>>Socio-economic Status

" Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services..."
Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in 1948, article 25-1

The subjects of socioeconomic status and income inequality are concepts that reasonable people have agreed to disagree about for a very long time. While I am neither an economist, nor a social scientist, I am a human being with a vested interest in the survival of both the planet and the species. Although I do not purport to be without an opinion in this debate, I have tried on this website to present objective and reasoned information to the reader. My primary goal is to contribute to the ongoing discussion and perhaps even assist in a resolution that is beneficial to all.

"In 2000:
The median income for all U.S. households was $42,100;
There were 31.1 million poor people in the U.S. (11.3 percent poverty rate)
Child poverty stood at 16.2 percent (Children make up 37 percent of the poor but only 26 percent of the total population.)" (1)

Socio-economic Status (SES) is a term that is used to describe an individual's financial and social position within society. SES is generally representative of one's level of education, income and occupation, but it can also be indicated by other factors, such as net worth, ownership of assets (homes, cars, boats, and other properties).

Income inequality is a term that generally refers to the variations of income. Within any population group, some people will have more income than others. The Gini coefficient http://depts.washington.edu/eqhlth/paperD4.htmlis one way of measuring this inequality.

The Gini coefficient is a method of calculating inequality that is usually applied to income. It is derived from a Lorentz Curve, which diagrams the cumulative percent of income against the cumulative percent of income recipients. Twice the area of the curve between what would be perfect equality and the existing distribution is the Gini coefficient. A Gini coefficient of 0 means perfect equality, while that of 1 means one unit of the population has everything and there is none for the rest. It more accurately measures differences in the middle of the distribution curve, than at the extremes.

"Gilligan, the former director of Mental Health in the Massachusetts prison system presents the view that "all violence is an attempt to achieve justice or what the violent person perceives as justice, for himself or for whomever it is on whose behalf he is being violent, so as to receive whatever retribution or compensation the violent person feels is "due" him or "owed" to him or to those on whose behalf he is acting, whatever he or they are "entitled" to or have a "right" to; or so as to prevent those whom one loves or identifies with from being subjected to injustice." He looks at the increasing disparity between the rich and the poor, and the gap between aspiration and achievement on the part of the poor themselves. Gilligan tries to elucidate "the psychological mechanism that causes this relationship between aspiration, frustration, and violence, -- namely that violence is a function of shame, and shame is a function of the size of the gap between aspiration and achievement."" Source: retrieved fromn the World Wide Web, on June 11, 2002, @ http://depts.washington.edu/eqhlth/paperD4.html.

"Let's say that it was 24 hours before you were born, and a genie appeared and said, 'What I'm going to do is let you set the rules of the society into which you will be born. You can set the economic rules and the social rules, and whatever rules you set will apply during your lifetime and your children's lifetimes.' And you'll say, 'Well, that's nice, but what's the catch?' And the genie says, 'Here's the catch. You don't know if you're going to be born rich or poor, white or black, male or female, able-bodied or infirm, intelligent or retarded.' Now, what rules do you want to have?'' Warren Buffet, investment whiz

The above referenced concept was actually constructed by John Rawls, who is considered by many people, to be one of the most influential philosophers of the late 20th century. Rawls refers to this procedure of designing policies, without personal bias, as "The Veil of Ignorance." It is a hypothetical situation in which rational persons behind a "veil of ignorance" choose principles of justice to govern the basic structure of their society. To read more about John Rawls, visit http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/original-position/.

The following quotes represent opinions from both sides of this issue:

'The outstanding faults of the economic society in which we live are its failure to provide for full employment and its arbitrary and inequitable distribution of wealth and incomes." John Maynard Keynes, English economist (1936)

'If all the Forbes billionaires agreed to limit themselves to their basic billion and handed over the excess to Uncle Sam, Uncle Sam would end up with some $90 billion without one member of the club having to give up a single necessity or, for that matter, a single luxury . . . not a house, not a car, not a boat, not nothing.'
Don Hewitt, 60 Minutes executive producer (1995)

'Our country is an exceedingly good example of the fact that if production be encouraged and increased, then distribution fairly well takes care of itself. Other countries, by their actions in stopping production, in penalizing industry and economy, and rewarding indolence and extravagance, have been able to bring about a very general and equal distribution of misery, but no other country ever approached ours in the equal and general distribution of prosperity.'
Calvin Coolidge

'When a man has accumulated a sum of money within the law, that is to say, in the legally correct way, the people no longer have any right to share in the earnings resulting from the accumulation.' John D. Rockefeller

'One of the things about my lifestyle is that I don't want to know what anything costs.' New York banker John Castle, who spent $500,000 chartering jets to fly his horse Spot to a veterinary specialist, The Wall Street Journal, April 8, 1999

'The poor of the world cannot be made rich by redistribution of wealth. Poverty can't be eliminated by punishing people who've escaped poverty, taking their money and giving it as a reward to people who have failed to escape.'
P.J. O'Rourke, former editor, the National Lampoon.

