Read the text Wealth, income, inequality and poverty

Henry W. LONGFELLOW AFTERNOON IN FEBRUARY

The poem to enjoy. Try to learn it by heart.

Read the article without a dictionary, try to retell it.

At leisure

Word origin BRIBE: a piece of bread

Many of the words that concern themselves with the idea of companionship have to do with the sharing of food. Bribe is such a word. In modern French, and in the plural, bribes mean bits, odds, ends, and leavings, but in Old French it meant a lump of bread, given to a beggar. The development of bribe seems to have been along the following lines: first a piece of bread, then beg ging, then living by beg gary, then theft, and finally blackmail and bribery in the modern sense.

2. Read and translate the proverbs, think of Russian equivalents,
give a situation using them.

— Deeds, not words.

— Custom is a second nature.

The day is ending, On village windows

The night is descending, That glimmer red.

The marsh is frozen, The snow recommences,

The river dead. The buried fences

Through clouds like ashes Mark no longer

The red sun flashes The road o’er the plain

Unit 12

Pre-text exercises

1. Find the transcription of new words in a dictionary:
inequality, wealthy, vary, pension, valuable, precious, asset, poverty,

remain.

Try to read them fluently.

2. Word-building
Compile and translate:
wealth n. + -y →
modern a. + -ize →
un + employ υ. -ment →
to differ υ. + -ence →
to educate υ. + -tion →
to invest υ. + -ment →

What does it mean to be wealthy? The answer to this question varies from culture to culture. In the modernized, industrial world that we live in, wealth generally means all the collected store of valuable things that belong to a person (or family, company or country). Wealth can include money saved in bank accounts, or invested in pension schemes. It can include land, houses or other property and valuable belongings such as works of art or precious jewels. Many people also own stocks and shares in companies. The various things that make up a person’s wealth are often called assets.

So wealth is a static thing. The term income, on the other hand, suggests flow of money. Income is the amount of money that a person (or family or company) receives over a period of time. For most people, this means the salary they get for the work they do. However, there are other sources of income. One source is government benefits, such as unemployment benefit or family support. Another source is rent from property and another is interest from savings.

Huge inequalities in wealth owned by individuals exist in many

countries. Take the United Kingdom, for example. A fifth of all the marketable wealth is owned by just one per cent of the UK’s population. That one per cent own over £355 billion of assets, 90 per cent of the population take only 70 per cent of the total income. This means that the top ten per cent of the population earn nearly 30 per cent of the country’s total income. The richest 50 per cent of the population own over 93 per cent of the wealth. In other words, half the population own nearly all the wealth and the other half own only a tiny percentage. The richest one per cent of the population own over a fifth of all the country’s wealth.

You can see how far from perfect the distribution is. Half of the population for example, earn just under a third of the total income. Without a doubt poverty is a huge problem in the world today. Figures suggest that three billion people or half the world’s population live in poverty. However, although we associate poverty with developing countries, poverty of some kind also exists in industrialized nations. For example, it is now thought that quite possibly one in every ten Americans lives in poverty. However, poverty means different things to different people. How do economists define poverty?

One measure of poverty is absolute poverty. People live in absolute poverty when they live on or below the poverty line. This is a level of income that is so low that people cannot afford the basic necessities to live, such as food, clothing and shelter. According to the World Bank, these are people who are living on two dollars a day. However, there are one billion people in the world who live on less than one dollar a day. The World Bank defines this as extreme poverty. Few people in industrialized countries live in absolute poverty, but many live in relative poverty. This measure of poverty takes into account the differences that exist in a population between the rich and the poor. For example, some economists say that people who earn less than half the average income live in relative poverty. In Britain, this means 14 million people. Why does poverty still exist? There is no single answer to this question. In developing countries, causes of absolute poverty include natural disasters like droughts and floods, political corruption and war. However, in many cases people – and whole population – are caught in a trap: the poverty trap.

People on a low income spend everything they have on daily necessities. They save almost nothing. In order to raise themselves out of

poverty, they need education. This costs money. Even when governments provide free schooling, the poor may not send their children because they send them to work. These families cannot afford the cost of sending a child to school. Without education, the children cannot find better paid work. In this way, generations of the same family remain poor.

The same cycle that traps individuals can trap a whole population. Economic growth depends on investment. Investment money comes from savings. A nation that has almost no savings cannot grow economically. This keeps wages low, so again people cannot save and the cycle continues.

Words:

poverty line — черта бедности to afford — позволить себе relative — относительный to take into account — при­нимать во внимание cause — причина disaster — бедствие «poverty trap» — «ловушка нищеты» unemployment benefit — по­собие по безработице

store — запас works of art — предметы искусства share — акция assets — активы, имущество income — доход source of income — источник дохода

benefit — прибыль without a doubt — несомненно developing country — развиваю­щаяся страна

Post-text exercises

Working on the text

I. Find answers in the text:

1. What does it mean to be wealthy? 2. What can wealth include to a person (family, company, country)? 3. What kind of wealth belongs to you? 4. What is income? 5. What are different sources of income? 6. Is there inequality in wealth in different countries? 7. What is the situation with inequality in wealth in the United Kingdom? 8. Is poverty characteristic to developing countries or developed industrialized ones? 9. What is poverty line? 10. What is extreme poverty? 11. Why does

poverty exist? 12. What is the «poverty trap»? 13. Do governments provide free schooling and social help?

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