Sociology 441: Stratification

Exercise #1: Poverty rates

The main purpose of this exercise is to give you experience in finding original data about stratification. A second, but equally important, purpose is to learn how to digest a slew of numbers and report a simple, concise statement. Brevity is essential to good writing. (Accuracy is, of course, assumed.)

You must make one descriptive statement out of the data you find. And you must report the data you need to support that statement. (Usually a small table will be easiest to read). Data and statement must fit exactly. There are two tests your paper should be able to pass:

• Have you made a statement that is not supported by the data you report? and
• Have you included unnecessary data that are not needed to support your statement?

Source: One of the first places to look for data is an annual publication of the U.S. Census, The Statistical Abstract of the United States. This exercise is designed to be answered from that source. (You could also find data in your textbook or on the web, but the point here is to find data from original sources, not from texts.) The most recent annual edition is available in the reference section of any library. The web address (for Adobe Acrobat Reader) is: http://www.census.gov/statab/www

Your task is to locate the best data for the topic (trends over time in U.S. poverty rates), record and present a few years that reveal any trend (usually a simple table is the simplest way to present this), and then describe verbally in a sentence or two what the numbers mean. Be sure to identify your source (e.g., table number and year of publication).

Rates: The most useful data are usually not absolute counts of people but rates (e.g., counts of poor people as a percent of the total population). Think carefully about choosing which rate would be best for documenting changes over time in American society. Often the tables report both the absolute numbers and the rates; occasionally you will have to compute the rates yourself.

Due: Monday, April 3