Posted: April 25th, 2025
General Discussion assigment
Social Mobility in the US
Reminders
· Each post must be 200+ words and include a Word Count (WC) at the end of your post, before your reference(s).
· APA formatted in-text citations and references are required for your initial post (and in response posts if assigned material is used)
· Please review the full DB Expectations.
Required Sources
· Read Chapter 8 Stratification and Mobility in the US, in the Schaefer textbook
o Specifically, review the information under the heading Social Mobility in the U.S.
· Watch this short video on
Social Mobility and the American Dream
Assignment
Post 1: What Did You Learn?
Often the argument is made that if you “just work hard enough” you can be financially secure. Sociological research demonstrates that the answer is more complicated than that.
· According to evidence from both Chapter 8 and the video, how realistic is it to be financially secure from “hard work”? In other words, what factors beyond “hard work” impact the likelihood of upward mobility in the US?
3 DB
General Discussion Board (DB) Expectations
1.
·
Post 1 is your initial response to the prompt based on what you learned from the assigned material. Initial posts must contain appropriate APA formatted in-text citations and reference(s) to the assigned material
2. Each post must be a minimum of 200 words and the word count (WC) should be included before the reference(s) at the end of your posts.
Social Mobility in the US
Reminders
· Each post must be 200+ words and include a Word Count (WC) at the end of your post, before your reference(s).
· APA formatted in-text citations and references are required for your initial post (and in response posts if assigned material is used)
· Please review the full DB Expectations.
Required Sources
· Read
Chapter 8
Stratification and Mobility in the US,
in the Schaefer textbook
· Specifically, review the information under the heading Social Mobility in the U.S.
· Watch this short video on
Social Mobility and the American Dream
Assignment
Post 1:
What Did You Learn?
Often the argument is made that if you “just work hard enough” you can be financially secure. Sociological research demonstrates that the answer is more complicated than that.
·
According to evidence from both Chapter 8 and the video, how realistic is it to be financially secure from “hard work”? In other words, what factors beyond “hard work” impact the likelihood of upward mobility in the US?
· Be sure to include appropriate APA formatted in-text citations and references
APA Formatting Resources
Make sure to include APA formatted in-text citations and references to assigned
|
CHAPTER |
|
8 |
STRATIFICATION AND SOCIAL MOBILITY IN THE UNITED STATES |
|
CHAPTER OUTLINE |
SYSTEMS OF STRATIFICATION
Slavery
Castes
Estates
Social Classes
SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON STRATIFICATION
Karl Marx’s View of Class Differentiation
Max Weber’s View of Stratification
Interactionist Perspective
IS STRATIFICATION UNIVERSAL?
Functionalist Perspective
Conflict Perspective
Lenski’s Viewpoint
STRATIFICATION BY SOCIAL CLASS
Objective Method of Measuring Social Class
Gender and Occupational Prestige
Multiple Measures
INCOME AND WEALTH
POVERTY
Studying Poverty
Who Are the Poor?
Feminization of Poverty
The Underclass
Explaining Poverty
LIFE CHANCES
SOCIAL MOBILITY
Open Versus Closed Stratification Systems
Types of Social Mobility
Social Mobility in the United States
SOCIAL POLICY AND STRATIFICATION: EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION
Boxes
Research Today: Precarious Work
Research Today: Taxes as Opportunity
Research Today: Calculating Your Risk of Poverty
Sociology on Campus: Student Debt
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
WHAT’S NEW IN CHAPTER 8
· Describe the four general systems of stratification: slavery, castes, the estate system, and the class system.
· Describe the class model in the United States.
· Analyze stratification using the three major sociological perspectives, including the views of Karl Marx and Max Weber.
· Compare and contrast the functionalist and conflict perspectives on the existence and necessity of social stratification.
· Summarize the factors used to measure stratification.
· Describe the distribution of income and wealth in the United States.
· Explain poverty in the United States using the conflict and functionalist perspectives.
