Chris Logue

Prof. Katie Lookholder

Sociology
March 5, 2016
Project 3: Poverty
Poverty has been a major problem to society all around the world
through out history. As even the great Nelson Mandela said As long as
poverty, injustice and gross inequality in our world, none of us can truly
rest. Poverty causes all types of problems to the individuals and to the
society. Its a very complex issue and very hard in order to solve the solution.
In poverty there are treated with gender inequality, racism, conflict, and
violence. It has a very negative effect as the children dont receive the
proper education, they usually end up living the rest of their lives from where
they grew up from or turn to crime in order to survive. Some can barely
afford food and living so they obviously cant afford other important
resources such as medical attention, fresh water, and other necessities. Karl
Marx wasnt impressed with capitalism and saw flaws in it. Workers werent
getting paid the same value for their hard work due to the social class
system. Weber then adds on three critical components which are status,
class, and party. These factors decide the social position for someone. I to
believe that social position and skills decide the outcome of someones
future.

Looking at those who live in poverty, you may think that poverty is
everywhere. Some places have it worse than others. Poverty seems to linger
in certain groups and areas in the world. Reason number one is because they
dont have enough resources. Such as education, some countries have better
programs giving the generation a good amount of knowledge about
technology and economy. It all comes down to which countries can produce
more goods to sell to others. Countries use to be in the same economic level
until the Industrial Revolution took place. Which ended up producing a lot of
goods in a short period of time. Poverty is found mostly in developing
countries. Poverty and crime have a very "intimate" relationship that has
been described by experts from all fields, from sociologists to economists.
The UN and the World Bank both rank crime high on the list of obstacles to a
countrys development. As people in poverty have a low income rate and
cant afford much to buy goods such as, food in order to survive. Since they
cant afford it, the only way they can get it is by stealing. Then they are seen
as a criminal and end up getting labeled as a negative even though its the
only way in order to survive.

Humans have been brought up through their own different cultural and
social settings. That includes social class, community, family, beliefs, and
many other factors. Poverty has been passed down through the family tree
branch. Bringing up the stratification system and one of the systems, the
caste system. Is a system where the childs future job is decided based on

their parents job. Its really hard for a child that are born in poverty to grow
up and survive in. As they have a great amount of problems such as hunger,
disease, and child labor. In developing countries (where 92 percent of
children live) 7 in 100 will not survive beyond age 5. As the children grow up
they have to go to school in order to get an education. These schools cant
do much help to the kids as they dont have enough money to support them.
More than 30 million children are growing up in poverty. In one low-income
community, there was only one book for every 300 children. They dont
receive proper education, most of them end up dropping out because they
need to help support the family. Since they dont go to school anymore they
have time for other activities. Some start working in places such as factories
and others start to get involved with criminal related activities such as theft
or drug. The ones that do end up succeeding dont get much attention
because the colleges and universities dont think highly for their
achievements looking at the school that they graduated from. The chances
of making it out and living a successful life isnt a whole lot. Its so difficult
for them to find a decent paying job because the education that they got, as
well as the employers take a look at the skills that they have received and
there isnt much to show. As they end up living in poverty and for the others
that are involved with crime end up behind bars. Children who do end getting
a job better than their parents is known to be called Intragenerational
mobility. Which doesnt happen as often as intergenerational immobility,

which is the other way around where the child downgrades a job compared
to the parents.

The paradigm that ties into with the poverty issue would be the conflict
theory. Founder of the conflict theory, Karl Marx argues the main idea that
the owner of production decides is the rich people and the poor people are
the workers. Their will always be someone that have something that others
do not have because of scarcity with the limited supply of resource. Then the
production owners let the people who need to work, work at their factory,
farm, or business. The owner has the workers do all the work for them, then
makes profit and usually distributes the profit unequally. Even though the
workers are working extremely hard, they dont make the same value for the
time and effort that they put in. Max Weber agrees with Marx with the
concept that social class plays a crucial role, but in addition he includes
material resources and skill. As resources is what you own, but in addition
skills is from the savings, investments, and land which also to define
someones social class. Comparing the past and present, todays workers are
more well educated then they were in the past. They know how much they
should be earning for the work that they put in. In the past they were a lot
more people didnt know how much they should be earning we call this false
consciousness. More people realize the issue in the present day through
social media. They give money to charity groups and these groups have
different goals of helping people either to go to school or providing food. Its

still not enough to help and at the same time like in the U.S., the upper class
are getting richer. As the middle and lower class are getting poorer. The
government gives aide to those we cant afford needs such as education or
medical attention. Yet still they dont give out enough compared to other
countries like Europe. The United States generally provides its citizens with
a lower level of government support for health and human services than
most developed European nations. This is true for services that benefit the
middle class as well as those for the poor. My view on poverty creates many
problems and inequality. It creates a tyrant out of some people and those
people start acting dominant. They start forming classes and people place
themselves above others which aggravates things like racism and feminism.
If everyone were in the same economic status, there wouldnt be a major
issue. Looking at the Chinese, today theyre viewed as the hardworking and
intelligent. Not one really discriminates them like they did before, when they
building railroads.

Giving an overview poverty was created through scarcity and

resources. People then started working for the ones who had control over
these resources. Then comes in the Karl Marx conflict theory, the ones who
had control over the production had power. With Max Weber comes then
adds on, that not only is it the control over goods but also skills. In order to
get these skills, you need to be brought up in a family that can support you
with education. If youre brought up in a family that doesnt have the

capability to support you, its going to be a lot tougher. Hard to get a good
education, and to compete with others that are provided with beneficial
resources. As some people view others based on social class which brings up
hatred like racism. If no one was rich and poor there would be no hatred in
this world as everyone views each other as the same type of person.

Works Cited
"11 Facts About Education and Poverty in America." 11 Facts About Education and Poverty in
America. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Mar. 2016.
Infoplease. Infoplease, n.d. Web. 06 Mar. 2016.
"Poverty and Crime: Breaking a Vicious Cycle of Discrimination." Poverties.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 06
Mar. 2016.
"Quick Facts About Social Issues." Social Facts. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Mar. 2016.
"Why Some Countries Are Richer than Others." Sciencenordic.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Mar. 2016.