Ups and Downs: Consequences of Poverty
For those who live in poverty, perhaps because they are chronically unemployed or working for minimum wage, the end results can be grim. A job layoff, a protracted illness or other family emergency can trigger a precipitous downward spiral.
Ups and Downs: Women, Minorities and Social Class
Those who tumble out of America's lower middle class and into poverty generally don't constitute a random cross-section of the U.S. population. More often than not they are women and minorities.
Ups and Downs: Upward Mobility
If there's even the slightest hint of a silver lining in the dark cloud of poverty in the United States, it's that upward mobility, while increasingly limited, is still possible for those living in the U.S., regardless of their cultural or ethnic ba...
Ups and Downs: Diminishing Opportunity
The explosion of opportunity in America reached its peak in the Post-War boom years of the 1950s. But many sociologists contend that with the decline of industry in the United States and the emergence of the Information Age, the number of opportunit...
Ups and Downs: Social Class in the United States: Fact or Fiction?
Despite the fact that nearly one in five Americans lives in poverty, most of those living in the United States insist that there is no such thing as social class in the U.S.