Severe Income Inequality

828 Words2 Pages

Severe income inequality is an issue that plagues the citizens and governments on a local and global scale. While the income gap between the classes grows wider with time, the ability for the poor to improve their socio-economic status declines. In addition, the items that make a significant difference to the quality of life and upward mobility like advanced education, quality health care, safe and decent housing, access to transportation, and high income jobs are the domain of the upper classes. One of the sharpest divides between high and low income families is healthcare. Due to the high cost of healthcare, a large percentage of the underprivileged population are unable to afford it. For the few that do have it, the high deductible …show more content…

Education is a key aspect in everyone’s life that helps them prepare for future job opportunities and a higher standard of living. Unfortunately, education is harder to access for some individuals, and easier for others. For instance, many low-income families have trouble taking their child to school as a result of a lack of transportation. They also might not be able to make it to school or do homework after school because of family issues, such as having to take care of a family member or having to work after school hours. While these inconveniences are commonly found throughout the middle and lower class, this issue does not seem to occur in the higher-income families. High-income families can obtain advanced education opportunities, including attending elite private schools, while generally, low-income families cannot. In addition, impoverished individuals that decide to get a higher education after college can sometimes be drowning in debt once they get out of college. Conversely, the wealthy only have a small amount to pay off, if any at …show more content…

In China, the poverty line is currently set at 6.3 yuan a day, which is approximately $0.91 US dollars. In 2012, about 10.2 percent of the population made lower than the poverty line. This means about 13,974,000 people in China are in poverty. In Brazil, however, 16.2 million people live under $70 Brazilian Dollars ($20.88 US Dollars) per month, and 4.8 million of those people don’t have any flow of income at all. If global income inequality continues, I believe there will be a huge increase in poverty, immigration, and disenchantment, which could cause protests and revolts. However, it’s never too late to reverse our income disparity issue. The solutions for solving severe income inequality are simple. We need to improve education in low-income neighborhoods, raise taxes on everyone who is making a six-figure income and above while lowering taxes on those who are making less than a six-figure income. Lastly, healthcare should be provided as a civil right as well as being free to use. In conclusion, severe income inequality limits many people from getting proper education and healthcare. It’s a problem found within our community and around the world, and with proper solutions, it's a situation we won’t have to deal with in the

Show More
Related

  • Extreme Inequality: The Causes Of Extreme Poverty

    1050 Words  | 3 Pages

    In life most people experience trials and conflicts. Fortunately many of us are able to find jobs, ask for assistance from friends family or even programs to aide us through those times. However what if those options were not available to you? What quality of life would you and/or your children experience? All over the World people live this reality everyday, They are forced to not only live in poverty, but some in what is known as extreme poverty. Extreme poverty is defined by The World Bank as life on less than $1.25/day. What this means is that children living in this condition are deprived of their basic needs such as no housing, persistent malnutrition, death, no health care and schooling is hard to obtain. All theses things although

    Read More

  • Billionaires On The Bus By Julie Delahanty

    1285 Words  | 3 Pages

    Unfortunately, the article’s eye-catching title is a reality in Canada. The wealth gap between the rich and poor is continually increasing. The number of billionaires in the world is so small that they can fit in a single school bus. Sixty-two people now own as much wealth as half the world’s population. The article explained the sad reality of inequality in the United States. It sheds light that the wealth of the poorest half of the world’s population has fallen by a trillion US dollars in just five years, while the wealth of the richest 62 people on the planet just kept growing. The article emphasizes that to truly tackle inequality and address extreme poverty several actions must be taken. These must include working with global leaders to end the era of tax havens, supporting women’s rights organizations and helping developing countries provide universal

    Read More

  • Income Inequality in the United States

    795 Words  | 2 Pages

    The highest earning fifth of U.S. families earned 59.1% of all income, while the richest earned 88.9% of all wealth. A big gap between the rich and poor is often associated with low social mobility, which contradicts the American ideal of equal opportunity. Levels of income inequality are higher than they have been in almost a century, the top one percent has a share of the national income of over 20 percent (Wilhelm). There are a variety of factors that influence income inequality, a few of which will be discussed in this paper. Rising income inequality is caused by differences in life expectancy, rapidly increases in the incomes of the top 5 percent, social trends, and shifts in the global economy.