· Explain how life chances are linked to stratification.
· Describe social mobility.
· Explain the relationship of various social factors to social mobility in the United States.
· Chapter-opening image showing a celebrity serving in a soup kitchen.
· Chapter-opening vignette based on a speech by Jerome Powell, Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (2019).
· Revised material on the shrinking middle class with Research Today box, “Precarious Work.”
· Complete revision of section on class warfare, focusing on recent tax changes that benefit the rich.
· Enhanced coverage on women’s unpaid labor and efforts to measure its economic value.
· Updated coverage of differences in wealth between racial and ethnic groups.
· Expanded treatment of intergenerational mobility, focusing on the Millennials.
· Coverage of the differential impact of the coronavirus pandemic on different classes.
· Enhanced discussion of poverty, including new focus on geographic distribution of both poverty and affluence.
· Key term treatment of “precarious work.”
· Updated tables “Human Trafficking Report,” “Prestige Rankings of Occupations,” and “Who are the Poor in the United States?”
· Updated figures “The 50 States: Contrasts in Income and Poverty Levels, 2018”. “Mean Household Income by Quintile, 2018” “Distribution of Family Wealth in the United States,” “U.S. Minimum Wage Adjusted for Inflation,” and “Poverty in Selected Countries.”
|
CHAPTER SUMMARY |
The term
social inequality denotes a condition in which members of a society have different amounts of wealth, prestige, or power. When a system of social inequality is based on a hierarchy of groups, sociologists refer to it as
stratification. This is a structured ranking of entire groups of people. The consequences of stratification are evident in the unequal distribution of income and wealth.
Income refers to salaries and wages, earned interest, dividends, and rental incomes.
Wealth refers to all of a person’s material assets.
To help understand stratification systems, one must discern between ascribed and achieved statuses. An
ascribed status is a social position assigned to a person without regard for that person’s unique characteristics or talents. An
achieved status is a social position attained by a person largely through their own efforts.
The most extreme form of legalized social inequality is
slavery, the ownership of human beings as property.
Castes are hereditary systems of social inequality, usually religiously dictated. Social mobility (or movement between economic levels) is severely restricted in a caste system. The
estate system, also known as feudalism, was a stratification system in which peasants were required to work the land of a noble in exchange for military protection and other services. A
class system is a social ranking based primarily on economic position. Sociologist Daniel Rossides has suggested that only 1–2% of the people in the United States are in the upper class, whereas the lower class consists of approximately 20–25% of the population. The lower class is disproportionately composed of Blacks, Hispanics, single mothers, and people who cannot find work or must make do with low-paying work. Sandwiched between the upper and lower classes are the middle classes: upper-middle class, lower-middle class, and working class. Class conflict has resulted from growing economic disparities among the classes.
Karl Marx viewed class differentiation as the crucial determinant of social, economic, and political inequality. Marx focused on the two classes within
capitalism that emerged as the estate system declined: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The
bourgeoisie is the capitalist class that owns and controls the means of production, and the
proletariat comprises working-class people who are exploited by the capitalist class. Marx argued that exploitation of the proletariat will inevitably lead to workers’ revolt and destruction of the capitalist system; but first, the working class must develop
class consciousness—awareness of common vested interests and the need for collective action—and overcome
false consciousness or an attitude held by members of a class that does not accurately reflect their objective position.
Unlike Marx, Max Weber insisted that no single characteristic totally defines a person’s social position. Weber identified three components of stratification: class, status, and power. His use of the term
class refers to a group of people with a similar level of wealth and income,
status group refers to people who have the same prestige or lifestyle, and
power is the ability to exercise one’s will over others.
Interactionists are interested in how class shapes a person’s lifestyle at the micro level. Thorstein Veblen introduced the concept of
conspicuous consumption to describe how the well-off convert some of their income into extravagant consumer goods.
