Download Stratification by Social Class

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SOCIOLOGY
Richard T. Schaefer
9
McGraw-Hill
Stratification and
Social Mobility
in the United States
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 2
9. Stratification and Social
Mobility in the United States
•
•
•
•
Understanding Stratification
Stratification by Social Class
Social Mobility
Social Policy and Stratification
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© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 3
Understanding Stratification
• Systems of Stratification
– Ascribed Status: social position
assigned to person without regard for
that person’s unique characteristics or
talents
– Achieved Status: social position
attained by person largely through his or
her own effort
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Slide 4
Understanding Stratification
• Systems of Stratification
– Slavery: most extreme form of legalized
social inequality
– Castes: hereditary systems of rank, usually
religiously dictated, that tend to be fixed
and immobile
– Estate System: associated with feudal
societies in the Middle Ages
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Slide 5
Understanding Stratification
• Systems of Stratification
– Social Classes
• Class System: social ranking based primarily
on economic position in which achieved
characteristics can influence social mobility
• Rossides (1997) uses five-class model to
describe U.S. class system:
• Upper class
• Upper-middle class
• Lower-middle class
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• Working class
• Lower class
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Slide 6
Understanding Stratification
Figure 9-1. Household Income in the United States, 2001
Source: DeNavas-Walt and Cleveland 2002:15
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Understanding Stratification
• Perspectives on Stratification
– Karl Marx’s View of Class Differentiation
• Social relations depend on who controls the
primary mode of production
Proletariat: working
Bourgeoisie:
capitalistclass
class; owns
the means
of
Capitalism:
economic
system
in which
the means
production
of
production are held largely in private hands and
the main incentive for economic activity is the
accumulation of profits
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Slide 8
Understanding Stratification
• Perspectives on Stratification
– Karl Marx’s View of Class Differentiation
• Class Consciousness: subjective awareness
of common vested interests and the need for
collective political action to bring about change
• False Consciousness: attitude held by
members of class that does not accurately
reflect their objective position
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Slide 9
Understanding Stratification
• Perspectives on Stratification
– Max Weber’s View of Stratification
• No single characteristic totally defines a
person’s position with the stratification system
Status Group:
people who
have the same
prestige or
lifestyle
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Class: group of
people who
have similar
level of wealth
and income
Power: ability
to exercise
one’s will over
others
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Slide 10
Understanding Stratification
• Perspectives on Stratification
– Interactionist View
• Interested in the importance of social class in
shaping a person’s lifestyle
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Slide 11
Understanding Stratification
• Is Stratification Universal?
– Inequality exists in all societies—even the
simplest
• Functionalist View
Social inequity necessary so
people will be motivated to
fill functionally important
positions.
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Does not explain the
wide disparity between
the rich and the poor
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Slide 12
Understanding Stratification
• Is Stratification Universal?
– Conflict View
• Human beings prone to
conflict over scarce resources
such as wealth, status, and
power
• Stratification major source
of societal tension and
conflict that will inevitably
lead to instability and social
change
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Dominant
Ideology: set of
cultural beliefs
and practices that
helps to maintain
powerful social,
economic, and
political interests
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Slide 13
Understanding Stratification
• Is Stratification Universal?
– Lenski’s Viewpoint
• As a society advances technologically, it
becomes capable of producing a considerable
surplus of goods
• Emergence of surplus resources greatly
expands possibilities for inequality in status,
influence, and power
• Allocation of surplus goods and services
reinforces social inequality
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Slide 14
Understanding Stratification
Figure 9-2. Around the World: What’s a CEO Worth?
Source: Towers Perin Bryant 1999:Section 4, p. 1
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Understanding Stratification
Table 9-1. Major Perspectives on Social Stratification
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Stratification by Social Class
• Measuring Social Class
– Objective Method
• Class largely viewed as
a statistical category
based on
–
–
–
–
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Occupation
Education
Income
Place of residence
Prestige: respect and
admiration an
occupation holds in
society
Esteem: reputation
specific person has
earned within an
occupation
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Slide 17
Stratification by Social Class
• Measuring Social Class
– Gender and Occupational Prestige
– Multiple Measures
• Wealth and Income
– Income in U.S. distributed unevenly
• In 2001, richest fifth of the population held
84.5% of nation’s wealth
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.
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Stratification by Social Class
Table 9-2. Prestige
Rankings of Occupations
Source: J. Davis et al. 2003
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Stratification by Social Class
Figure 9-3. U.S. Income
Pyramid, 2003
Source: Developed by author based on data from DeNavas-Walt et
al. 2004; HINC-01 and the Internal Revenue Service (2004)
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Slide 20
Stratification by Social Class
Figure 9-4. Distribution of Wealth in the United States, 2001
Source: Wolff:2002
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Stratification by Social Class
Figure 9-5. U.S. Minimum Wage Adjusted for Inflation, 1950—2005
Source: Author’s estimate and Bureau of the Census 2003a:425
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Stratification by Social Class
• Poverty
– Absolute poverty: minimum level of
subsistence that no family should live
below
– Relative poverty: floating standard by
which people at the bottom of a society
are judged as being disadvantaged in
comparison to the nation as a whole
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Slide 23
Stratification by Social Class
• Poverty
– Who Are the Poor?
• Not a static social class
– Explaining Poverty
• In Gans’s view, poverty and poor satisfy
positive functions for many non poor groups
Life Chances: opportunities to provide material goods,
positive living conditions, and favorable life experience
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Slide 24
Stratification by Social Class
Figure 9-6. Absolute Poverty in Selected Industrial Countries
Source: Smeeding et al. 2001:51
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Slide 25
Stratification by Social Class
Table 9-3. Who Are the
Poor in the United Sates?
Source: DeNavas-Walt et al. 2004:10
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Slide 26
Social Mobility
• Open versus Closed Stratification
Systems
– Indicate social mobility in a society
• Open System: position of each individual
influenced by the person’s achieved position
• Closed System: allows little or no possibility
of moving up
Social Mobility: Movement of individuals or groups from
one position in a society’s stratification system to another
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Slide 27
Social Mobility
• Types of Social Mobility
– Horizontal Mobility: movement within
same range of prestige
– Vertical Mobility: movement from one
position to another of a different rank
– Intragenerational Mobility: social
position changes within person’s adult life
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Slide 28
Social Mobility
• Social Mobility in the United States
– Occupational Mobility
– The Impact of Education
– The Impact of Race and Ethnicity
– The Impact of Gender
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Slide 29
Social Policy and Stratification
• Government and Poverty
– The Issue
• Governments searching for right solution to
welfare
– How much subsidy?
– How much responsibility should poor assume?
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Slide 30
Social Policy and Stratification
• Government and Poverty
– The Setting
• Shifts in U.S. welfare program in 1996
• Most countries devote higher proportions of
expenditures to
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–
–
–
–
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Housing
Social security
Welfare
Health care
Unemployment compensation
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Slide 31
Social Policy and Stratification
• Government and Poverty
– Sociological Insights
• Many sociologists view debate over welfare
reform from conflict perspective
• Corporate Welfare: tax breaks, direct
payments, and grants the government makes
to corporations
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Slide 32
Social Policy and Stratification
• Government and Poverty
– Policy Initiatives
• Prospect for hard-core jobless faded
• In North America and Europe, people beginning
to turn to private means to support themselves
• People seeing gap between themselves and the
affluent grow with fewer government programs
to assist them
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