After completing Chapter 10, you should be able to:
- Discuss the dimensions of socioeconomic inequality.
- Discuss how one's social categories affect one's position in the social class structure of society and the fundamental reasons for the overrepresentation of these categories in the ranks of the poor.
- Identify the key differences between the order and conflict perspectives in their treatment of social class.
- Identify and discuss the myths that are common in American society today about poverty.
- Discuss social mobility, the social circumstances that impact different groups' access to it, and the factors that differentially limit some groups' mobility.
- Explain the phenomenon identified as the "feminization of poverty" and the social transformations that are behind its rise in the U.S.
- Discuss the dynamics of "welfare" and "wealthfare" and the current trends that relate to the diminishment of one and the expansion of the other.
- Understand the characteristics of American poverty.