The functionalist view of stratification suggests that society must distribute its members among a variety of social positions or jobs. Social stratification is deemed necessary so that qualified people will be motivated to fill functionally important positions. Contemporary conflict theorists, on the other hand, believe that human beings are prone to conflict over scarce resources such as wealth, status, and power. Conflict theorists argue the powerful strive to maintain their status through control of resources and even culture; the term
dominant ideology describes a set of cultural beliefs and practices that helps to maintain powerful social, economic, and political interests. Conflict theorists argue that stratification will inevitably lead to instability and social change. Finally, in his sociocultural evolution approach, Gerhard Lenski proposed a view of society in which technological increases cause greater stratification as a society ages, and that those with wealth, status, and power primarily control the allocation of resources.
In the
objective method of measuring social class, class is viewed largely as a statistical category. A researcher decides the individual’s position by using indicators or causal factors like prestige or esteem.
Prestige refers to the respect and admiration an occupation holds in society, and
esteem refers to the reputation that a specific person has earned within an occupation. Studies of social class have for years ignored the occupations or income of women as a measure of social rank; feminist sociologists have worked to change that imbalance. When researchers use multiple measures, they typically speak of
socioeconomic status (SES), a measure of social class that is based on income, education, and occupation.
By all measures, income in the United States is unevenly distributed, and the income gap between the richest and poorest groups in the United States is widening. During one recent 25-year period, the top 1% of income earners saw their after-tax incomes rise 228%, compared to only 21% for households in the middle quintile.
Approximately 15% of people in the United States live below the poverty line. Women and other minority groups are overrepresented in the lower income groups and underrepresented at the top.
Absolute poverty refers to a minimum level of subsistence that no family should be expected to live below.
Relative poverty is a floating standard of deprivation by which people at the bottom of a society are judged to be disadvantaged in comparison with the nation as a whole. The
feminization of poverty refers to the modern trend in which women constitute an increasing proportion of the poor in the United States and the world. Some sociologists have used the term
underclass to describe long-term poor people who lack training and skills. Sociologist Herbert Gans has applied functionalist analysis to an understanding of the existence of poverty and argues that various segments of society actually benefit from the existence of the poor.
Max Weber saw class as being closely related to people’s
life chances—their opportunities to provide themselves with material goods, positive living conditions, and favorable life experiences. The lower classes have considerably fewer life chances than those of the upper classes.
Social mobility is the movement of individuals or groups from one position in a society’s stratification system to another. Theoretically, in an
open system, the position of each person is influenced by their achieved status. In a
closed system (such as a caste system), there is little or no possibility of individual social mobility.
Horizontal mobility involves the movement of an individual from one social position to another of the same rank.
Vertical mobility involves upward or downward movement from one social position to another of a
different rank. The two types of vertical social mobility are
intergenerational mobility or
intragenerational
mobility. Both have been common among males, but much of this mobility in the United States is minor, in that changes in occupational level are incremental. Education, race and ethnicity, and gender are important factors in shaping one’s chances for upward mobility. Although education is a major enabler of mobility, its impact has diminished in the past decade. For certain U.S. racial groups, especially African Americans, the class system is more rigid than for others. Gender remains an important factor in shaping social mobility, with women in the United States especially likely to be trapped in poverty.
|
LECTURE OUTLINE |
Introduction
•. Excerpt from a speech by Jerome Powell, Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (2019).
•
Social inequality denotes a condition in which members of a society have different amounts of wealth, prestige, or power.
•
Stratification is a structured ranking of entire groups of people that perpetuates unequal economic rewards and power in a society.
•
Income refers to salaries and wages, earned interest, stock dividends, and rental income.
•
Wealth is an inclusive term encompassing all of a person’s material assets.
I.
Systems of Stratification
•
Ascribed status is a social position assigned to a person by society without regard for that person’s unique talents or characteristics.
•
Achieved status is a social position attained by a person largely through their own efforts.
A.
Slavery
•
Slavery is a system of enforced servitude in which enslaved individuals are owned by other people.
