SOC 2280 Lecture Notes - Gross Domestic Product, Standard-Definition Television

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 2280
• Professor: Linda Hunter

Document Summary

Wealth refers to the total economic assets owned by a person or family; it consists of property and income. Property comes in many forms, such as buildings, land, animals, machinery, cars, stocks, bonds, businesses, and bank accounts. Income is money received as wages, rents, interest, royalties, or the proceeds from a business. Large differences of income and wealth have existed as long as these data have been collected. The majority of wealth, 68 percent, is owned by only 10 percent of the nation"s families. The super-rich, the richest 1 percent of u. s. families, are worth more than the entire bottom 90 percent of americans. This unequal distribution of income and wealth has been remarkably stable; the changes that do occur indicate growing inequality. Also, there have been persistent differences in income and wealth between men and women, the young and old, and white and non-white americans: the income inequality of a population is commonly measured using the gini index.