Social status is a powerful determiner of whether a person will be poor or rich. Theoretically, a person with greater intelligence, higher aptitude, and the diligence to study intensively and work hard should be able to earn a better income than a comparable person with less intelligence, lower aptitude, poor study habits, and less inclination to work. However, such is not always the case. If the smarter, more hard-working person is poor, and the less-smart, lazier person is rich, the odds are cast the other way around. Social stratificationùnot just a lack of moneyùis one of the primary and most profound causes of poverty. If this were not so, the people who receive welfare and other forms of relief could expect to attain the same position in life as those who are born rich. Social status is far more important than it should be in determining peopleÆs success and life outcomes.
A 1979 Carnegie study ("Small Futures: Children, Inequality, and the Limits of Liberal Reform", Richard de Lone principal investigator) found a child's future to be largely determined by social status, not brains (ôExplorations in Social Inequalityö). Furthermore, the gap between the rich and the poor in the United States is larger now than it has been at any point in the last 75 years and greater than in any other industrialized nation (ôExplorations in Social Inequalityö). In 1989, Federal Reserve figures found that the top 1% of wealthiest American households had a net worth of at least $2.3 million each and owned nearly 40% of the nationÆs wealth; the top 20% of American households, worth $180,000 or more, owned more than 80%:
According to Michael Hout and Samuel R. Lucas's Inequality by Design: Cracking the Bell Curve Myth (Princeton University Press), in 1974, when income inequality was at its lowest point, the top 10 percent of U.S. households had incomes 31 times that of the poorest 10 percent and four times greater than median-i...