•
Slaves in ancient Greece were captives of war or piracy, but their status was not necessarily permanent or passed on to the next generation. In the United States, slavery was an ascribed status, and racial and legal barriers prevented slaves from being freed.
•
More people are enslaved today in the world than at any point in human history.
B.
Castes
•
A caste system is a hereditary system of rank, usually religiously dictated.
Example:
There are four major castes, or
varnas, in India.
•
Urbanization and technological advancement have brought more change to India’s caste system in the past decade or two than the government was able to effect since formally outlawing the practice in 1950.
•
The term
caste can also be applied in recent historical contexts outside India, such as to the system of stratification that characterized the southern United States after the Civil War. Apartheid is another example. In both cases, race was a defining factor.
C.
Estates
•
The estate system, also known as feudalism, is associated with feudal societies in the Middle Ages, where peasants worked land leased to them by nobles in exchange for military protection or other services.
D.
Social Classes
•
A class system is a social ranking, based primarily on economic position, in which achieved status can affect or influence social mobility.
•
One can move from one stratum to another.
•
Unequal distribution of wealth and power is a basic characteristic of a class system.
•
Daniel Rossides’s five-class model of the class system in the United States differentiates among the upper class, the upper middle class, the lower middle class, the working class, and the lower class.
1.
Upper and Lower Classes
•
Upper: about 1 or 2% of the population of the United States.
•
Lower: about 20–25%, disproportionally consisting of Blacks, Hispanics, single mothers with dependent children, and people who cannot find regular work or must make do with low-paying work.
•
Both reflect the importance of ascribed status and achieved status.
•
Galbraith: The rich are the most noticed and the least studied.
2.
Middle Class
•
Upper middle class: 10–15% of population.
•
Lower middle class: about 30–35% of population.
•
The middle class is under great pressure and shrinking. Causal factors include disappearing opportunities for those with little education, global competition, and technological advances, growing dependence on the temporary workforce, and the rise of new growth industries and nonunion workplaces.
3.
Working Class
•
About 40–45% of population; people who hold regular manual or blue-collar jobs.
•
Most noticeably declining in size.
4.
Class Warfare
•
The Occupy Wall Street movement sparked greater talk of class conflict. Conflicts over tax rates of the wealthy in the United States have grown sharper.
•
The gulf between the rich and everyone else has grown for the last 50 years.
II.
Sociological Perspectives on Stratification
•
Karl Marx viewed class differentiation as the crucial determinant of social, economic, and political inequality. Max Weber was critical of Marx’s emphasis on economic factors and argued that stratification had many dimensions.
A.
Karl Marx’s View of Class Differentiation
•
Differential access to scarce resources shapes the relationship between groups. Controlling the primary mode of economic production is key.
•
Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production are largely privately held; profit is the major incentive for economic activity.
•
The bourgeoisie—the capitalist class—owns the factories and machinery and controls most production.
•
The proletariat—the working class—is exploited by the capitalist bourgeoisie.
•
Marx predicted the exploited proletariat would eventually revolt and destroy the capitalist system. First, they must develop class consciousness, a subjective awareness of their plight and of the need for collective action to effect change. Often, this means overcoming false consciousness, an attitude held by members of a class that does not accurately reflect its objective position.
•
Marx failed to anticipate the emergence of labor unions and did not foresee individual workers’ striving for improvement within free societies offering substantial mobility.
B.
Max Weber’s View of Stratification
•
Weber was a critic of Marx’s class model. He identified three distinct components of stratification: class, status, and power.
•
Weber argued that the actions of individuals and groups could not be understood solely in economic terms; the level of income or wealth is not the only dimension along which persons may be stratified.
•
Weber used the term
class to refer to a group of people who have a similar level of wealth and income.
•
A status group consists of people who have the same prestige or lifestyle, but status is not the same as economic class standing.
Example:
A successful thief might achieve the same income level as a college professor, but the college professor has a much higher status.
•
Power is the ability to exercise one’s will over others. Individuals gain power through membership in a desirable group.
