Welcome to Week 5 of Our Social World! This week we will learn about how
societies group people by the wealth and income they have. We will focus on the
meaning of social class, particularly in the United States, and how social class
affects a person’s life chances.
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Every society is marked by inequality, with some people having more money,
schooling, health care, and power than others.
Stratification involves 4 basic principles:
1. It is a trait of society. It is not simply function of individual differences.
2. It persists over generations.
3. It is universal, but varies in form.
4. It rests on widely held beliefs.
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In ascribed stratification systems characteristics, individuals are born with
determines ones position in society.
In achieved stratification systems, individuals are allowed to earn positions
through their ability and effort.
You will find ascribed statuses in caste and estate systems.
Caste systems are the most rigid ascribed systems and are
maintained by cultural norms and social control mechanisms that are deeply
imbedded in religious, political, and economic institutions.
Caste predetermine:
Occupational positions, marriage partners, residences, social
associations, and prestige levels.
Castes are recognized through:
Clothing, speech patterns, family name and identity, skin color, and
other distinguishing
characteristics.
Socialization is important in caste systems because it teaches
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individuals their place in society.
Stability in caste systems is maintained by ideology.
Estate systems are ascribed systems characterized by the concentration of
economic and political power in the hands of a small minority of the political-military elite,
with the peasantry tied to the land (examples today include some Central and South American
and Asian countries on large banana farms, etc.).
Estate systems are based on the ownership of land, the position one is born
into, or military strength. An individual’s rank and legal rights are clearly spelled out, and
arranged marriages and religion bolster the system.
You will find achieved status in the social class systems.
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Wealth, power, & prestige – These are ways to measure social inequality. We find
that wealth, power, and prestige help identify one’s social class.
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Property is considered to be the ownership one has in in buildings, land, animals,
machinery, cars, bank accounts, etc.
Please note: Do not confuse income with wealth.
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Nearly 85% of all wealth in the US is held by 20% of individuals in the U.S. Even
this can be much more concentrated. The richest 36,000 Americans are worth over
$1 trillion – about 6% of all privately held wealth in the U.S. Another way to think
about this extent of inequality is to note that the super-rich, the richest 1% of U.S.
families, are worth more than the entire bottom 99% of Americans!!!
There are great disparities in wealth in the U.S.
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Income distribution in U.S.
If population is divided into fifths, the top 20% have approximately 50% of all
income, the next 20% of the population have 23% of the income, then 15%, then
9%, and the lowest 20% of the population has 3% of all USA total income.
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In spite of many antipoverty programs, each fifth of U.S. population receives
roughly the same proportion of the nation’s income as it did in 1945!
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Most people in the U.S. identify as “middle class,” but the middle class is shrinking.
The gap between the richest 5% and poorest 40% has increased since the 1970s.
Middle class wages and salaries have declined since the 1980s.
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“Wealth brings power, & extreme wealth brings extreme power.”
Power refers to the ability to control or influence others.
“Power elite”: power that is concentrated among individuals with powerful
positions in political, business, and military arenas.
“Pluralist” theorists contend that power is not held exclusively by an elite group but
is instead shared among many power centers, each of which has its own selfinterests to protect.
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Sociology looks at how people rank occupations according to PRESTIGE.
Sociology considers four basic elements (of why people give some jobs more
prestige than others). These elements include:
1. Jobs that pay more (relatively speaking);
2. Jobs that require more education;
3. Jobs that entail more abstract thought; and,
4. Jobs that offer greater autonomy.
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Wealth, power, and prestige are awarded according to:
1. Cultural capital, which refers to the knowledge and access to important
information in society (what one may have been exposed to in life, that is).
2. Social capital refers to the networks with others who have influence.
Please see page 190 in your textbook for an example of assessing social and cultural
capital among college students.
Individual qualities influence capital also. Particular traits, such as leadership,
personality, sense of humor, self confidence, physical attractiveness, gender,
ethnicity, and so on can all influence one’s capital.
