folk vs descent

folk and descent both are nouns.

Word	Noun	Adjective	Verb	Adverb
folk	Yes	No	No	No
descent	Yes	No	No	No

As nouns, descent is a hypernym of folk; that is, descent is a word with a broader meaning than folk:

folk (noun)	descent (noun)
the traditional and typically anonymous music that is an expression of the life of people in a community	the act of changing your location in a downward direction
people in general (often used in the plural)	properties attributable to your ancestry
a social division of (usually preliterate) people	a movement downward
people descended from a common ancestor	the hereditary derivation of an individual
	a downward slope or bend
	the kinship relation between an individual and the individual's progenitors