【优质】《英语国家社会与文化入门》Unit10SocialProblemsInTheUnitedStates(8P).pptVIP

Unit 10 Social Problems In The United States Focal Points ● Racial problems 　 ● Poverty as a social problem ● Drug abuse 　 ● White-collar crime 　● Richard Nixon  Socially-Stratified American Society American society is a stratified one in which power, wealth and prestige are unequally distributed. It is divided into social classes that have varying degrees of access to the reward the society offers. For example, the richest fifth of American individuals and families owns more than three-quarters of the wealth in the United States, whereas the lowest fifth owns only 0.2% of the wealth. The richest fifth of American families receives over 40% of the national income, whereas the poorest fifth receives only 5.2%. Racial Problems The black “Underclass” The majority of the blacks today have failed to share in the general gains of progress made in the past decades. The urban ghettos now contain a permanently impoverished “underclass” of habitually unemployed or underemployed black people. Many of them are young and unskilled. They live in cities where the unemployment rate for teenager black workers run as high as 50% or about 8 times the rate for the American work force as a whole. This “underclass” could continue to persist---that is, for reasons of social-class inequality. Living in an environment of poverty, decay, crime, drug addiction, joblessness, and hopelessness, this ghetto underclass offers an explosive potential for the future. Poverty as a social problem The United States is one of the most wealthy countries in the world. Yet over 24 million people or about 10% of the population are living at or below the official poverty line, in incomes that the federal government considers insufficient to meet basic requirement of food, clothing, and shelter. There are millions more living slightly above the poverty line, whose plight is not much better. Also, the social services in the United States compare unfavorably with those in most in