Social Issues and Poverty

990 Words2 Pages

Introduction Social issues are problems in the society today that are described as wrong, widespread and changeable. A category of conditions that people believe need to be changed. Poverty is a serious social issue in the society today. According to Peilin (2012), poverty brings hardships to families and individuals as well as political thereby negatively affecting the social stability and social development and posing a severe threat to human security (p. 243). This paper focuses on poverty as a social issue in today’s society. First, it gives a succinct introduction of the social issue, and then describes how it fits into the field of sociology. It also evaluates the sociological theories and terminology that relate to the social issue. The section that follows evaluates what is known and unknown about the particular social issue. This is followed by a discussion regarding the value of sociological research into the issue determining the available or possible practical implications of the sociological inquiry. The information presented here is strongly supported by the concepts and theories derived from reliable sources. Poverty as a social Issue Poverty is generally defined as a state of deprivation in well-being. The conventional perspective connects well-being basically to control over commodities, so the poor are individuals who do not have sufficient income or consumption to place them above some adequate bare minimum threshold (Lyman et al, 2004). Poverty is also tied to a particular type of consumption, for instance people may be considered health poor, house poor or food poor. The poverty dimensions can often be determined directly. For instance it can be measured by assessing malnutrition or levels of literacy (Alla... ... middle of paper ... ... conditions and it is a severe societal phenomenon that challenges a significant fraction of the world population. A few of the well known facts are that poverty has several causes and faces and that it often increases with the increase in population. However it is not known what can be done to lessen the poverty levels through tourism and which character traits are particular for males and females leading in high poverty levels (Peilin, 2012). Sociological inquiry attempts to address the fundamental elements, issues, processes and meanings assigned to social realities and occurrences. The sociological research helps in describing poverty as a social phenomenon and creates a deeper and richer understanding on poverty as a social reality (Peilin, 2012). The main implication of the sociological inquiry is that it provides a central organizing model for the discipline.

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