 people is experiencing poverty, the highest rate since 1994 (U.S. Census Bureau 2010). The aggregate poverty rate varies by region with the Northeast having the lowest rate of 12.2 percent and the South with the highest rate of 15.7 (U.S. Census 2010).

Inequality: A Contemporary Approach to Race, Class, and Gender offers a comprehensive introduction to the topics animating current sociological research focused on inequality. Contemporary, engaging, and research-oriented, it is the ideal text to help undergraduate students master the basic concepts in inequality research and gain a deeper understanding of the ways in which race, class, and gender interact with systems of social stratification. Following an introduction to theories and research methods used in the field, the authors apply these concepts to areas that define inequality research, including social mobility, education, gender, race, and culture. The authors include up-to-date quantitative evidence throughout. The text concludes by examining policies that have facilitated inequality and reviewing the social movements that in turn seek to reshape those structures. Though primarily focused on the United States, it includes a chapter on stratification across the globe and draws on cross-national comparisons throughout.

For those who own it, wealth can have extraordinary advantages. High levels of wealth can enhance educational attainment, create occupational opportunities, generate social influence and provide a buffer against financial emergencies. Even a small amount of savings can improve security, mitigate the effects of job loss and other financial setbacks and improve well-being dramatically. Although the benefits of wealth are significant, they are not enjoyed uniformly throughout the United States. In the United States, because religion is an important part of cultural orientation, religious beliefs should affect material well-being. This book explores the way religious orientations and beliefs affect Americans' incomes, savings and net worth.

Religion, family processes, and education are linked in complex ways to each other and, ultimately, to wealth ownership. Childhood religion and childhood family socioeconomic status (SES) are correlated, and these work together to affect the timing and ordering of educational investments and outcomes, marriage behavior, and fertility and family behaviors. These behaviors and outcomes, in turn, affect job processes and occupation, wages and salaries, and ultimately wealth ownership. In this chapter, I explore how religion, education, marriage, fertility and family, are related. I will refer to Figure 1.1 and elaborate on the portions labeled background (family and social, religious, and other), human capital , and adult family and friends . Throughout this chapter and Chapter 3, I also describe the intergenerational and demographic mechanisms identified in Figure 1.1 as one of the three pathways through which the various processes are related. This pathway and the others included in the figure operate across the life course, affecting both transitions from childhood to adulthood and those that occur within adulthood.

This book is about wealth mobility, how some people get rich while others stay poor. The advantages of owning wealth and the nature of true wealth have long made questions about the wealthy appealing. In recent years, that interest has been amplified by economic changes and rising wealth inequality. Today, although the basic facts about wealth inequality are no longer a mystery, we still know little about who the wealthy are, how they got there, and what prevents other people from becoming rich. We know very little about the process of wealth mobility. This book explores wealth by investigating some of the most basic questions about wealth mobility. How much mobility is there? Has the nature of mobility changed over time? Is entrepreneurship important? How much does inheritance matter? What other factors encourage or prevent wealth mobility, and how do these change over the course of a person's life?

This book began by asking what factors account for wealth accumulation and mobility. That is, why do some people get rich while others never seem to get ahead. Wealth is the things people own, including their homes, savings, investments, other real estate, businesses, and vehicles. Recent shifts in economic conditions propelled some people to great wealth and ignited interest in how this process unfolds. Subsequent economic downturns highlighted the fact that wealth can be – and often is – fleeting. Researchers have been more interested in wealth in recent years, perhaps than at any other point in history. We now have many excellent sources of information about household asset and debt ownership, and this has allowed us to specify very precisely the nature of wealth distribution. That is, we know a great deal about how wealth ownership is allocated across people: what percentage of the total pie is owned by what percentage of the population. The bottom line is that a very small percentage of Americans owns the vast majority of wealth. Yet even with this increased interest in wealth and our improving ability to understand wealth, we know very little about the process by which people accumulate assets. What is it about their backgrounds and the paths they follow through their lives that makes some people accumulate lots of assets while others never seem to save much of anything? Is it simply that those who start off with more end with more?