Global stratification refers to the unequal distribution of wealth, power, resources and influence among world among world nations. To understand this concept, countries are divided into 3 or 4 categories based on their wealth, industrialization and economic development. Since the end of the World War II, different topologies have been adopted to classify nations according to the three underlying factors. The first topology classified nations as the First World, Second World, and Third world nations. First world countries included capitalist democracies and covered North America, Western Europe, Japan, Australia and others while the second world was majorly the Soviet communists a third world included South America, Africa and parts of Asia (Huy, 2010).
This topology, however, was later disgruntled and was replaced by either developed, developing or undeveloped nations but again was replaced by another topology which based its classification on the Gross Domestic Product per capita (GDP) and classified countries as wealthy (high-income) nations, middle-income nations and low-income nations. However, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) used the Human Development Index (HDI) as a composite measure using the nation’s income, health and education levels as measures of stratification.
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According to global poverty levels, almost a half of the world's population are from poor/low-income countries, and a sixth is from wealthy countries (Dikhanov, 2005). Research done on global poverty helps in showing what proportion of individual people are living in dire situations and data obtained can be used by anti-poverty programs to recognize these regions.
Global stratification has led to the occurrence of global inequality which is the economic gap between wealthy and developing nations (Neckerman & Torche, 2007). This has made a fifth of world's most affluent to control 75% of the world's income and a fifth of the world's poorest to have 1.5% of the world's income. This has made the planet's poorest countries to have low human development rate, high child mortality rates, poor sanitation and severe malnutrition among its people.
In light of these issues, two theories try to explain global stratification, and they are the modernization theory and the dependence theory. According to the modernization theory, the wealthy nations became wealthy because they adopted the correct "beliefs", values and practices for trade, industrialization and economic growth (McClelland, 1967). The dependency theory instead counters the modernization theory by blaming the exploitation of developing nations by the wealthy ones during the colonization period where the wealthy countries enslaved and enforced harsh rile with little or no education on these countries (Packenham, 1992).
From this research, we understand how global stratification has shown the uneven distribution of wealth and resources among countries. Moreover, we get to understand the different ways we can try to identify poverty in low-income countries and how to help them cope with various challenges for a better future (Lewis, 1996).
References
Dikhanov, Y. (2005). Trends in global income distribution, 1970–2000, and scenarios for 2015. New York, NY: United Nations Development Programme.
Huy, N.Q.(2010).CoffeeproductionandconsumptioninVietnam.Retrievedfromhttp://www.docstoc.com/docs/ 27139628/COFFEE-PRODUCTION-AND-CONSUMPTION-IN-VIETNAM-Prepared-by-Nguyen-.
Lewis, P. (1996, February 13). Nigeria’s deadly war: Shell defends its record. The New York Times, p. 1.
McClelland, D. C. (1967). The achieving society. New York, NY: Free Press.
Neckerman,K.M.,&Torche,F.(2007).Inequality:Causesandconsequences.AnnualReviewofSociology,33(1), 335–357.
Packenham, R. A. (1992). The dependency movement: Scholarship and politics in development studies. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