    Read More

  • Inequality in America

    562 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the United States there are four social classes : the upper class, the middle class, the working class, and the lower class. Of these four classes the most inequality exists between the upper class and the lower class. This inequality can be seen in the incomes that the two classes earn. During the period 1979 through the present , the growth in income has disproportionately grown.The bottom sixty percent of the US population actually saw their real income decrease in 1990 dollars. The next 20% saw medium gains. The top twenty percent saw their income increase 18%. The wealthiest one percent saw their incomes rise drastically over 80%. As reported in the 1997 Center on Budget's analysis , the wealthiest one percent of Americans ( 2.6 million people) received as much after-tax income in 1994 as the bottom 35 percent of the population combined (88 million people). But in 1977 the bottom 35 percent had about twice as much after tax income as the top one percent. These statistics further show the disproportional income growth among the social classes. The gr...

    Read More

  • Income Inequality in the United States

    3100 Words  | 7 Pages

    Income inequality not only harms us fiscally, but also affects our mental and physical wellbeing; therefore, it is important to identify the right ways to control wealth distribution among people.

    Read More

  • A Solution to Help Make College More Affordable

    890 Words  | 2 Pages

    Steve Cohen shows the disparity between the rising cost of college and a family’s capability to afford it. Cohen explains “Tuition has risen almost 1,200 percent in the last 35 years, and the sticker price for many four-year private colleges and out-of-state public universities exceeds $250,000.” Moreover, he goes on to say that even at public universities, it is about $80,000 for four years for tuition and other college related expenses. Later in his article, Cohen explains how this leaves middle-class families in a very uncomfortable situation. The parents or other money-making entities in the household want their student to go to college and earn a degree, but now there can be an element of stress in figuring out how the fees will be paid for. Furth...

    Read More

  • An Analysis Of Owen And Sawhill's Essay: Should Everyone Go To College

    896 Words  | 2 Pages

    Everyone knows that person from high school that just wasn’t cut out for college. It’s not a bad thing by any means, but if you’re thinking about heading off to college like many American teenagers often do, think about this: going to college can be a waste of both your time and your money. I’m not the first to say it, and I sure as hell won’t be the last. In Stephanie Owen and Isabel Sawhill’s essay, Should Everyone Go to College?, the two authors take a strong economic approach to justify going to college. Owen, an ex- senior research assistant at Brookings’ Center on Children and Families and current research associate at the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan center for research on the problems of urban communities, and Sawhill, the co-director

    Read More

  • Persuasive Essay On Standardized Testing

    1272 Words  | 3 Pages

    But what’s more important? Saving money orapplying to college? So here we ask ourselves on more time, is college worth it? Of course, it is.The more colleges you apply for, the better. Expanding your college options are better thanlimiting yourself with a budget.The cost of tests and applications may be high, but that is nothing compared to how muchcollege really costs. In college, you’re not just paying for the opportunity to learn. You arepaying for books, to rooming, to the grass you step on, and to the air you breathe. A student withno subsidizing means to pay for college can find themselves amidst a nightmare when findingout how much college costs. The cost is so high that an “average of $29,400” (Webber 2) isexpected for a single student’s loans. College tuition, is not lenient, and you know it’s bad whenalmost former president Barack Obama mentioned and “criticized the rising rate of collegetuition” (Gutmann 136). The average cost of college can “range from $3,000 to more than$32,000” (How Much Will College Cost Me? 1). And for low-income students? The statisticssay that “only 52 percent of low-income students enrolled in a…college immediately upongraduating” (Elliot 26). The game is not in the favor of low-income students. In fact, collegecosts plus lack of monetary. See, they need jobs to pay for college, but without college, thechances at a good paying job are slim. And so, some never see the end of

    Read More

  • America Should Increase Taxes and Lower College Tuition

    1520 Words  | 4 Pages

    For at least a century, tuition at selective private colleges and universities has risen annually by two to three percent more than the rate of inflation (Ehrenberg 1). Tuition increases at public colleges have slowed slightly, but the cost is still out of reach for low-income students. Financial aid has dwindled. A select group of colleges and universities are cutting their tuition; (Carapezza, 2013) however, student debts can stick with a person, even after graduation. Due to a university’s cost, a handful of tuition is passed down to the students. With college follows the higher cost of living. Incomes are limited due to low paying jobs. During my first week in college, everything about college was an adventure. From what to expect in college, to the adaptation of the college environment, the college experience seemed nerve wracking at first. However, the lessons from college proved to be beneficial towards my life. At that moment, not only have I learned about the college experience, I’ve also learn about the burdens of college tuition, how it can impact a person’s life, and as well as being a successful college student. Also, college tuition has escalated my worries toward the future. To help pay for higher education, the federal government offers tuition tax credit programs (College Board, n.d). Anyone who can afford to pay for thousands of dollars can usually ignore it. As for everyone else, when every penny counts, questions will be raised about where every penny is going. If tax dollars were to be invested to either the national health care or the military, for one, transferring taxes to health care will ensure the public's health; however, since taxes was invested in health care, there will be fewer doctors towards a m...

