The Venetians Taking Riva sul Garda from the Milanese in 1440, ca. 1570, Jacopo Robusti, (fresco) Credit: DeAgostini/Superstock Let’s contrast two “average” families from around the world: For Getu Mulleta, 33, and his wife, Zenebu, 28, of rural Ethiopia, life is a constant struggle to avoid starvation.
They and their seven children live in a 320-square-foot manure-plastered hut with no electricity, gas, or running water.
They have a radio, but the battery is dead.
The family farms teff, a grain, and survives on $130 a year.
The Mulletas’ poverty is not due to a lack of hard work.
Getu works about eighty hours a week, while Zenebu puts in even more hours.
Housework for Zenebu includes fetching water, cleaning animal stables, and making fuel pellets out of cow dung for the open fire over which she cooks the family’s food.
Like other Ethiopian women, she eats after the men.
In Ethiopia, the average male can expect to live to age 48, the average female to 50.
The Mulletas’ most valuable possession is their oxen.
Their wishes for the future: more animals, better seed, and a second set of clothing. Springfield, Illinois, is home to the Kellys—Rick, 36, Patti, 34, Julie, 10, and Michael, 7.
The Kellys live in a four-bedroom, 2½-bath, 2,687-square-foot ranch-style house with a fireplace, central heating and air conditioning, a basement, and a two-car garage.
Their home is equipped with a refrigerator, freezer, washing machine, clothes dryer, dishwasher, garbage disposal, vacuum cleaner, food processor, microwave, and a convection stovetop and oven.
They also own computers, cell phones, color televisions, several digital cameras, an iPod, an iPad, a printer-scanner-fax machine, blow dryers, a juicer, an espresso coffee maker, a pickup truck, and an SUV.
Rick works forty hours a week as a cable splicer for a telephone company. Patti teaches school part-time. Together they make $66,632, plus benefits.
The Kellys can choose from among dozens of superstocked supermarkets. They spend $5,765 for food they eat at home, and another $3,876 eating out, a total of 14 percent of their annual income.
In the United States, the average life expectancy is 77 for males, 82 for females.
On the Kellys’ wish list are a solar car with Internet connection, a phablet, an Ultra High-Definition bendable TV, a virtual-reality simulator, an in-ground heated swimming pool, a boat, a motor home, an ATV, and a lakeside cabin.
(Menzel 1994; Statistical Abstract 2017:Tables 112, 714, 723, 995).
Hearing from Students Global Stratification Play Hearing from StudentsGlobal Stratification
