Q Activity 4: Income Inequality L.O. 7.4: Explain how we distinguish social classes in the United States L.O. 7.6: Demonstrate the impacts of class position on social outcomes. L.O. 7.7: Identify programs that best address income inequality. What is your social class? In the first part of this activity, you will examine your own social class. 1. Go to http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/09/06/are-you-in-the-american-middleclass/ and follow the directions in step 1. Choose the closest metropolitan area to your home. a. Compare your metropolitan area with the United States. How are they similar or different? b. Write your answers in one paragraph. 2. Complete step 2 using your individual characteristics. a. Recalculate income using one level of education lower than the one you have or plan to have. How does education affect income? b. Return to your original characteristics and recalculate for another— race/ethnicity. c. Which variable influenced income the most, education or race/ethnicity? d. Write your answers in one paragraph. 3. Your text notes that most Americans have been or will be in poverty. Nearly 60 percent of Americans live through at least one year of poverty, and 75 percent experience near poverty, earning just 150 percent of the poverty level (Korgen and Atkinson, 2021). Go to: https://confrontingpoverty.org/poverty-risk-calculator/ and use the economic risk calculator to estimate your own chance of falling into poverty over the next 5, 10, and 15 years. a. What do you find? What is your chance of falling into poverty? b. How do your race, education, and marital status influence your risk? c. Write your answers in one paragraph. Play Spent In the second part of this activity, you will play an interactive “game” that illustrates the obstacles faced by the working class and the poor. 1. Play Spent. Go to: http://playspent.org/ and accept the challenge to live for 30 days with no job, no savings, no housing. You will be asked to make choices. a. Note the choices you make. b. Can you last the entire month? Answer by indicating the number of days you lasted and the decisions that you made that got you to that point. c. Describe your experience in a few sentences. 2. Reflect on your experience. a. Does your experience reflect the material in the text? Why or why not? Be specific. b. In answering, quote at least one fact from the text. c. Write your answer in one paragraph. 3. National and global policies can mitigate or increase inequality. a. Drawing from section 7.7, describe a government program that has impacted inequality for the better or worse. b. Write your answer in a few sentences. 4. Pretend you are a social scientist (like Brad Rose, from the text) working with a nonprofit consulting organization. a. What policies to reduce inequality would you want to invest in? Why? b. Be sure your answer is based on sociological understandings of inequalities faced by the working class and poor. c. Write your answer in a few sentences