    Read More

  • The Three Different Types Of Poverty

    1199 Words  | 3 Pages

    The most significant dividing factor between people is money. Money divides cities into sections of wealthy areas and non-wealthy areas, money divides countries into social classes, and money divides the world into first-world countries and third-world countries. Lately, this divide has grown exponentially due, at least in part, to the increasing problem of poverty throughout the world. Poverty takes many forms and can be found in many places, and if the problem is not addressed and fixed, the world will be split into just two categories: the rich and the poor. Throughout the world, there are three different types of poverty; situational poverty, locational poverty, and relative poverty. Understanding and addressing theses types of poverty

    Read More

  • Why The Poor Are Getting Richer And The Rich Poorer Essay

    1045 Words  | 3 Pages

    There are many rich and poor people in the world today, in our own country and in others. We have classified by how much they can afford and they are put into a class system. It’s hard for everyone in a country to be equal in the sense of how much money they make. Adriana Delgado says, “The vast differences between the rich and the poor, the powerful and the powerless, will be the catalyst for the best intentions to be rewarded with ungratefulness and contempt, creating resentment and mistrust between the classes.” there is always going to be problems between the rich and poor, because one sometimes is held higher than the

    Read More

  • Essay On Income Inequality

    1524 Words  | 4 Pages

    Income inequality continues to increase in today’s world, especially in the United States. Income inequality means the unequal distribution between individuals’ assets, wealth, or income. In the Twilight of the Elites, Christopher Hayes, a liberal journalist, states the inequality gap between the rich and the poor are increasing widening, and there need to have things done - tax the rich, provide better education - in order to shortening the inequality gap. America is a meritocratic country, which means that everybody has equal opportunity to be successful regardless of their class privileges or wealth. However, equality of opportunity does not equal equality of outcomes. People are having more opportunities to find a better job, but their incomes are a lot less compared to the top ten percent rich people. In this way, the poor people will never climb up the ladder to high status and become millionaires. Therefore, the government needs to increase all the tax rates on rich people in order to reduce income inequality.

    Read More

  • Argumentative Essay: Should Higher Education Be Free?

    1053 Words  | 3 Pages

    Many significant questions regarding higher education are in relation to its cost, raising fears that higher education has become unaffordable. Education fee for universities and colleges has continuously grown to become one of the largest expense for most students and parents over the years, especially with the never-ending dramatic tuition fee increases resulting from public funding cuts for education by the federal and state governments. Selingo (para 3) reported that higher education cost definitely has a direct impact on access, thus, the frequent increases in cost are logically of great concern to many, including parents, students, and education policymakers. In other words, this has disadvantaged the poor families, resulting in unequal education opportunities for Americans and putting attainment of higher education in danger of becoming a hereditary privilege rather than a right for all people (Selingo para 6).

    Read More

  • Proverty Inequality

    752 Words  | 2 Pages

    On today’s life, social inequality is given based on a variety of different characteristics, of race, ethnicity, gender, culture, economic class, immigration status, and sexual preference that a person may have. It is the power of privilege the holds the honor and respect, and the prestige of income and property, that wins every time. Auto-differentially positioning the poor as minority groups to hold less power, and manipulated by those who want to maintain themselves as elite. “Often experiencing unequal treatment compared to the dominant group, giving them a collective sense of being discriminated against” (Carl 2013, Pg.41) It is clear that society still struggles to find opportunities to live in equality with the poor. Rewarding them with only unequal distribution of opportunities that only increases, today’s wage gap and the disadvantages that they must overcome on their way to survive and succeed in life. What factors can increase this inequality? The poor must overcome the lack of economic resources, the stereotypes created among their group, and the government cutbacks that they must live on their daily basis till the rest of their lives.

    Read More

  • Inequality In Education Essay

    1002 Words  | 3 Pages

    Obtaining a good education is probably one of the most sought out dreams in America. Although education is free for all American citizens, there are several obstacles that impact the population from receiving equal education benefits. Two groups that experience a difference when receiving an education are the rich and the poor. Inequality among different social classes in America can make it extremely difficult for the poor to receive the same type of education as the wealthy. These inequalities can lower the chance of individuals living in poverty stricken communities from receiving a reasonable education. Education can be impacted by location, wealth, and state funding. Each factor plays an important part in the education citizens across

    Read More

More about Severe Income Inequality

Open Document