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Chapter 14
Stratification
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© W. W. Norton & Company, 2008
Introduction
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Stratification is systematic inequalities between
groups of people that arise as intended or
unintended consequences of social processes and
relationships.
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Views of Inequality
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In the eighteenth century JeanJacques Rousseau argued that
private property creates social
inequality and that this
inequality ultimately leads to
social conflict.
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View of Inequality
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The Scottish Enlightenment thinkers Adam Ferguson and John
Millar agreed with Rousseau that private property creates
inequality.
 However, they argued that this is good because it means that
some people are getting ahead and creating assets (a form of
wealth that can be stored for the future).
 The ability to create assets provides an incentive to work
hard, leading to higher degrees of social organization and
ultimately to an improved society.
 The irony, however, is that this ability to create and store
surpluses is what creates inequality.
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View of Inequality
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Thomas Malthus
 Viewed inequality favorably, but only as a means
for controlling population growth
 Thought that a more equal distribution of resources
would increase the world’s population to
unsustainable levels and ultimately bring about
mass starvation and conflict
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View of Inequality
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Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Master-Slave
Dialectic
 Posited that most social relationships in the world
were based on a master-slave model in which the
master becomes as dependent on the slave as the
slave is on the master
 Believed that over time society would have more
and more free people and the master-slave model
would die out as the primary social relationship
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Standards of Equality
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Ontological equality is the notion that everyone is
created equal in the eyes of God.
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Standards of Equality
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Equality of Opportunity
 Idea that inequality of condition is acceptable so
long as everyone has the same opportunities for
advancement and is judged by the same standards
 This standard of equality is most closely associated
with modern capitalist society and a cornerstone of
arguments made by civil rights activists in the
United States in the 1960s
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Standards of Equality
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Equality of Condition
 Idea that everyone should have an equal starting
point from which to pursue his or her goals
 Belief in this standard of equality has led to policies
such as affirmative action, which try to compensate
social actors for differences in their conditions or
starting points
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Standards of Equality
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Equality of Outcome
 Notion that everyone in a society should end up
with the same “rewards” regardless of his starting
point, opportunities, or contributions
 Standard of equality is most closely associated with
Communist ideology, and critics argue that without
greater incentives to work hard and be productive,
people would slack off and social progress would
be stymied
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Forms of Stratification
Estate System is a
politically based
system of stratification
characterized by
limited social mobility
that is best exemplified
in the social
organization of feudal
Europe and the pre–
Civil War American
South.
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Caste System is a
system of stratification
based on hereditary
notions of religious
and theological purity
and generally offers no
prospects for social
mobility. The varna
system in India is the
most common example
today of a caste
system.
Class System is an
economically based
system of stratification
characterized by
somewhat loose social
mobility and
categories based on
roles in the production
process rather than
individual
characteristics.
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Forms of Stratification
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Karl Marx felt that society was divided strictly
into two classes—the proletariat, or working
class, and the bourgeoisie, or owners of the means
of production.
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Erik Olin Wright developed the concept of
contradictory class locations, which is the idea
that people can occupy locations in the class
structure that fall between the two “pure” classes
defined by Marx.
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Forms of Stratification
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It can be difficult to define class because class
means different things to different people and
because people don’t always fit neatly into just one
category.
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Max Weber’s concept of class is based on grouping
people according to the value of their property or
labor in the commercial marketplace.
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/national/class/inde
x.html
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Forms of Stratification
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The status hierarchy system is a system of
stratification based on social prestige. This prestige can
be linked to different things—occupation, lifestyle,
membership in certain organizations—but sociologists
have most often studied occupational status.

Elite-mass dichotomy system is a system of stratification
that has a governing elite—a few leaders who broadly hold
the power of society.
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How Is America Stratified Today?
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Socioeconomic status (SES) refers to an individual’s
position in a stratified social order.
In the United States, the upper class is associated with
income, wealth, power, and prestige, but definitions
related to specific levels of income or net worth can vary.
There is little consensus about how to define the middle
class, yet almost 90 percent of Americans self-define as
being in the middle class. A further complication is how
to separate middle class from working class.
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How Is America Stratified Today?
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The middle class has historically been composed of
white-collar workers and the working class of manual
laborers, but in the post–World War II economic
boom, the working class essentially merged with the
middle class as higher wages gave manual laborers
access to markers of middle-class achievement such as
home ownership, providing their children with a
college education, ample retirements savings, etc.
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How Is America Stratified Today?
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Another major change in the workforce that has blurred the
lines between the middle and working classes is the rise of
the low-wage service sector composed of ostensibly whitecollar jobs that earn working-class wages.
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The income gap between high-income and low-income
individuals has increased dramatically over the last thirty
years, and there are a number of competing theories as to
why this has happened.
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Figure 14.4 | Distribution of Net Worth
and Financial Wealth, 2001 (pt. 1)
Figure 14.4 | Distribution of Net Worth
and Financial Wealth, 2001 (pt. 2)
Figure 14.3 | Average CEO Pay versus
Production Worker Pay, 1970-2000
How Is America Stratified Today?
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Poverty has an official, government definition, but
there are less official categories such as the working
poor and the nonworking poor (sometimes called the
underclass). These unofficial categories don’t represent
stable, homogenous groups because people at this end
of the socioeconomic spectrum tend to shift in and out
of poverty over the course of their lives.
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Global Inequality
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Taking a broad view of history, it is clear that global
inequality has increased dramatically in the past 500
years, for example.
 However, by some measures there has been a
noticeable decrease in income inequality in the past
twenty to thirty years.
 One key to these conclusions is whether you look at
inequality within different countries or between
countries.
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Figure 14.5 | Income Ratios, 1980
Figure 14.5 | Income Ratios, 1990
Figure 14.5 | Income Ratios, 2000
Global Inequality
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Many scholars have examined the question of why
Europe developed first and why many former colonies
have struggled to improve social and economic
conditions for their populations. Theories range from
geographic differences to the importance of social
institutions to the types of relationships different
colonial powers had with their colonies.
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Social Reproduction versus Social Mobility
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Social mobility, the movement between different positions
within a system of social stratification in any given society,
can be either horizontal or vertical and can take place on the
individual or group level.
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Social Reproduction versus Social Mobility
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Structural mobility is mobility that is inevitable from
changes in the economy, such as the expansion of high-tech
jobs in the past twenty years.
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Exchange mobility occurs when people essentially trade
positions—the number of overall jobs stays the same, with
some people moving up into better jobs and others moving
down into worse ones.
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Social Reproduction versus Social Mobility
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A mobility table is a way to examine the process of
individual mobility by comparing changes in occupational
status between generations.
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A status-attainment model also looks at changes in
occupational status between generations, but it includes
factors such as educational attainment, income, and the
prestige of a person’s first job.
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The “Death” Tax
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The estate tax in the United States is related to the issue of
stratification because it goes to the heart of questions about
how to promote business growth, how wealth should be
distributed, how to encourage meritocracy, and how to
build a more equitable society.
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