intervening variable may depend on the level of ethnographic entrism within each of the various ethnic populations in a society, the amount of conflict over scarce resources, and the relative social power held within each ethnic category. Global stratification Globalizing forces lead to rapid international integration arising from the interchange of world views, products, ideas, and other aspects of culture. Advances in transportation and telecommunications infrastructure, including the rise of the telegraph and its modern representation the Internet, are major factors in globalization, generating further interdependence of economic and cultural activities. Like a stratified class system within a nation, looking at the world economy one can see class positions in the unequal distribution of capital and other resources between nations. Rather than having separate national economies, nations are considered as participating in this world economy. The world economy manifests a global division of labor with three overarching classes: core countries, semi-periphery countries and periphery countries, according to World-systems and Dependency theories. Core nations primarily own and control the major means of production in the world and perform the higher-level production tasks and provide international financial services. Periphery nations own very little of the world's means of production (even when factories are located in periphery nations) and provide low to non-skilled labor. Semiperipheral nations are midway between the core and periphery. They tend to be countries moving towards industrialization and more diversified economies. Core nations receive the greatest share of surplus production, and periphery nations receive the least. Furthermore, core nations are usually able to purchase raw materials and other goods from noncore nations at low prices, while demanding higher prices for their exports to noncore nations. A global workforce employed through a system of global labor arbitrage ensures that companies in core countries can utilize the cheapest semi-and non-skilled labor for production. Today we have the means to gather and analyze data from economies across the globe. Although many societies worldwide have made great strides toward more equality between differing geographic regions, in terms of the standard of living and life chances afforded to their peoples, we still find large gaps between the wealthiest and the poorest within a nation and between the wealthiest and poorest nations of the world. A January 2014 Oxfam report indicates that the 85 wealthiest individuals in the world have a combined wealth equal to that of the bottom 50% of the world's population, or