CHAPTER 8: Global Inequality
MULTIPLE CHOICE
1. Of the 25 richest people in the world in the year 2005, how many were Americans?
a. 6
b. 2
c. 13
d. 24
Answer: C
2. According to the textbook, what do some of the wealthiest people have in common?
a. They are all American immigrants.
b. They are all men.
c. They all come from either Microsoft or Wal-Mart.
d. They are all strong supporters of the Republican Party.
Answer: B
3. In 2000, the richest person in the world was:
a. Bill Gates
b. Paul Allen
c. Wirat Tasago
d. Li Ka-shing
Answer: A
4. A country’s annual output of goods and services per person is its:
a. global inequality (GI)
b. global per-person output (GPO)
c. per-person gross national income (GNI)
d. per capita product (PCP)
Answer: C
5. A country has a per-person GNI of $11,907. This is a(n) ________ income country,
according to the World Bank.
a. lowb. middlec. high-
d. upper-middleAnswer: C
6. Which of the following best characterizes a difference between rich and poor countries?
a. High-income countries are found only among English-speaking countries.
b. The ratio of people living in poor versus rich countries is greater than 2:1.
c. Communist and socialist countries are always classified as low income.
d. High-income countries are characterized by large populations that earn high incomes.
Answer: B
7. Which of the following is a high-income country?
a. United States
b. India
c. Nepal
d. China
Answer: A
8. China has hundreds of millions of people living in poverty, yet it is classified as a
________ country by the World Bank.
a. high-income
b. middle-income
c. low-income
d. poverty-stricken
Answer: B
9. The ________ countries contained 64 percent of the world’s population, but produced 23
percent of the wealth in 2007.
a. low-income
b. middle-income
c. high-income
d. communist
Answer: B
10. The main economic activity in most low-income countries is:
a. high technology
b. oil production
c. mining
d. agriculture
Answer: D
11. What proportion of the world’s population lives in poverty?
a. 1 percent
b. 10 percent
c. 20 percent
d. 50 percent
Answer: C
12. Most of the lowest income countries are found in:
a. Central Africa
b. Central America
c. North America
d. South America
Answer: A
13. Global inequality is:
a. growing
b. decreasing
c. staying the same
d. varying from year to year, with no distinct trend
Answer: A
14. In 2007, the average person in a high-income country made ________ times the average
income of a person in a low-income country.
a. 10
b. 20
c. 37
d. 65
Answer: D
15. Which of the following best describes the health conditions in high- and low-income
countries?
a. While the services available in high-income countries are more accessible, the life
expectancy is similar in both groups.
b. Infant mortality is more than 10 times higher in low-income countries than high-income
countries.
c. The AIDS epidemic has ravaged both groups of countries equally and placed a serious
strain on their resources.
d. Conditions have worsened in high- and low-income countries as more government
resources are spent on the military.
Answer: B
16. Most famine and hunger in the world today are the outcome of:
a. overpopulation
b. organic farming
c. a global shortage of food
d. a combination of natural and social forces
Answer: D
17. Which of the following descriptions best characterizes hunger as defined by the United
Nations?
a. a young child who does not have breakfast or lunch, and for dinner eats one piece of
freshly baked whole wheat bread
b. a teenager who skips breakfast, eats lunch provided by the school cafeteria, and sleeps
through dinner
c. a student at an Ivy League university who skips meals in order to study
d. A dieter who consumes exactly 1900 calories per day
Answer: A
18. In what way has the AIDS epidemic NOT contributed to global hunger and food
shortages?
a. Too many people of prime working age are dying of the disease.
b. Most of the AIDS cases are found in high-income countries.
c. Countries with the highest rate of AIDS are also agricultural countries.
d. With few people able to work on farms because so many die from AIDS, fewer crops are
harvested.
Answer: B
19. Which of the following has NOT contributed to world hunger and famine?
a. Higher levels of obesity across the world are the result of greater food consumption at a
more rapid pace.
b. Ongoing wars have depleted many countries’ resources.
c. Climatic catastrophes have destroyed many food sources.
d. Poor countries cannot afford the newer technologies that would increase food production
and reduce famine.
