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SOCIOLOGY
Richard T. Schaefer
9
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Stratification and
Social Mobility
in the United States
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 2
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 3
Understanding Stratification
Figure 9-1. Household Income in the United States, 2001
Source: DeNavas-Walt and Cleveland 2002:15
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Slide 4
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 5
Understanding Stratification
Functionalist feel that stratification is functional
for the following reasons
1. Society must make certain that its positions are
filled
2. Some positions are more important than others
3. The more important positions must be filled by the
more qualified people
4. To motivate the more qualified people to fill these
positions, society must offer them greater rewards
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Slide 6
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 7
• From this perspective, stratification is functional
mainly for those at the top of the social hierarchy
• All ruling groups-from slave masters to modern elitesdevelop an ideology to justify their position at the
top.
• This ideology often seduces the oppressed into
believing that their welfare depends on keeping
society stable.
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Slide 8
• Consequently, the oppressed may support laws
against their own interests and even
make sacrifices that benefit the bourgeoisie.
• For this to happen the working class has to develop
class consciousness
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Slide 9
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 10
Max Weber (1864-1920)
• Weber believed that Marx’s economic view of
stratification could not capture primary features of
modern industrial stratification systems
• Weber noticed that social position did not always
seem to be simply a matter of property ownership
• Weber believed that no single characteristic (such
as class) dictates a person's position within the
stratification system
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Slide 11
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 12
Understanding Stratification
• According to Weber, each of us has not one but three
ranks in society.
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Slide 13
Stratification by Social Class
Table 9-2. Prestige
Rankings of Occupations
Source: J. Davis et al. 2003
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Slide 14
Understanding Stratification
Table 9-1. Major Perspectives on Social Stratification
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Slide 15
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
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Slide 16
Stratification by Social Class
• Measuring Social Class
• Wealth and Income
 One important dimension of economic inequality
involves income, wages or salary from work.
• Whereas wealth, is an individual’s or family’s total
financial assets.
– Income in U.S. distributed unevenly
• In 2001, richest fifth of the population held
84.5% of nation’s wealth
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.
Slide 17
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 18
Stratification by Social Class
Figure 9-4. Distribution of Wealth in the United States, 2001
Source: Wolff:2002
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Slide 19
• All the data show that there is an enormous gap
between the haves and the have nots and that it has
been growing steadily wider
• In the past 15 years, our highest-income family saw
its share of all income go up about 12 percent while
our eight low-income families saw their share drop
9%.
• Overall, Americans are worth over $38 trillion
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Slide 20
The Middle Class
• The middle-class include 40 to 45 percent of the
population
• Because it is so large and embodies the aspirations of
many more people, the middle class exerts
tremendous influence on our culture.
• Television and other mass media usually show
middle-class men and women and most commercial
advertising is directed at these “average” consumers.
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Slide 21
The Working Class
• About 30% of the population is a member of the
working class holding manual or blue-collar jobs.
• Even if they make good income, higher than lower
middle class, they tend to identify with manual
workers.
• Compared with the lower middle class, they have less
years of formal education.
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Slide 22
The Lower Class
• Have little income, their lives are unstable and
insecure.
Poverty
• approximately one out of every nine Americans lives
below the poverty line established by the federal
government.
The Poverty Line
Official U.S. government definitions of poverty are
based on the calculation of a minimum family
“market basket”
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Slide 23
• The U.S. Department of Agriculture regularly prepare
estimates of the cost of achieving a minimum level of
nutrition, based on average food prices.
• It is assumed that an average low-income family
must not spend one third of its total income on food
• The poverty line for 2004 was $19,157
• In 2001 roughly, 11.7 percent or 34.5 million-live
below the poverty line
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Slide 24
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 25
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 26
Stratification by Social Class
Figure 9-6. Absolute Poverty in Selected Industrial Countries
Source: Smeeding et al. 2001:51
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Slide 27
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 28
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 29
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 30
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 31
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 32
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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Housing
Social security
Welfare
Health care
Unemployment compensation
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Slide 33
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 34
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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