Class Inequality Essay

1054 Words5 Pages
“In this paper I will show how a countries social system affects/influences class inequality and with that how class inequality influences a students access/opportunity to quality public education ” As an international student I will compare the American social system to that of my home country the Netherlands. With this comparison I will highlight the differences in our social system compared to that of the US and how this affects class inequality and availability / quality of public education. Social system: While there are multiple explanations of socials systems I will give a brief outline what is meant by “social system” in this paper. Social system; The fashion in which a countries government arranges its tax and social security system. The Netherlands; The countries with the least amount of class based education inequality are Sweden and the Netherlands, and they are also the countries where a family’s social class background is less related to their children’s school achievement (BossFeld & Shavit, 1993). The Dutch government has implemented a system wherein class inequality is minimized. This system was implemented during the establishment of the Dutch government and can be related to the Dutch culture. There are different policies that the Dutch government uses to minimize the class inequality, but the two most influential ones are the progressive tax system and our social security. There is a progressive tax on wages, profits, social security benefits and pensions. Income tax is as follows; * Part of the income from EUR 0 to EUR 17,579: 2.45 % of EUR 17,579 is EUR 430 * Part of the income from EUR 17,579 to EUR 31,589: 10.7 % of EUR 14,010 is EUR 1,499 * Part of the income from EUR 31,589 to EUR 53,860: 42 % of EUR 22,271 is EUR 9,353 Above that: 52 %. As indicated above, when a person’s income increases they are obligated
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