Socioeconomic Statuses

Introduction Society never developed with the environment in mind, because societies formed before our full understanding of the earth and its natural processes. The planet looks to sustain itself, while society looks to conquer. We are socialized into wanting and expecting more than the bare minimum. Furthermore, were divided into class systems, and those systems are further validated by concepts such as, The American Dream: the idea that anyone can make it if they try hard enough. The American Dream serves capitalism, not society or the environment (Hinton 2017). It blatantly ignores any systematic inequalities and or injustices brought by our political and social institutions. The American Dream is stuffing clothes under a bed and

Prior mentioned, socioeconomic statuses play a role in determining our societal circumstances, but they also play a role in determining our environmental risk indicators. Since those with higher socioeconomic status are more privy to preparing and coping with a natural disaster; they can evacuate readily and have more means to deal with the aftermath, e.g., society might shun the environment, but we still have flood/earthquake-insurance (Mavhura & Collins 2016). While those who have a lower socioeconomic status are more affected by hazards because they do not have the means to cope appropriately. On top of that their infrastructure tends to be less resilient than those with higher socioeconomic status. Thus examining the placement of those who have a lower socioeconomic status is especially crucial to understanding risk assessment of a potential hazard. Our current digestion of hazards is viewed through the lens of the post-disaster. We look at the geographic areas that are prone to disaster but seldom do we look at the population that makes up that area. It’s fundamental to understand the makeup of the community to assess how resilient the people are to a hazard. Thus our current concept of socioeconomic status is lacking in evaluating environmental

The social vulnerability index was created in 2003, by Cutter et al. , and aims to measure how resilient a population is to any given ecological disaster. The SVI can be measured by using a range of social, economic, geographical, and environmental factors; then weights those factors to determine the outcomes (Cutter et al. 2003). In large part, it looks at how environmentally vulnerable an area is, and compares that with the vulnerability of the people. Using a social vulnerability index would be more beneficial to understanding the population because it allows for more variance within any given status group. Our current mode of thinking is based on heuristics, and a way to define, differentiate and categorize; thus our categories, e.g., lower-class, middle-class, and high-class, are limited. If we were to use an SVI to assess the population, we would likely see differences depending on the communities demographics, geographical location, and social support. Under this theory, we would see dissimilarities between two people with an identical SES title (Lin and Hung 2016). These dissimilarities would be a sufficient mode of comparing and contrasting; instead of asking what makes a person with a low SES different from someone with an intermediate