Social Stratification

Social Stratification This is a way of describing how the country is divided up into a hierarchy – the people at the top of the hierarchy have more access to wealth and power

Class System In the UK, our system of stratification is called the class system. Generally we have three different classes, The Upper Class – here we are talking about the Royal Family and people who would be considered part of the aristocracy The Middle Classes – there are a few different levels of Middle Classes, but these are generally people from professional backgrounds, who may own businesses and property, and who often have a university level of education The Working Class- tend to be from a lower educational background and who work in manual labour type jobs

Change over time However, the class system in the UK as changed significantly over time, it used to be quite an important factor in how we think about our own identities and how we judge others. A person’s occupation would be used as a quick way to make judgements about the kind of things that they would be likely to think about certain political and social issues But today, class isn’t as important as it was. As society has progressed we have found other ways of building identities for ourselves - we express ourselves through the way we spend money as well as the way we earn money.

Inequality Nevertheless, although class is less significant than it was, there is certainly still a high level of inequality in UK society. Some people have much more access to wealth and power than others. This has a knock-on effect on health, education and other social and political issues. People who have more wealth have longer, healthier lives, and have children who get better education and better jobs, and live longer, healthier lives. This opens up a huge area of debate on fairness.

An Economy for the 1%, shows that the wealth of the poorest half of the world's population - that's 3.6 billion people - has fallen by a trillion dollars since 2010. This 38 per cent drop has occurred despite the global population increasing by around 400 million people during that period. Meanwhile the wealth of the richest 62 has increased by more than half a trillion dollars to $1.76tr. Just nine of the '62' are women.

Different Viewpoints on stratification Natural inevitability viewpoints suggest that inequality exists because of natural differences in people's abilities and is a just system. Functionalist viewpoints state that stratification is useful to society because it enhances stability and induces members of the society to work hard. Conflict viewpoints suggests that stratification occurs through conflict between different classes, with the upper classes using superior power to take a larger share of the social resources – they exploit the lower classes Create a mind map showing the arguments for and against each of these viewpoints