Week 9 — Global Inequality

Why this matters

A shopper reading the label inside a shirt and a nursing student wondering why life spans differ by country both meet this week's ideas.

In plain language

Some countries are far richer than others, and where a person is born shapes how long they live, how long they go to school, and what a day's work pays. This week names that worldwide ranking global stratification (the sorting of the world's countries into layers by wealth, power, and well-being). You will learn how countries are grouped by income per person (a country's total income divided by its population). You will see where the world's poverty line (the dollar-a-day amount below which a person counts as extremely poor) is drawn, and why moving that line changes the count. You will weigh three competing stories about why the gaps exist, then read real figures on inequality inside seven countries, step by step.

• Already covered: Weeks 1 to 8 built the perspectives, the four data questions, stratification, and the level-of-analysis habit.
• This week: income groups, measures of development, the world's poverty line, and three explanations for the gaps.
• How they connect: Week 7's layers and medians now read figures for whole countries.
• Where we're going next: Week 10, Race & Ethnicity, begins the axes of inequality inside a society.

Focus

Why are some countries so much poorer, and how do you read the numbers that rank them?

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

• [ ] place a country in an income group from GNI per capita
• [ ] explain why raising a poverty line raised the count
• [ ] compare modernization, dependency, and world-systems theory
• [ ] read the 2022 Gini figures four ways

To-do

Plan your week

1. Read Chapter 9 (about 40 minutes), then the lecture and slides.
2. Work the lecture tutorial (60–90 minutes) and the practice set (about 20 minutes).
3. Do the Sociology in Action Workshop (about 90 minutes), the discussion, and the assignment.
4. Take the quiz.

This week's checkpoint: explain why about 125 million more people fell below the 3.00-dollar line without anyone's income falling.

You've got this

Take it in order, and ask your instructor early if you get stuck.

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