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Some don’t use the category of “working class,” but instead group it in the lowest
part of lower middle class since there can be a job distinction and education
distinction. I like to use working class (blue collar).
Characteristics of the Middle Class include the following:
1. Makes up about 30% of the population (although the majority claim to be
middle class)
2. Wages and salaries in the middle class have declined since the 1980s
a. Macro-level trends influencing this are downsizing and layoffs,
technological shifts, competition, free trade and trade deficits between
countries, immigration, and deregulation
3. Upper-middle class families have high income, high education, high
occupational level, and high participation in political life and voluntary
associations
a. Families enjoy a stable life, stressing companionship, privacy, pleasant
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surroundings in safe neighborhoods, property ownership, and stimulating
associations
4. Lower-middle class families include small businesspeople and farmers; semiprofessionals; middle management personnel; and sales in clerical workers who work in
office settings
a. Families are relatively stable, they participate in community life, and they
have more political power than the classes below them
The poor, or those in poverty. There are multi-level determinants of being in poverty.
1. The poor includes the working poor (at jobs that pay minimum wage, limited benefits,
etc.) and the underclass, who have no permanent or stable work or property-based income,
only casual or intermittent earnings in the labor market. Some traits that typically describe
individuals in this class include:
• They are dependent on help from government agencies or private organizations to survive;
and,
• They have no collective power and little representation of their interests and needs in the
political system.
There are different ways to think about poverty.
• Absolute poverty, or not having resources to meet basic needs, means no prestige, no
access to power, no accumulated wealth, and insufficient means to survive.
• Relative poverty refers to those whose income falls below the poverty line, resulting in an
inadequate standard of living relative to others in a given country.
• Relative poverty leads to shortened life expectancy, higher infant mortality, and poorer
health.
• The feminization of poverty refers to the trend in which single females, increasingly
younger and with children, make up a growing proportion of those in poverty
• Feminization of poverty is often heightened by divorce, unequal earning power, and
inability to collect child support.
• There are multiple costs a society pays for poverty.
• Society loses the talent and abilities that these people could contribute; and,
• Society must expend tax dollars to address the needs of people in poverty or to regulate
them with social workers and police.
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• People live with a contradiction of cultural values which claim that all citizens are “created
equal” and are worthy of respect, yet not all can “make it” in society.
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Individual life chances are influenced by the social class of which
one is a member.
•
Achieved and ascribed characteristics both affect one’s chances for
success in life.
•
Life chances refer to one’s opportunities, depending on their
achieved and ascribed status in society.
•
Life chances influence placement in organizations which impacts
educational experiences. Important institutions that impact life chances are:
1.
Education
a. The cost of education creates an insurmountable barrier for some.
b. Education also affects political, religious, and marital attitudes and
behavior.
2.
Health, Social Conditions, and Life Expectancy
a. Access to health care is determined by availability of doctors and
medical facilities, money for transportation and treatment, access to child care,
release-time from other tasks in order to get to a medical facility.
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b. The affluent also have access to better food, are less exposed to polluted
water and unhygienic conditions, and are able to pay for medical care and drugs when they
have ailing health.
c. In developing countries, shorter life expectancies and deaths are due to
controllable infectious diseases.
d. In affluent countries, heart disease and cancer are the most common cases of
death.
e. The US has much larger gaps between the rich and poor people than most
other wealthy countries.
f. The US trails 40 other developed nations in infant mortality rates.
g. The life expectancy of men living in Harlem is shorter than the life
expectancy of men living in Bangladesh.
3.
Individual Lifestyles
a. Attitudes toward Achievement
• Differ by social status and are generally closely correlated with life
chances.
• Motivation to get ahead and beliefs about what an individual can
achieve are products of upbringing.
• Upbringing produces opportunities one thinks are available.
