Example research essay topic: Cost Of Living Poverty Threshold - 880 words

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RACE AND SOCIAL STRATIFICATION The census bureau uses two basic criteria to determine if an individual or a family can be considered in poverty. The first step is to assess the income. There can be different forms of income in addition to that which one would earn from a normal job. There are, for instance, social security, supplemental security income, public assistance, veterans payments, pension, retirement income, interest dividends, royalties, alimony, and child support. These are all considered money income. The second step is to calculate the individual's / family 's needs (the amount of money required to survive).

This is called a poverty threshold. The poverty threshold varies according to the size of the family and the age of the members. It's important to take into consideration that poverty thresholds are not always accurate. They are used as "statistical yardsticks" to try and determine the cost of living. After income and poverty threshold are determined, the income is divided by the threshold. This is called the ratio of income to poverty.

If your income is less than your threshold you are considered to be in poverty. Overall, I think that this process is an effective way of determining poverty for the majority of Americans. I do think, though, that there are some holes in this system. For example, poverty thresholds are a set amount, no matter where you live in America. The cost of living, however, is much more expensive in L. A.

than it is in Escanaba. As a result of this there are people who could be starving but at the same time earning an income surplus according to their poverty threshold statistic. I think this could be fixed by making poverty thresholds correlate with the cost of living in different regions. Another problem that I noticed was that people living without conventional housing were not included in the census.

I don't know how this can be solved, but if the census do't include the homeless then the information regarding poverty must be drastically inaccurate. When I started to look at the census data regarding the rate of poverty in different races I started to realize that there was a large discrepancy between the percent of whites in poverty and the percent of minorities in poverty. In almost every case the difference in poverty rates between whites and minorities was about ten percent. (see graph) After looking at the data from the census bureau on the rate of poverty for different races I began to realize that there are indeed differences between races regarding social stratification. There are three different sociological theories that can help explain why these differences exist. They are the functionalist theory, conflict theory and symbolic interactions theory.

Functionalists, like Davis and Moore, would say that social inequality serves an important purpose. It drives people to fill more valuable positions in society. Because society needs cohesion to exist, it creates social stratification which is based in commonly shared goals. If the individual doesn't share the same goals as the society, or occupies a status that doesn't help further the society as a whole, then they have no function except to remind the public of what you shouldn't be. Functionalism is helpful in understanding the basic idea of stratification but it doesn't explain why there is a ten percent disparity between the poverty rate of whites and minorities in America.

to explain this we need to take a look at conflict theory. Conflict theorists say that stratification arises out of group competition and conflict. Unlike functionalists they believe that stratification is universal but it is not necessary to the survival of a society. Theorists like Karl Marx believed stratification was a result of exploitation. He broke social stratification into two groups, the bourgeois and the proletarian The bourgeois are the people with the power.

They sustain power by exploiting the proletarians. They are the workers (the minorities in poverty). These people can ascribe to the American dream and work hard all their lives but they will never rise above their station because the bourgeois will not let them. You would think that people would be conscious of this control and try to fight it but it doesn't seem like anyone wants to do anything about it.

This brings me to the third and final theory of stratification - symbolic interactions. Symbolic interaction ists say that stratification is maintained because people believe it is legitimate. People are socialized to the concept of stratification and their place in the stratification structure. So when you use this theory to try and explain the poverty rates of minorities in America, it's easy to see how a child in the 80 's who grew up in poverty would accept his place in the social structure and continue to live in poverty, thus raising another generation under the same conditions. In conclusion, I think it would be foolish of me to pick one of these theories and say that it was the answer to the problem of poverty among minorities. I say this because each theory has its strong points but each also leaves questions unanswered.

I think the best I can do is take a little bit from each theory and try to make sense of it all for myself.

Research essay sample on Cost Of Living Poverty Threshold