Manifestation of Poverty and Social Inequality

Social inequality perpetuates poverty at two main levels; at the micro and the macro level. The micro level addresses poverty from the angle of rewards in the labor and capital markets. For instance, every market around the world is characterized by the increasing disparities in real wages between the low skilled and the skilled workers. At the same time, the flow of returns in companies from the effort of the skilled workers to the owners creates an unfavorable skew of disparity between the employees and the owners of such businesses. On the other hand, at the macro level, there exists influences emanating from the structure of the market. For example there are influences such as the structure of the economy vis-à-vis that of other major economies, shifts in commodity prices where only a certain class of people can acquire such products, shifts in inflation, influences from globalization and tax structure in a country (Jozkowski, and Wiersma, 2017). All these factors tend to favor one end of the society while disadvantaging other and creating a major rift between them.

At an individual and institutional level, social inequality thrives owing to the existence of the discriminatory atmosphere. For instance, the world has consistently favored the male gender as compared to the female. In companies, most of the job are taken up by the male gender despite the statistics around the world showing that the population of women is larger compared to that of the male gender (Bhopal, 2017). Often time job promotions are done based on one’s gender which is one of the areas that results to social inequality. In addition, the challenge of acquiring skills largely boils down to ones social position, the poor are more likely to be discriminated from accessing such skills and in essence fail to have the means to effectively adapt to the changes in the work environment. Also, as a factor worth mentioning, the lack of competition either at some institutional level or in the corporate level influences products pricing which trickles down to affect the poorer families.

Despite the difficulty involves with producing solutions to address the social inequalities, there are solution that if implemented can address this issue. For instance, the government may need to deploy a variety of measures to address this challenge. Key among them are the measures related to taxes which as has been highlighted by Beneke, Lustig and Oliva (2017) as a contributing factor to how the poorer are disadvantages. Governments can help address this by offering certain tax privileges to the poor while deploying higher taxes for the rich. In doing this, the social inequality bracket will be highly reduced. Secondly, the government can also offer a platform where the poor can have free access to some basic social services. In doing this, there will be some balance that allow everyone in the economy to access the basic social services.

Lastly, as Alvarez, Barney, and Newman (2015) highlights, there is need for government to find the ways to ensure industrialization is employed in a country. Industrialization will in a sense offer everyone an opportunity to access resources and the knowhow to contribute to the economy directly. At the same time, an increase in the level of industrialization will contribute to an opportunity for all employees to access almost equal wage levels which in will ease this difference (Jozkowski, and Wiersma, 2017).

References

Alvarez, S. A., Barney, J. B., & Newman, A. M. (2015). The poverty problem and the industrialization solution. Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 32(1), 23-37.

Beneke, M., Lustig, N., & Oliva, J. A. (2017). The impact of taxes and social spending on inequality and poverty in El Salvador. Commitment to Equity Handbook. A Guide to Estimating the Impact of Fiscal Policy on Inequality and Poverty. Brookings Institution Press and CEQ Institute.(2016).

Bhopal, K. (2017). Addressing racial inequalities in higher education: equity, inclusion and social justice. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 40(13), 2293-2299.

Jozkowski, K. N., & Wiersma‐Mosley, J. D. (2017). The Greek system: How gender inequality and class privilege perpetuate rape culture. Family Relations, 66(1), 89-103.