Stratification and Social Inequality
About 11 percent of the people in the United States live below the poverty line established by the federal government. In 2015, no fewer than 43.1 million people were living in poverty.
One contributor to the poverty rate has been a large number of workers employed at the minimum wage. The federal government raised the minimum wage over the last 60 years from 75 cents in 1950 to $7.25 in 2009. The minimum wage has failed to keep pace with the cost of living.
Stratification in the society assigns people to distinctive ranks based on their religious knowledge, skill in hunting, physical attractiveness, trading expertise, or ability to provide health care. For example:
Enos Banks makes his home in a forgotten pocket of rural poverty. In his 60s, he lives in a trailer and gets by on a little more than $500 a month in supplemental security income (SSI).
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mbwebwe Kabamba earns about $200 more per month than Enos Banks. Kabamba is a surgeon at a hospital in Kinshasa. He supplements his hospital salary of $250 per month by performing surgery on the side. In Congo, the same income that impoverishes Enos Banks places Kabamba near the middle of his society’s income distribution.
Kabamba may seem better off than Banks due to Congo’s lower cost of living. This is not the case. Kabamba supports a family of 12, while Banks supports only himself. By U.S. standards, Kabamba’s four-bedroom home compared with Banks’s trailer is overcrowded. And although Kabamba’s house has a kitchen, it lacks running water, dependable electric service, and air conditioning–services most Americans take for granted. Considered wealthy in his own country, Kabamba is worse off than a poor person in the United States.