The ruling nation or "mother" was really the main benefactor of this relationship because it used the colonies people and resources.
The world system theory is about how all nations came to rely on what are called the core nations. The core nations were the first nations to industrialize. They are Britain, France, Holland, and Germany. The next group of nations was called the semi periphery. They were the nations located around the Mediterranean. They were not able to grow and prosper as much as the core nations because they became to rely only on trade with the core nations. The third group is the fringe nations. They are the countries of Eastern Europe. They developed even less that the semi periphery group because they relied on being able to sell cash crops to the industrialized nations. The last groups of nations were called the external area and were left out all together. This was mainly Africa and Asia.
The dependency theory is very much like the world system theory in that the least industrialized nations became more dependent on the most industrialized nations. The most industrialized nations just used the least industrialized nations for resources and materials.
The culture of poverty was proposed by John Kenneth Galbraith in 1979. He believes that some nations" cultures hold them back from becoming richer. Their way of life or religious beliefs may prevent them form obtaining more or having the ambition to try for more.
Social stratification is maintained in several different ways. It is basically, the strong and powerful find a way to stabilize and justify their power so that they will always be the strong and powerful and the weak with no power will always be weak with no power. That is called neocolonialism. It is also maintained by multi national corporations, where new technology gives and advantage to more industrialized nations.
Social class is a large group of people who rank closely together according to wealth, power, and prestige.