STRUCTURAL INEQUALITIES

Structural Inequalities

Structural Inequalities

Introduction

Social inequalities refer to disproportionate allocations or possessions of economic and social resources among groups. Some of the key individual, group, and structural domains in which these disparities occur include, but are not limited to, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, class, age, geographical location (country, rural vs. urban setting, affluent vs. high-poverty concentration environment), arid citizenship. Social inequalities concern the power dynamics that are ingrained in how these identities and locations translate to differential inter-individual and intergroup outcomes. Furthermore, while objective positioning as defined by measureable outcomes are crucial elements of social inequalities, subjective 1ocation within hierarchies and power structures are also critical components to understanding how these inequalities translate to inter- and intra-group differences and similarities in outcomes.

Discussion

One of the clearest ways in which social inequalities manifest is in indicators of structural inequalities, such as household income, and unemployment rates. For example, while the median household income for all families in the United States increased from 1968 to 2007, the disparities between whites and Blacks remained constant. In 1968, the median household income for Blacks ($27,995) was just a few thousand dollars more than half of the median household income for whites. In 2007, this increased to $40,143 for Blacks and $69,937 for whites. As the data show, the Black/white disparity in median household income has, in fact, grown (Dani, 2008, 3).

Economic Structural Inequalities by Lower Class City Residents

If poverty is seen as a result of structural inequality within society, any serious attempt to eliminate poverty must seek to change those conditions which produce it.

The issue was not taken up in detail by the Commission and there was no attempt to elucidate what was meant by structural inequality within society, or to explore its role in causing poverty. The implication however, was that efforts to reduce poverty would ultimately fail unless these structural inequalities were also addressed. Some writers have interpreted these remarks to mean that income poverty and income in equality are the same, particularly when the poverty line is expressed in relative terms, as a percentage of median (or mean) income.

The concept of statistical poverty described earlier, arguing that it directs attention on the pathologies of the poor themselves and away from the broader structural inequalities in society that allows poverty to persist. The manifestations of poverty come to be identified with it causes, so that cause of poverty is low income ...