Daily Archives: April 30, 2022

Recognizing the Gender Wage Gap

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The gender wage gap is something that lawmakers have tried to address through legislation, such as the Equal Pay Act, however it is still a very prevalent problem in America. Today, a woman earns about 79 cents for every dollar that a man earns. This is clearly unfair and shows that gender discrimination is still impacting individuals despite the progress and the attempts to close this wage gap. Women of color specifically earn the least when compared to the wages of men and white women. This may be due to the intersectionality of the identities of women of color (including gender and race), further proving that race and gender are factors that unfairly impact earnings. For example, Hispanic women earn only 55% of the earnings of men. This large gender wage gap is a clear example of unequal treatment based on gender in today’s society. It has been predicted that the gender wage gap will hopefully be closed by 2059. While this is great, the current wage gap (as shown in the following bar charts) is something that is actively impacting every woman and marginalized identity group right now without a quick fix to refocus professional earnings on talent rather than gender.

citations: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/03/these-5-charts-show-how-big-the-pay-gap-is-between-men-and-women/

US incarceration rates in 2010

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This bar chart explains US incarceration rates based on race and ethnicity from 2010. It shows that blacks are disproportionately imprisoned as compared to all other races. It shows that black individuals are over five times more likely to be incarceration than white individuals. It also shows that American Indian or Alaskan Native are the second most commonly incarcerated ethnicities which is somewhat surprising to me because I feel like this population is so commonly overlooked in research and most commonly put into an “other” category. Often statistics and research leaves them out and only chooses to include Latinx, Black, Asian, and White groups in their research so it is interesting to understand the racial profiling and potential targeting that leads to incarceration that American Indians and Alaskan Natives are subject to as well. This goes for Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders as well, coming in as the third most commonly incarcerated ethnicity in 2010. Higher incarceration rates of people of color is indicative of many social justice issues in the US. Such as being indicative of issues regarding over policing minority and lower income communities as well as issues of racial profiling. Racial profiling issues can be  connected back to the war on drugs period in American history in which minority populations and people of color were tied to drug scares and labeled as dangerous criminals. Unfortunately, the implications of this war on drugs still exists today and can be seen in greater incarceration rates of people of color in the US.

Unequal Access to Education

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Every child has a right to an education, however millions across the globe do not have access to education (this is not to mention the children who do have access to a low quality education). According to 2012 numbers, 120 million children were not enrolled in elementary school or middles school, with 50 million of those children living in Sub-Saharan Africa. Education is the key to improving communities and societies, without it, poverty lines increase and social mobility becomes harder. The chart below shows the number of children not enrolled in elementary of middle school in the year 2000 compared to the year 2012 across the world. The green bars indicate female children not enrolled in school while the blue bars represent male children not enrolled in school. As you can see, it is more common for girls to not be enrolled in school than it is for boys, which is another social injustice. More work needs to be done to ensure that children have access to quality education!

https://www.statista.com/chart/3180/out-of-school-children/

Are rising temperatures dramatically effect people of color?

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Environmental racism is a concept that often gets overlooked however it’s a big issue that is connected to many aspects of society. One way that you can look at this is through climate change and the demographics of where people live. According to NPR, in a study of 108 urban areas nationwide, the formerly redlined neighborhoods in nearly every city studied were hotter than those not subjected to redlining. The temperature difference in some areas was nearly 13 degrees. There has been a systematic disparity on who is getting affected by climate change the most. If you look at a global level “counties with large African American populations are exposed to extreme temperatures 2 to 3 more days per year than those counties with smaller African American populations.” In the next decades, this trend is only going to increase. If you look at the graph below it shows the different emission paths and the number of unlivable months out of a year a place will experience because of heat. This graph shows the many places that will become unlivable, with the ones most affected being around the equator which in many places has a high percentage of people of color. With temperature increase and the creation of unlivable zones will trigger a series of mass migrations which is both a social and humanitarian crisis that should be important to everyone.

 

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Income Inequality in America

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Income inequities have always been around in the United States. Yet, over the past few decades the gap has grown. As seen in the pie charts you can see that since 1989 the top ten percent of income earners have grown 8% totaling a total 50% of all of the income in the United states. In 2016 the bottom 50% of income earners made between $0-53,000, the middle 50%-90% made between $53,000-$176,000, and the top ten percent make over $176,000 people.  The inequities are clear. What the chart doesn’t show is what percent of the wealth that the 1% have. According to Smart Asset, a personal finance website, the 1% makes nearly $600,000 a year, which shows that there is are huge inequalities among the top 10%.

https://www.stlouisfed.org/open-vault/2019/august/wealth-inequality-in-america-facts-figures

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/01/24/how-much-money-you-have-to-earn-to-be-in-the-top-1percent-in-every-us-state.html

Food Insecurity- Issue of Equity

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As a Sociology major, looking at the ways in which different social justice issues affect individuals isn’t new to me. However, what is new to me is looking at these issues through a mathematical lens. The issue of food insecurity and hunger is not just an issue surrounding food, but an issue surrounding equity. Consider the following chart;

The information on this chart shows that the rate of White college students facing food insecurity is 36%, which is quite high. However, other demographics have even higher percentages. Hispanic college students food insecurity rate is 47%, Black is college students rate is 54% and Indigenous college students rate is 60%. This data shows that food insecurity is an issue of racial equality and equity.

One of the main contributing factors to the difference of food insecurity among demographics is the difference in pay wages. Consider another chart below;

This chart displays that no matter the level of education, White employees will be paid more than Black and Hispanic workers. When an individual is paid more, they have more access to purchase food and avoid food insecurity. Hence, White workers being paid more definitely contributes to White individuals having the lowest rate of food insecurity among college students, compared to Black, Indigenous and Hispanic college students.

Lastly, as we have previously discussed, healthier food options are more expensive than unhealthy food options, such as fast food chains (McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, etc). With this in mind, families of lower income are going to be more likely to eat at fast food restaurants given the low prices. Consider this last data set;

This data shows that the rate of obesity among White students is only 29.3% while it is 35.9% among Black children and 38.2% among Hispanic children. This makes sense given everything that has been discussed thus far in this blog. Eating cheap fast food more often will result in higher obesity rates. The way that poverty can have an affect on so many other factors such as physical and mental health displays how capitalistic our society truly is.