Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: What is wealth?

[Forbes Jan (jan.forbes]

Sharon

Again I must jump in.  

You're citing just one definition of wealth.  There are many.  

When my son did economics at uni he was working on a definition that you can
have no money or possessions and yet if you have all your needs met and have
what you choose and want in life, which may be to sit under a tree somewhere
and contemplate your navel, your are wealthy.  

Concepts of wealth are relative to the society you live and to your goals in
life.  They are subjective and culturally defined.  

What sociology text was that?  A very old one?  Published in the US no
doubt.

Jan

-----Original Message-----
From: Sharon Villines [mailto:sharon [at] sharonvillines.com]
Sent: Tuesday, 8 April 2003 3:09 AM
To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
Subject: Re: [C-L]_Median or mode, Wealth & Poverty



On 4/02/2003 7:40 PM, "Forbes Jan" <jan.forbes [at] dhhs.tas.gov.au> wrote:

> The median is the middle value of a list of values.  The peak of the bell
> curve, where most of the values fall, is the mode.
> 
> Which one you decide to use depends on things like the nature of the
> distribution and what you are using it for.  If it is skewed distribution
> the median is usually preferred over the mean.  If in doubt about the
nature
> of the distribution, it is helpful to look at mean, media and mode as well
> as the standard deviation.

Thanks for the correction. Sorry to confuse people.

I still haven't located the mode but have a bit more info from a Sociology
text that I'm reading:

Wealth is determined by one's net assets -- the monetary value of everything
one owns minus one's debts. Wealth is the accumulation of savings or
investments. 1/3 of the US population has no net worth or wealth -- which
means they live from day to day. No income today, no food today.

Wealth in the United States is concentrated in the upper 10% of the
population which controls 86% of the nation's wealth. The top 1% owns more
than the bottom 90%. This concentration is greater than in any other
industrialized nation and has increased rapidly since the 1980s (during
Reagan's tenure as president, 1981-1989). The concentration of wealth in the
US is greater than at any time since 1929.

The World Bank defines poverty as an income of less than $1 a day per
person. By this definition poverty has declined since 1987 from 29% to 26%,
but most of this is decline in Asia. The US Federal poverty line is $16,660
for a family of four. In 1998 12.7% of the population was living below this
line.

This figure is determined by using the Department of Agriculture's dietary
requirements to calculate a low-cost food budget and multiplying this by 3
assuming that a household spends approximately 1/3 of its budget on food.

The "culture of poverty" is largely a myth. Only 22% of people living in
poverty one year will be in poverty the next. The largest causes of poverty
are temporary crises with under 5% living in poverty for more than two years
at a time. 41% of those living in poverty are working at least full time.
18% of the entire workforce living in poverty.

But since most of us couldn't imagine living on $4,140 (1/4 of $16,660) --
even living on an income of twice that would be difficult -- if cohousing is
going to extend to the poor, it will have to have capital investment from
the wealthy, directly or by taxation in the form of government grants.

Sharon
-- 
Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org



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