BACCALAURÉAT - SESSION 2014 - DNL SES - ANGLAIS
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Thème : Comment analyser la structure sociale ?
Working poor in the USA
Document 2:
In 2011, some 46.2 million Americans lived below the official poverty line— 15 percent of the country. Of those, roughly 10.4 million counted as the "working poor," people who either had jobs or were looking for at least half the year, but still fell below the line. (...)
Why is that? The BLS report drew a few broad conclusions:
—Part-time work was much more conducive to poverty than full-time work. Some 14.4 percent of part-time workers fell below the poverty line, compared with just 4.4 percent of full-time workers. (...)
—Low wages are, not surprisingly, the biggest problem. About 66 percent of the working poor fell below the poverty line at least in part because of low earnings. But the still-terrible labor market played a big role too: 39 percent of the working poor experienced bouts of unemployment during the year.
—Some jobs have higher rates of poverty than others. The largest group of working poor were in the service industry— 3.3 million, or 13.1 percent of all service workers. (...)
—Education levels make a huge difference. Just 2.4 percent of college-educated workers fell below the poverty line. By contrast, 9.2 percent of high-school graduates in the labor force were classified as working poor, while 20.1 of those who never finished high school fell below the line.
—There are huge racial disparities. "13.3percent of Blacks and 12.9 percent of Hispanics wereamong the working poor, compared with 6.1 percent ofWhites."
—There's also this fact about children: "Among families with at least one member in the laborforce for 27 weeks or more, those families with childrenunder 18 years old were about 4 times more likelythan those without children to live in poverty."
Source : Brad Plumer, Washingtonpost.com, 13/04/2013
Questions:1- What are the main pieces of information in the first document?
2- How can we explain the poverty of working people in the United States?
3- How do we calculate a poverty line?
RAPPEL
20 minutes de préparation; oral: 10 minutes sur le document et 10 minutes d’entretien