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Gap between rich and the poor
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Are there any sociological debates about why the gap is getting bigger? I'm doing my sociology coursework on this so I would like some input from the PD regulars please 
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Is the coursework on "economic" or "social" inequality, and is it restricted to the UK only? The two are obviously interlinked but the emphasis will probably dictate definitions, approaches, etc in your argument. Since it is a sociology essay its likely to be the latter.
You'll need to think about declining levels of "social capital" for lower economic/income quintiles and lessening class mobility (poorer education, healthcare, housing provisions for lower quintiles, greater emphasis on formal qualifications), fragmentation of social classes/groupings, decline of labour movements and unions, and perhaps the impact of immigration as well.
Sociology isn't my strong point, at any rate, I would lean toward economic arguments for growing inequality. Primarily, the broad shift from social-democracy (welfare state, nationalized industries, universal services) towards market liberalism (privatization, lower taxes for the rich, less welfare provision, less regulation of business, union-breaking) causing a decline in incomes and social mobility for those in the lower quintiles (as well as loss of social housing, etc) and rising profits for business (especially finance) and therefore rise in incomes for the highest few percent (shareholders, executives, managers, etc). You possibly could add to this the impact of immigration (large numbers of low income immigrants competing with lowest earners and putting further pressure on public services, whilst wealthy immigrants or "non-doms" moving to London increases proportion of wealth held by the richest few percent).
For example, in Chile the gap has increased over the last years (it is a hugely unequal country I'm afraid), but since the country as a whole is doing well economically the poor do live better off than before in absolute terms - their standard of life is just improving more slowly than that of the rich, hence the widening of the gap.
Yes, and it would be fairly easy to look up aggregate/averaged statistics on the net or maybe detailed textbooks. I think the lowest 10-15% have seen their real incomes decrease in the last 20 years, the next 30 percent or so haven't seen much of a difference, the next 40 or so slight rises, and the most substantial rises going to the last few percent. The best way to understand it would perhaps be to look at distribution curves for real income from 1985, 1995, 2005. The method economists use to calculate inequality is the "Gini Coefficient" which gives an indication based on available data.
If the coursework covers international examples Chile might be a good example; it and other latin/central American countries were subject to the "shock therapy" that Russia also experienced. This was similar to what happened in the UK (i.e. privatization, deregulation, tax cuts, budget cutbacks, union-busting, etc) but over a much shorter timescale. These increased inequality and caused economic turmoil in most of the places it was implemented. Provides a more extreme example of the general trend.
As for standard of life improving; from what I've seen there is no real empirical evidence for this, and much of what there is points in the other direction. Most people (80% plus) have seen a rise in the absolute material standard in living, but most indictators of general wellbeing (e.g. anxiety, depression rates, serious mental illness, suicide, serious obesity, serious drug abuse, alcoholism, etc) have shown substantial decline. The general goods market-liberalism/globalisation were supposed to deliver are articles of faith or elements of the general ideologies ("invisible hand", trickle down effect, etc).
Thanks.
I assume you are still talking about Chile in this paragraph? If you are, I disagree. This may be true for other Latin American countries, but not for Chile. There is documented evidence of income and living standard having improved for the poorest, at least in material terms, which is what I'm referring to. For example, the same segment which years ago suffered from undernourishment are the ones suffering from obesity now. I'm not saying this is a good thing - I'm just saying that it is very telling of an augmented purchasing power.
As for the characteristics you mentioned in the "general wellbeing", I am of the opinion that this part is actually more difficult to prove empirically, as these measurments are more recent. Even if they are in decline (which I think they are, btw), is it only for the poorest segment? I would have to look at the records again to be sure, but I would say, from what I have read, they have declined for everybody. And anyway, I think it's tricky to blame the economic model for them -how much comes from the model itself and how much from the complex interactions of different natures of a society? Of course they are closely linked, I just think it's trickier to claim a casuality from the economic model to people's mental health, for example. I'm not saying there isn't a relation, it's just a thought that we should consider different factors carefully before we make conclusions.
No, although it might not have been clear! I was talking about the UK, although the trend is evident across almost all English speaking countries, the USA being the most extreme example.
Increases in "wellbeing" are felt most keenly at low levels of income. So, if you go from $4 to $10 disposable income per day you will feel a lot better than if you went from $104 to $110 a day. Put simply, when you are closest to absolute poverty the better any extra "dollar" feels.
I agree entirely...difficult for an item of coursework but you'd need to draw upon as many sources and disciplines as possible to arrive upon a decisive conclusion!