Answer: A
20. As world hunger has grown, global food production:
a. has declined, exacerbating the hunger problem
b. has failed to keep up with population growth
c. began to fall behind population growth in the 1990s
d. has actually continued to increase more rapidly than population growth
Answer: D
21. Rapid economic growth in East Asia in the 1980s and 1990s was accompanied by:
a. violent suppression of labor rights
b. development of an increasingly white male labor force
c. environmental upgrades
d. improved workplace conditions
Answer: A
22. Most of the newly industrializing economies (NIEs) in East Asia today are:
a. low-income countries
b. middle-income countries
c. high-income countries
d. just starting to develop
Answer: B
23. The rapidly growing economies of the world are known as:
a. rapidly growing economies (RGEs)
b. newly industrializing economies (NIEs)
c. rapidly industrializing regions (RIRs)
d. rapidly industrializing countries (RICs)
Answer: B
24. Which region experienced such rapid economic growth between the 1960s and 1980s that
most of its NIEs moved from the ranks of the poor to the middle-income category?
a. East Africa
b. Northern Europe
c. Central America
d. East Asia
Answer: D
25. Rapid economic development in East Asia has clearly had its benefits, but which of the
following was among the costs?
a. violent repression of labor and civil rights
b. corrupt politicians taking corporate bribes
c. decreased tourist economy
d. an unskilled workforce that was unable to comply with supply and demand
Answer: A
26. Why did the economies of East Asia experience greater growth between 1980 and 1999
than other parts of the world?
a. Max Weber and other sociologists attribute the growth to the importance of Protestantism
in the people’s lives.
b. The governments in this part of the world removed themselves from economic policies,
allowing for an open capitalist system of free enterprise.
c. The United States and Europe were in demand of clothing, footwear, and electronics that
were manufactured in these countries.
d. The governments in this area adopted the laissez-faire economic platforms of conservative
Western governments.
Answer: C
27. Which of the following was among the reasons East Asia experienced rapid economic
growth from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s?
a. Countries like Taiwan, South Korea, and Hong Kong actually benefited in key ways from
colonialism.
b. The countries were growing while the rest of the world was experiencing economic crisis.
c. These countries received important economic aid from the Soviet Union during the cold
war.
d. The countries decided to partner to develop goods and merchandise that could be exported
to Western countries.
Answer: A
28. In the late 1990s, economic development in the East Asian NIEs:
a. continued at a rapid pace
b. accelerated rapidly to the fastest pace in world history
c. slowed somewhat, but continued at an unprecedented pace
d. came to an abrupt halt because of corruption, poor investments, and world economic
conditions
Answer: D
29. The most influential theories of global inequality among Western economists and
sociologists in the 1960s were:
a. market-oriented theories
b. modernization theories
c. dependency theories
d. world-systems theories
Answer: A
30. With which of the following statements would a market-oriented theorist agree?
a. “International capitalism has facilitated poverty in low-income countries.”
b. “The most effective way for low-income countries to develop economically is to mimic the
successful capitalist practices of the United States.”
c. “The key to economic success in low-income countries is for the government to harness the
cultural beliefs of the people into a productive unit.”
d. “The economic plight of poor countries could be alleviated with greater government
intervention.”
Answer: B
31. According to W. W. Rostow’s modernization theory, which stage immediately follows
“take-off”?
a. traditional stage
b. landing
c. mid-flight cruising altitude
d. drive to technological maturity
Answer: D
32. ________, a view now commonly held by Western economists, is based on ________
theory, which promotes free markets and noninterference by governments in the economy.
a. Marxism; dependency
b. Liberalism; state-centered development
c. Neoliberalism; modernization
d. Neo-Marxism; world-systems
Answer: C
33. Which theory promotes the adoption of Western capitalist economic systems and values
as the road to economic development?
a. market-oriented theory
b. Marxist theory
c. dependency theory
d. state-centered theory
Answer: A
34. According to dependency theory, what was the original cause of “misdevelopment” in the
low-income countries?
a. fatalism
b. colonialism
c. their peripheral geographical locations
d. patriarchal hegemony
Answer: B
35. Which theory draws primary attention to the exploitation of poor countries by rich ones?
a. market-oriented theory
b. modernization theory
c. dependency theory
d. world-systems theory
Answer: C
36. According to world-systems theory, the global economic system must be approached as a
single ________ unit, not as a collection of independent, individual countries.
a. capitalist
b. socialist
c. communist
d. fascist
Answer: A
37. Which of the following theories of global inequality minimizes the significance of
cultural and political differences between countries?
a. modernization theory
b. culture-of-poverty theory
c. dependency theory
d. world-systems theory
Answer: D
38. In ________, networks of labor, production, and consumption of products span the world.
a. worldwide work
b. semiperipheral chains
c. global commodity chains
d. net span theory
Answer: C
39. According to world-systems theory, which countries are the most advanced industrial
societies, collecting the greatest share of the economic pie?
a. core
b. peripheral
c. semiperipheral
d. semicore
Answer: A
40. Natural resources flow from the ________ to the ________, according to world-systems
theory.
a. core; periphery
b. periphery; core
c. semiperiphery; periphery
d. upper class; lower class
Answer: B
41. According to world-systems theory, which of the following exploit(s) the natural
resources of the periphery?
a. core and semicore
b. semiperipheral and semicore
c. the core
d. the semiperipheral
Answer: C
42. Which theory looks at the whole world economy as an integrated web of relations rather
than focusing on individual countries?