C.
Interactionist Perspective
•
Marx and Weber examined stratification primarily from a macrosociological perspective; interactionists are interested in microsociology as well.
•
Interactionists want to understand how social class influences a person’s lifestyle.
•
Thorsten Veblen’s concepts of conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure can still be applied to the behavior of wealthy people today.
III.
Is Stratification Universal?
•
Stratification is universal, in that all societies maintain some form of social inequality among members.
A.
Functionalist Perspective
•
A differential system of rewards and punishments is needed for society to operate efficiently.
•
Society must distribute its members among a variety of social positions (Davis and Moore). Positions are filled with those who have the appropriate talents and abilities. The most important positions must be filled by the most capable persons. Rewards, including money and prestige, are based on the importance of a position and the scarcity of qualified personnel. Social inequality motivates people to fill critical positions.
•
Functionalists fail to explain the wide disparity between rich and poor or to account for stratification systems that are largely inherited.
B.
Conflict Perspective
•
Competition for scarce resources results in significant political, economic, and social inequality. The writings of Marx are at the heart of this perspective.
•
Contemporary conflict views include conflict based on gender, race, age, and other dimensions.
Example:
See Ralf Dahrendorf’s work on authority.
•
Dominant ideology refers to a set of cultural beliefs and practices that helps to maintain powerful social, economic, and political interests.
•
Stratification is a major source of societal tension and conflict, and will inevitably lead to instability and social change.
C.
Lenski’s Viewpoint
•
Economic systems change as the level of technology becomes more complex.
•
As societies advance technologically, they become capable of producing a surplus of goods. The emergence of these resources, and their allocation by those with wealth and power, expands inequalities in status, influence, and power. This allows for a well-defined and rigid social class system.
•
The degree of social and economic equality seen in contemporary society far exceeds what is needed to provide for goods and services.
IV.
Stratification by Social Class
A.
Objective Method of Measuring Social Class
•
Class is viewed largely as a statistical category. Researchers assign individuals to social classes on the basis of criteria such as occupation, education, income, and residence.
•
While
prestige refers to the respect and admiration an occupation holds,
esteem refers to the reputation a person has earned within an occupation. A person may have esteem but lack high levels of prestige. Prestige rankings of occupations are commonly used for class position (see Table 8-3).
B.
Gender and Occupational Prestige
•
There has been debate over how to judge or assess class or status for women in dual-career families. New methods include a focus on the individual (rather than on the family or household) as the basis for categorizing a woman’s class position.
•
The United Nations has placed an $11 trillion price tag on unpaid labor by women, largely in childcare, housework, and agriculture. This represents a continued undercounting of many workers’ contributions to a family and entire economy. Feminists, therefore, argue that virtually all measures of stratification need to be reformed.
C.
Multiple Measures
•
Sociologists use the term
socioeconomic status, or SES, when describing class based on income, education, and occupation.
•
Criteria such as value of homes, sources of income, assets, years in present occupation, neighborhoods, and dual careers have been added to income and education as objective determinants of class.
V.
Income and Wealth
•
Income in the United States is distributed unevenly.
•
There is a dramatic disparity in the wealth of African Americans and Hispanics compared to that of whites.
•
Wealth in the United States is much more unevenly divided between rich and poor than income; the wealth of the top 1% exceeds the collective wealth of the bottom 90%.
VI.
Poverty
•
About 13% of people in the United States live below the poverty line.
Example:
In 2016, no fewer than 40.6 million people were living in poverty.
•
A contributing factor is the large number employed at minimum wage. In terms of real value, adjusted for inflation, the minimum wage has often failed to keep pace with the cost of living; today it is lower than it was at any time from 1956 to 1984.
A.
Studying Poverty
•
Absolute poverty refers to a minimum level of subsistence that no family should be expected to live below.
•
The poverty line serves as an official indicator of which people are poor.
•
In 2016, a family of four with a combined income of $24,339 or less fell below the poverty line.
