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poverty in our global village of 1000
Rick Malloy, S.J. (malloy@SJU.EDU)
Thu, 17 Oct 1996 21:15:26 -0400
Hello all on Anthro-L:
I'm reading with great interest this thread on poverty.
I'm a Jesuit priest, living in Camden, NJ, finishing my
Dissertation at Temple U., and teaching anthroplogy
at St. Joseph's U. in Philadelphia.
A challenge for me is to get students and others to see
and think about poverty as a structural problem and not just
as the fault of poor people. These statistics help me
spark some thinking and debate in SJU classrooms.
Poverty would be studied and understood differently if we all
were located on the bottom rungs of the ladder of social
stratification.
Peace,
Rick Malloy, S.J.
OUR GLOBAL VILLAGE of 1000 People
Imagine that the 5.5 billion people on Earth
are reduced to a single village of 1000 people.
Of That 1000:
575 villagers are Asians
200 Asian villagers are from the Republic of China
130 villagers are Africans
125 villagers are Europeans
100 villagers are Latin Americans
65 villagers are North Americans (Canada, USA and Mexico)
700 villagers are people of color
300 villagers are not people of color (i.e. "white")
700 villagers are non-Christian
300 villagers are Christian
120 individuals get half of the village's total income
500 people (including most children) don't get enough food,
eventhough the village produces plenty of food for all.
200 of the worst off residents, lack food and safe drinking
water, which renders them unable to work and susceptible
to diseases.
600 live in shanty towns while the richest 60 families
live in luxury housing
75 villagers have a college degree
700 villagers cannot read or write and 50% of the village's
children have never been inside a classroom.
[Macionis 1996:1-2]
The 358 billionaires on the planet listed
by Forbes in 1994 had a combined net worth
equal to the combined income of the bottom
45% of the world population (Barnet 1994:7).
In terms of our village, this means that .000065 of the village
are billionaires, and they have more than the 450 villagers
at the bottom of the world distribution of wealth.
Nearly 1,000,000,000 live on the edge of
starvation and 30,000 children die each
day (Barnet 1994:5).
In terms of our village this means that 182 out of
1000 are near starvation, and a child dies
each 100 days of starvation.
Not more than 1.7 billion of the 5.5 billion people
on earth have either money or credit to buy much
of anything; 3.8 billion are window shoppers (Barnet 1994:19).
Therefore, in the village of 1000, 309 people can buy things;
691 people are window shoppers.
Barnet, Richard J.
1994 The Global war against the Poor. Washington DC: Servant
Leadership Press
Macionis, John J.
1996 Sociology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall
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Distribution of Wealth in USA
(% share of total net worth in 1983 dollars)
1963 1983 1989 % of households
Super Rich 25% 35% 41% 0.5% households $2.5 million +
Very Rich 7% 7% 6% 0.5% households $1.4 to $2.5 million
Rich 33% 30% 33% 9.0% households $206,340 to $1.4 million
All the rest 35% 28% 20% 90.0% households less than $206,340
[in 1983 Dollars. Source: Economic Policy Institute, 1992,
in Hess, Markson, Stein* 1997:197] *Sociology Text, Allyn & Bacon, 5th ed.
Distribution of Income in the USA 1990
Richest Fifth = 44.3%
Fourth Fifth = 23.8%
Third fifth = 16.6%
Second Fifth = 10.8%
Poorest Fifth = 4.6%
[Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1992,
table 704, p.450, in Gelles and Levine* 1996:256]
*Sociology Text, McGraw Hill, 5th ed.
POVERTY in the USA 1992
- 14.5% of population in poverty
- 9.6% White
- 33.3% Black
- 29.3% Latino
- 21.9% of all under 18
- 16.9% White children
- 46.6% Black children
- 39.9% Latino children
- 11.7% All families
- 5.5% White families
- 11.0% Black families
- 19.1% Latino familes
- 34.9% Female headed families
- 28.1% White Female headed families
- 49.8% Black Female headed families
- 48.8% Latino feamale headed families
[Current Population Reports, Series P60-185,
Poverty in the United States: 1992, in
Gelles and Levine* 1996:261] *Sociology Text,
McGraw Hill, 5th ed
Levels of Income Across the World (Per capita Income)
Per Capita Income = value of all goods and services
produced in an economy divided by the population
Switzerland $35,590 Soviet Union $8,639 India $303
Japan $27,300 Czechoslovakia $6,914 Nigeria $242
USA $22,550 Poland $4,185 Mozambique $74
Canada $20,840 China $1,327
U. Kingdom $17,400 El Salvador $1,075
[Giddens* 1996:51] * Sociology text, Norton 2nd ed.
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