a. market-oriented theory
b. modernization theory
c. dependency theory
d. world-systems theory
Answer: D
43. Leaders in countries such as Cuba and China where the government actively shapes
economic policy would probably adhere to which of the following frameworks?
a. laissez-faire
b. Republican ideology
c. modernization
d. state-centered theories
Answer: D
44. Which approach points out that successful NIEs such as Singapore, South Korea, and
Taiwan have grown largely because of repressive labor laws, government ownership in key
industries, and government provision of social welfare services?
a. market-oriented theory
b. modernization theory
c. state-centered theory
d. world-systems theory
Answer: C
45. Which theory sees an important role for government coordination and planning in
economic development for NIEs?
a. state-centered theory
b. modernization theory
c. dependency theory
d. world-systems theory
Answer: A
46. Child labor:
a. is prohibited in developing countries where children are protected by the same laws as
those in the United States
b. is a reality for about one out of every four children in the world
c. has been eliminated worldwide, thanks to the United Nations
d. is increasingly becoming commonplace in the United States as more families need extra
income to pay for basic necessities
Answer: B
47. In what way could you personally help to reduce child labor in the world today?
a. avoid clothing that is made by unionized labor
b. look for clothing made in Myanmar, a country with strong commitments to human rights
c. buy clothing that is certified “sweatshop free” by a reputable organization such as those
with the “Rugmark” label
d. shop only in those countries where child labor is permitted to hopefully boost children’s
income as demand heightens
Answer: C
48. Which of the following is an example of child labor?
a. Demanding that high school students read their books at least four hours per day.
b. Using your younger sibling to do your household chores.
c. Going to college full-time, working full-time, and having a second job on the weekends.
d. Nine-year-olds working more than 15 hours a day picking coffee beans.
Answer: D
49. What can be done to help curb child labor?
a. Reduce the number of credits required for college graduation.
b. Abolish labor unions in the agricultural sector.
c. Boycott products that use child labor.
d. Purchase only products that use natural fibers such as cotton.
Answer: C
50. Sweatshops are:
a. becoming legalized as a way to create jobs for unskilled immigrants
b. often firetraps
c. disappearing in major U.S. cities
d. often found in the electronics industry
Answer: B
51. Using Jeffrey Sachs’s categories, the United States would be classified as what type of
region?
a. technology innovator
b. technology adaptor
c. technologically disconnected
d. technologically disengaged
Answer: A
52. The ________ are regions of the world that apply technology invented elsewhere in their
own production and consumption systems.
a. technology innovators
b. technology adaptors
c. technologically disconnected
d. technologically disengaged
Answer: B
53. Using Jeffrey Sachs’s categories, as which type of region would tropical sub-Saharan
Africa be classified?
a. technology innovator
b. technology adaptor
c. technologically disconnected
d. technologically disengaged
Answer: C
54. Which of the following is one explanation for the persistence of global economic
inequality?
a. People in low-income countries lack a strong work ethic.
b. As the technology gap between countries widens, it becomes more difficult to eliminate
poverty.
c. As AIDS continues to rampage throughout high-income and middle-income countries, they
will have fewer technology workers.
d. Capitalism is innately unequal and socialism is innately equal.
Answer: B
55. The most optimistic analysts expect:
a. the republics of the former Soviet Union to remain middle-income countries
b. economic growth to shut out countries like Latin America and Africa in favor of the United
States and Canada
c. the remnants of caste societies to be superseded by class-based systems
d. high-income countries to become middle-income countries, thereby more equitably
distributing income worldwide
Answer: C
TRUE/FALSE
1. Gross national income (GNI) does not give a complete picture of economic activity in a
country because it does not include noncash transactions.
Answer: True
2. The higher the literacy and education rate in a country, the higher its population growth
rate is likely to be.
Answer: False
3. In the poorest regions of the world, such as sub-Saharan Africa, a child is more likely to
die before age five than to enter secondary school.
Answer: True
4. Most malnourished children live in countries that cannot produce enough food to feed their
own people.
Answer: False
5. Some formerly low-income countries in East Asia have actually moved into the highincome category.
Answer: True
6. Economic development in regions like East Asia has been accompanied by other social
gains: an increase in civil rights, the elimination of economic exploitation, and improved
environmental protection.
Answer: False
7. According to market-oriented theories, economic development is most likely to proceed
when governments just “get out of the way.”
Answer: True
8. Neoliberalism is based on the Marxist rejection of market-oriented theories of
development.
Answer: False
9. Rapid globalization is unlikely to have an impact on you personally if you already live in a
high-income country.
Answer: False
Test Bank for Essentials of Sociology
Anthony Giddens, Mitchell Duneier, Richard P Appelbaum, Deborah Carr
9780393932379, 9780393674088, 9780393937459, 9780393918830
