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... wages of individuals at the bottom while the wages are the top levels increase. (David W, 2005) Societies Most Vulnerable The most vulnerable in society are the children who in present times can be targeted by predatory elements and become runaways or face the danger of abductions etc. Thousands of children are each year abducted in connection with crimes and while a majority of children return, there is always the risk of hunger, sickness and sex abuse for those who do not come back. The information technology also works as a double edged blade which on one hand helps broaden the education and knowledge of our children and on the other hand it is also an ideal medium for propagating evil. The involvement of the Justice Department in the prevention of child abduction holds a high priority with a nation wide war being waged over this scourge with the federal government providing support emergency shelters and implementing programs that reach out to the young people on the streets. These programs are mostly faith based or community administered and provides food, comfort and counseling.
With over a 100, 000 runaway children reported every year, much still requires to be done to stop the deteriorating situation within societies. (George W. B. , 2002) Social Parity Differences with regard to Education While the standard normal education is common within the range of average individual students, 95 percent of the students in a prestigious institute like Harvard come from families that earn in excess of 55, 000 dollars with the middle income Harvard families earning between 110. 000 and 200, 000 dollars. We can therefore deduce that the children of rich people go to Americas best and costliest colleges with the students in such colleges richer in comparison to their predecessors. From the mid 1970 s to the mid 1990 s sampling results of eleven prestigious colleges showed that students with family income in the bottom quartiles remained around 10 percent while students with family incomes in the top quartiles rose sharply from around a 33 percent to 50 percent. The upscale restaurants and shops near their campuses the trend has similarly been on the same pattern.
When the sampling was broadened and included the top 150 colleges of the United States, the students with family earnings in the bottom quartile dropped to 3 percent, which enables us to conclude that very few poor students study in Americas best colleges where most of the increasing numbers of students come from rich families. This trend also clarified the widening disparity between the poor and the rich not only in colleges admit their students but in their internal structuring as well with rich colleges annual returns and endowments equally proportionate. (As an interesting example the annual return on Harvard's $ 30 billion endowment now exceeds the entire endowment of some of its Ivy League rivals). The 19 th century President Charles W. Eliot had once remarked that "luxury and learning are ill bed fellows", we on our part can only say that as bed fellows they are now dying and almost extinct. (Andrew D, 2007) Cohabiting Couples and Prevalent Family Forms The modern beliefs, assumptions and the popularly accepted perceptions of premarital cohabitation as an effective way of knowing and understanding one another, and for ensuring that quality and stability in married life would have some guarantees for success in our present high-divorce societies is one of the reasons why many couples prefer to live outside the bonds of marriage. It is often because of the perceived higher levels of economic disadvantage amongst Blacks and regardless of their desirability factors, cohabitation serves as a substitute for marriage for many of them.
Cohabitation is also more likely to function as substitutions for marriage on similar lines as the Black people for Mexican American and Hispanics, with Hispanic women more likely to conceive children while cohabiting. While the United States holds the highest record for divorces with the United Kingdom not closer in numbers but at second place. In this context it is surprising to note that the number of marriages in the United States are at their lowest average in 40 years, while on the other hand there are now eight times more cohabiting couples than there were in the 1970 s. It is probable that the reason for the decrease in marriages have been because of the changed divorce laws ushered in between the period 1970 and 1985. These laws have made it faster and profitable for individuals to choose divorce then to receive one. On the other hand Studies have proven that married individuals enjoy better marital satisfaction as they spend more time together in shared activities and are more supportive of each other and have better ability to solve their problems in comparison the individuals who cohabit. (Casper & Bianchi, 2002; Axinn & Thornton, 1992; Manning, 2001).
Middle Class Women The past generation has seen the American middle-class family having to work harder to keep itself financially safe and secure because realities have transformed the economic risks at such levels that an error in judgment or for example the disappearing of a spouse can cause a family to be reduced from middle class to a poor family within months. Rising prices have rocked the middle class families and women from such families have had to enter the workforce in a strategy to break even with two paychecks. With families facing higher costs and increased risks even a minor miscalculation can create a financial crisis and it has become especially difficult for single mothers to carve out livings in the present fast paced and tough lifestyles and the risk for divorces women with children to file for bankruptcy have increased three fold. In just a single generation mothers have had to go work and thereby transforming the basic economics of a typical middle-class household that can no longer depend on a single earning family member. While the social implications are widely being discussed about these changing lifestyles, not enough attention to it is being given from the economic point of view. The expenditures of families are lesser by 51 percent on major appliances in present time in comparison to the past generation with a full 75 percent of the family's income budgeted for recurring monthly expenses.
With middle class families being pushed so much towards the edge it is likely that the resultant financial fallout could have a major impact on the political situation of the country. (Elizabeth W, 2004) Burden of Public Goods The burden of collective goods will have to be shared by the state as well as the public and private sectors with responsibility and accountability. Through purposeful re-education of all concerned parties, emphasis should be made and defined with clarity that collective goods are a part of the socially related policies that are france from the funds received by the government in the forms of taxes and revenues for the further servitude of the citizens. It is only when collective goods benefit the people as a whole that they are considered in reality as collective goods and care should be taken to avoid the problems of free riders when ever any strategic planning and schemes are implemented for the people by the governments in such a manner that the public spirit is also involved in it. (Public Goods) The Role of Government in Society and the Democratic Control of Economy While it is American themselves, who elect politicians opposed to restraining the forces that cause widening inequality and argue that the lifting of minimum wage and the necessity of forcing employers to offer employees with health insurance could harm the economic growth within the country. Despite the belief that the United States is a more mobile society in comparison to Europe, in recent times the typical average child born in poverty in Europe or Canada has a better chance to be prosper. However, the escalator scales of social mobility continues to move as almost 34 percent of the freshman in colleges last fall indicated that their parents had not studied beyond high school and it was thanks to the growing economy that the living standards of people had risen. While in comparison to the past, typical Americans live and enjoy life better as they now have the services of cell phones, the Internet and improved health care facilities than their parents and grandparents. (David W, 2005) References: Andrew Delbanco, March 29, 2007, Scandals of Higher Education (Accessed: April 16, 2007) web David Wessel, May 13, 2005, As rich-poor gap widens in U.
S. , class mobility stalls, The Wall Street Journal (Accessed: April 16, 2007) web Elizabeth Warren, (2004), The Middle Class on the Precipice, Rising financial risks for American families (Accessed: April 17, 2007) web George W. Bush, October 2, 2002, White House Conference on Missing, Exploited, and Runaway Children, Ronald Reagan Building, Washington, D. C. (Accessed: April 16, 2007) web Hedrick Smith, February 20, 2004, Frontline: Tax Me If You Can, washington post. com (Accessed: April 17, 2007) web Public good, From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (Accessed: April 17, 2007) web References from Journals Axinn, W.
G. , & Thornton, A. (1992). The relationship between cohabitation and divorce: Selectivity or causal influence? Demography, 29, 357 - 374. Casper, L. M. , & Bianchi, S.
M. (2002). Continuity and change in the American family. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Manning, W. D. (2001).
Childbearing in cohabiting unions: Racial and ethnic differences. Family Planning Perspectives, 33, 217 - 223.
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Research essay sample on Middle Class Families Accessed April