•
Relative poverty is a floating standard of deprivation by which people are judged to be disadvantaged when compared to the nation as a whole.
•
There is debate over the federal government’s measure of poverty, which has remained unchanged since 1963. In 2010, the government launched a statistic called the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), used to estimate economic hardship.
B.
Who Are the Poor?
•
Many believe the poor can work but choose not to, a stereotype that leads to the faulty notions about how to reduce poverty.
•
Many of the poor live in urban slums, but the majority live outside these poverty-stricken areas.
C.
Feminization of Poverty
•
Since World War II, an increasing number of poor people have been women.
•
In 1959, female householders accounted for 26% of the nation’s poor; by 2016, that figure had risen to 54% (see Table 8-4).
•
Households headed by single mothers are more likely to be living in poverty, as compared to married couples. About half of all women in poverty are dealing with an economic crisis resulting from the departure, disability, or death of a husband.
•
The feminization of poverty is not just a U.S. phenomenon, but a worldwide one.
D.
The Underclass
•
William Julius Wilson and colleagues describe the long-term poor as the
underclass who lack training and skills.
•
The recent economic downturn may swell the ranks of the underclass.
•
The overall composition of the poor changes continuously, as some move above the poverty line and others slip below it. African Americans and Latinos are more likely than whites to be persistently poor. Both Latinos and Blacks are less likely than whites to leave the welfare rolls as a result of welfare reform.
E.
Explaining Poverty
•
Using functionalist analysis, Herbert Gans suggests that poverty serves a number of social, economic, and political functions. In his view, the poor actually satisfy positive functions for many nonpoor groups in the United States.
VII.
Life Chances
•
Max Weber saw class as related to life chances—opportunities to provide oneself with material goods, positive living conditions, and favorable life experiences.
•
Poor people spend a greater proportion of their limited resources on the necessities of life.
•
In times of danger, the affluent and powerful have a better chance of surviving.
•
Class position affects people’s vulnerability to natural disasters.
Example:
Hurricane Katrina’s impact on the poor of New Orleans
VIII.
Social Mobility
•
Refers to the movement of individuals or groups from one position of a society’s stratification system to another.
A.
Open Versus Closed Stratification Systems
•
Open systems encourage competition and imply that a person’s position is influenced by achieved status.
•
Closed systems, such as slavery or caste systems, allow little or no possibility of moving up. Social placement is based on ascribed status.
B.
Types of Social Mobility
•
Horizontal mobility refers to a person moving from one social position to another of the same rank.
•
Vertical mobility is the movement from one social position to another of different rank. This may be upward or downward.
•
Intergenerational mobility involves changes in social position relative to one’s parents.
Example
: college professor whose parents were farmers.
•
Intragenerational mobility involves social changes within one’s adult life.
Example:
teacher’s aide becoming a superintendent.
C.
Social Mobility in the United States
1.
Occupational Mobility
•
Occupational mobility is more common among males than females. Sixty to seventy percentage of sons are employed in higher ranked occupations than their fathers.
•
Although mobility in the United States is high, much of it is minor, with individuals only moving one or two levels away from that of their parents.
2.
The Impact of Education
•
Education has a greater impact than family background, although family background influences the likelihood that one will receive a higher education.
•
Education is a very important means of intergenerational mobility.
•
The impact of education has diminished in the past decade. BA/BS degrees serve less as a guarantee of upward mobility because more people have them.
3.
The Impact of Race and Ethnicity
•
African American men with good jobs are less likely than white men to see their children attain the same status; African American children are less likely to receive financial support from their parents.
•
Downward mobility is significantly higher for African Americans than for whites.
•
The median wealth of white non-Hispanic households is 18 times that of Hispanic households. Continuing immigration accounts for part of the disparity since most new arrivals are very poor, but even the wealthiest Latino households have only one-third as much net worth as the top 5% of white households.
4.
The Impact of Gender
•
Women are more likely to withdraw from the labor force if their job skills exceed the jobs offered them.