• Tolerance for “different” individuals is influenced by social status.
4.
Family Life and Child-Rearing Patterns
a. Higher social class correlates with later marriage and lower divorce rates.
b. Lower class families tend to use more physical punishment to discipline
children.
c. Middle class parents use guilt, reasoning, “time outs,” and other noncorporal sanctions to control children’s behavior.
5.
Religious Membership
a. In the US, upper class individuals are disproportionately Episcopalian,
Unitarian, and Jewish.
b. In the US, lower class individuals are disproportionately Nazarene,
Southern Baptist, Jehovah’s Witness, and in holiness and fundamentalist sects.
6.
Political Behavior
a. Upper-middle classes are most supportive of elite or pro-capitalist agendas,
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while lower working class members are least supportive.
b. The lower the social class the more likely people are to vote for liberal
parties, and the higher one’s social status the more likely one is to vote conservative on
economic issues consistent with protecting wealth.
Status Inconsistency
• Some people experience high status on one trait, especially a trait that is achieved, but may
experience low standing in another area.
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One’s father’s occupation is a key factor in a child’s social mobility.
Different types of social mobility
1. Intergenerational mobility refers to change in status compared to
your parents’ status, usually resulting from education and occupational attainment.
a. The amount of intergenerational mobility in a society measures the degree to
which the society has an open class system, or one that allows movement between
classes.
b. There is a severe lack of mobility among the upper-upper and lower-lower
classes in technologically developed countries, which perpetuates the belief that
mobility is possible and the system is fair.
2. Intragenerational mobility refers to the change in position in a single individual’s
life.
a. Vertical mobility refers to movement up or down in the hierarchy, which
sometimes involves changing social classes.
How much mobility is there? Let’s look at Measures of Social Mobility.
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• One traditional method of measuring mobility is to compare fathers and sons.
• Several conclusions can be derived:
1. There is a high level of occupational inheritance;
2. There is also considerable movement up and down the occupational ladder
from one generation to the next; and,
3. By a considerable margin, sons are more likely to move up than down.
** Determining the mobility of women is more difficult because they often
have lower level positions and their mothers may not have worked full-time.
** One conclusion that can be drawn is that both women’s and men’s
occupational attainment is powerfully influenced by class origins.
Factors Affecting an Individual’s Mobility
• Mobility depends on micro-level factors such as socialization and education
1. Family Background, Socialization, and Education
a. Socialization leads to job change of similar status because an individual’s
socialization and training are most applicable to similar jobs
b. Education gives people skills to access jobs, social networks, and
determines their access through curricula through
“streaming” and tracking
2. Occupational Structure and Economic Vitality
a. Mobility also depends on macro-level factors like the occupational structure
and economic status of countries, population changes and the number of people vying for
similar positions, discrimination based on gender or ethnicity, and the global economic
situation
b. The occupational structure and economic vitality of a nation affects the
chances for individual mobility
c. Population trends, like fertility rates, influence the number of people looking
for jobs
3. Gender and Ethnicity
a. Divisions based on gender and ethnicity cause some people to experience
privilege; some experience dis-privilege due to socioeconomic status, ethnicity, gender, or a
combination of these
4.
The Interdependent Global Market and International Events
a. Mobility at the micro-level is also dependent on macro-level occurrences in
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the interdependent global market and international events
Is There a “Land of Opportunity”? Cross-Cultural Mobility
• Opportunities for upward mobility have changed significantly with globalization
1. Manufacturing jobs in the global economy have moved from developed to
developing countries.
2. Globally, much of the upward mobility in the world is taking place among
those who come from small, highly-educated families with “get-ahead” values, and who see
education as a route to upward mobility.
What Are Your Chances for Upward Mobility?
1. College education is the most important
factor in moving to high income status in global north
countries.
2. The value of education increases because of changes in the occupational
structures, creating new types of jobs and a “new social class” with skills for the computer
and information age.
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