'I thought government was supposed to protect our property, not confiscate it, not penalize someone because they've been successful.'
Senator Don Nickles (R-OK), in support of repealing the estate tax, July 16, 2000

'What's wrong with being rich in America?'
Senator Phil Gramm (R-Texas), July 14, 2000

'If we made an income pyramid out of a child's blocks, with each layer portraying $1,000 of income, the peak would be far higher than the Eiffel Tower, but almost all of us would be within a yard of the ground.' Paul Samuelson of MIT

'Humans are social. We judge our own situations very much in comparison to others around us. It is not surprising that people experience less stress, more peace of mind, and feel happier in an environment with more social cohesion and more equality.' Harvard economist Juliet Schor, Rachel's Environment & Health Weekly, June 10, 1999

'A billion people living in dire poverty alongside a billion in widening splendor on a planet growing ever smaller and more integrated is not a sustainable scenario. Whether it is the rich who must pause or the poor who must catch up is likely to be a defining issue in the future.'
Raymond Baker and Jennifer Nordin, International Herald Tribune, February 5, 1999

'What I want to see above all is that this remains a country where someone can always get rich.' Ronald Reagan, past president of the United States

'In a republic like ours, where all men are equal, this attempt to array the rich against the poor or the poor against the rich is socialism, communism, devilism.'
Senator John Sherman, explaining his opposition to the 1894 income tax proposal.

'I think it is really corrosive to have this argument about the rich and the poor. It's not worthy of where we are in the development of our country.' Paul O'Neill, U.S. Treasury Secretary, February 6, 2001"

Source: Retrieved from the World Wide Web on May 30, 2002 @ http://www.inequality.org/quotesfr.html

(1) Income and Poverty 2000 -
PRESS BRIEFING ON 2000 INCOME AND POVERTY ESTIMATES
Dr. Daniel H. Weinberg
Chief, Housing and Household Economic Statistics Division
U.S. Census Bureau, September 25, 2001

For additional information, the following sites are suggested:

http://www.inequality.cornell.edu/ (Check out the inequality quiz!!)

http://www.apa.org/pi/urban/povres.html (Resolution on Poverty and Socioeconomic Status Adopted by the American Psychological Association, August 6, 2000.)

http://www.cepr.net/ (Center for Economic and Policy Research)

http://www.daedalus.amacad.org/issues/winter2002/Jencks.pdf (Objective research on effects of inequality)

http://www.npal.org/aid/inequality.html [2001, January 15].
The National Policy Association and the Academy for Health Services Research and Health Policy cosponsored "Income Inequality, Socioeconomic Status and Health," Washington, DC, on April 27, 2000. A brief description of the conference and selected presentations are available from the National Policy Association website, above. A comprehensive conference report is still to be published.

http://depts.washington.edu/eqhlth/ [2001, January 15].
The site is provided by the International Health Program of the Department of Health Services at the School of Public Health and Community Medicine in the University of Washington, Seattle, USA and Health Alliance International, Seattle, USA. The groups' mission is to provide the scientific evidence that demonstrates and seeks to explain the association between income inequality and health. It contains a glossary, an overview of ideas and issues, some papers and reports, and links.

http://www.macfdn.org/research/hcd/hcd_13.htm McArthur Foundation Network on Socioeconomic Status and Health

http://www.mnlegalservices.org/lsap/socio.shtml Socioeconomic status and health: the disparities may be deadly. Minnesota Legal Services Coalition

http://wwwdasis.samhsa.gov/teds97/id16.htm Trends in socioeconomic status

http://www.aap.org/policy/re9848.html Race/Ethnicity, Gender, Socioeconomic Status-Research Exploring Their Effects on Child Health: A Subject Review (RE9848)
AMERICAN ACADEMY OF PEDIATRICS

http://www.apa.org/pi/urban/povres.html Resolution on Poverty and Socioeconomic Status