•
The large range of clerical occupations open to women offer modest salaries and little chance to advance.
•
Women find it harder to secure financing to start self-employment ventures than men do.
•
Women are unlikely to move into their fathers’ positions.
•
Women’s earnings have increased faster than their mothers’ did at a comparable age, so that their incomes are substantially higher.
IX.
(Box) Social Policy and Stratification: Executive Compensation
A.
Looking at the Issue
•
Executive pay has always been high in the United States, but in recent years, it has grown dramatically. Corporate executives of private companies earn the highest incomes in the nation.
•
CEOs recovered nicely from the recent economic decline and never suffered the way many workers did.
B.
Applying Sociology
•
Generous compensation is reasonable, from a functionalist perspective, given the potential for a corporation’s gain.
•
Conflict theorists question both the high levels of compensation and the process through which executives’ pay is determined, where boards of directors have great financial incentive to go along with terms favorable to top executives.
•
In a somewhat interactionist approach, some sociologists observe that public comparisons of executive compensation within today’s industry may influence board members and lead them to tie compensation more directly to performance.
C.
Initiating Policy
•
Before 1992, corporations were required to disclose executives’ pay, but not in a uniform manner.
•
Today, the law mandates publication of “summary compensation tables” and report of retirement packages and “golden parachute” clauses—clauses that protect executives who bail out of failing companies.
•
The White House recently appointed a Treasury Department official, the “pay czar,” to look into executive compensation, but this assignment has had no lasting impact.
•
In 2015, the Securities and Exchange Commission approved a new rule requiring companies to report on pay-ratio levels between chief executives and a sample of employees, beginning in 2018.
|
KEY TERMS |
Absolute poverty A minimum level of subsistence that no family should be expected to live below.
Achieved
status A social position that a person attains largely through their own efforts.
Ascribed
status A social position assigned to a person by society without regard for the person’s unique talents or characteristics.
Bourgeoisie Karl Marx’s term for the capitalist class, comprising the owners of the means of production.
Capitalism An economic system in which the means of production are held largely in private hands, and the main incentive for economic activity is the accumulation of profits.
Caste A hereditary rank, usually religiously dictated, that tends to be fixed and immobile.
Class A group of people who have a similar level of wealth and income.
Class
consciousness In Karl Marx’s view, a subjective awareness held by members of a class regarding their common vested interests and the need for collective political action to bring about social change.
Class
system A social ranking based primarily on economic position in which achieved characteristics can influence social mobility.
Closed
system A social system in which there is little or no possibility of individual social mobility.
Conspicuous
consumption Purchasing goods not to survive, but to flaunt one’s superior wealth and social standing.
Dominant
ideology A set of cultural beliefs and practices that helps to maintain powerful social, economic, and political interests.
Estate
system A system of stratification under which peasants were required to work land leased to them by nobles in exchange for military protection and other services. Also known as
feudalism.
Esteem The reputation that a specific person has earned within an occupation.
False
consciousness A term used by Karl Marx to describe an attitude held by members of a class that does not accurately reflect their objective position.
Feminization
of
poverty A trend in which women constitute an increasing proportion of the poor people of both the United States and the world.
Horizontal
mobility The movement of an individual from one social position to another of the same rank.
Income Salaries and wages, interest on savings, stock dividends, and rental income.
Intergenerational
mobility Changes in the social position of children relative to their parents.
Intragenerational
mobility Changes in social position within a person’s adult life.
Life
chances The opportunities people have to provide themselves with material goods, positive living conditions, and favorable life experiences.
Objective
method A technique for measuring social class that assigns individuals to classes on the basis of criteria such as occupation, education, income, and place of residence.
Open
system A social system in which the position of each individual is influenced by their achieved status.
Power The ability to exercise one’s will over others.
Precarious work Employment that is poorly paid, and from the worker’s perspective, insecure and unprotected.
Prestige The respect and admiration that an occupation holds in a society.
Proletariat Karl Marx’s term for the working class in a capitalist society.
Relative
poverty A floating standard of deprivation by which people at the bottom of a society, whatever their lifestyles, are judged to be disadvantaged
in comparison with the nation as a whole.
Slavery A system of enforced servitude in which some people are owned by other people.
Social
inequality A condition in which members of society have differing amounts of wealth, prestige, or power.
Social
mobility Movement of individuals or groups from one position in a society’s stratification system to another.
Socioeconomic
status
(SES) A measure of social class that is based on income, education, and occupation.
Status
group People who have the same prestige or lifestyle, independent of their class positions.
Stratification A structured ranking of entire groups of people that perpetuates unequal economic rewards and power in a society.
Underclass The long-term poor who lack training and skills.
Vertical
mobility The movement of an individual from one social position to another of a different rank.
Wealth An inclusive term encompassing all a person’s material assets including land, stocks, and other types of property.
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ESSAY QUESTIONS |
1. Distinguish between wealth and income. Discuss differences in the relationships between wealth and income. For example, how might the wealth and income levels of the elderly be different from those of younger individuals who only recently entered the labor force?
2. Briefly summarize the four systems of stratification presented in the text.
3. To what degree is slavery present in the world in the new century?
4. Slavery was not limited to plantation life in the United States because it still exists in the world today. Explain.
5. Summarize Daniel Rossides’s description of the class system in the United States.
6. Discuss capitalism from a Marxist perspective.
7. Distinguish between
class consciousness and
false consciousness, and give examples of both.
8. To what extent have Karl Marx’s theories been useful in understanding contemporary industrial societies? To what extent have they been misleading?
9. Distinguish among Weber’s use of the terms
class,
status group, and
power.
10. Contrast Max Weber’s and Karl Marx’s views of social class. Discuss why Weber’s model is more comprehensive and most often used by sociologists today.
11. How do functionalists view the issue of the universality of stratification?
12. How do conflict theorists view the issue of the inevitability of stratification?
13. Explain how Gerhard Lenski’s approach to stratification represents a synthesis of the functionalist and conflict approaches.
14. Describe the objective method of measuring social class.
15. What efforts are being made to measure the contribution that women are making to the economy?
16. How are wealth and income distributed in the United States?
17. Explain the utility of the terms
absolute poverty and
relative poverty.
18. Who are the poor in the United States today, and what is meant by the
feminization of poverty?
19. Discuss the feminization of poverty and explain its growing significance.
20. How is the underclass different from the poor?
21. How did Herbert Gans apply a functionalist analysis to the existence of poverty?
22. Describe the ways in which stratification influences a person’s life chances.
23. What does the discussion of the motion picture
Titanic illustrate about the concept of life chances?
24. Distinguish between an
open system and a
closed system.
25. Distinguish between
horizontal mobility and
vertical mobility.
26. How does the impact of intergenerational mobility on an individual differ from that of intragenerational mobility?
27. How does race impact social mobility in the United States?
28. Compare the functionalist and conflict views of the high salaries and other compensation of corporate executives, as compared to the wages of rank-and-file workers.
29. Explain the concept of precarious work and its role in the American economy.
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CRITICAL THINKING QUESTIONS |
1. Discuss why patriotism could be considered a form of false consciousness when viewed from the conflict perspective. Give some examples to support your answer.
2. Explain why the upper classes may allow persons in the lower classes to attain prestige without granting them power or wealth. Give examples to support your answer.
3. Assuming that we could equally divide all the world’s wealth and assets among everyone, why would stratification soon be evident among societies again? Use one or more of the various sociological perspectives to support your answer.
4. Discuss why college education may not benefit all sectors of a society in terms of social mobility. Do most college students expect to experience upward vertical mobility after attaining a college degree? Why or why not?
5. Discuss the factors that make it difficult to restrain the ballooning rates of corporate executive compensation. In your opinion, is this something that needs to be done? Explain.
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