1. Social Class And Social Mobility
© Alan S. Berger

2. Characteristics of Class Systems
In a class system, social stratification is based on both birth and individual achievement.
Industrial societies move towards meritocracy, social stratification based on personal merit.
© Alan S. Berger

3. The Persistence of Class Status
Class status persists across generations because it is backed up by an ideology, a set of cultural beliefs that justify social stratification and inequality .
© Alan S. Berger

4. The American Class System
Inequality follows relatively consistent and stable patterns that persist through time.
Typically, stratified groups in the United States are referred to as the upper class, the upper middle class, the lower middle class, the working class and and the lower class.
Income inequality is high in the United States; it is increasing; and it is at its highest level in 50 years.
In 2001, the top 20 percent of the population received half of the income and inequality in wealth is even greater.
© Alan S. Berger

5. The American Class System
Social class largely determines people’s life chances and style of life.
Children and the elderly account for nearly half of all Americans living in poverty.
Three theories predominate regarding poverty:
The culture of poverty theory,
poverty as situational
poverty as a structural feature of
capitalist societies
© Alan S. Berger

6. Social Inequality in the US
U.S. society is highly stratified, but many people underestimate the extent of structured inequality in U.S. society for the following reasons:
In principle, the law gives equal standing to all.
Our culture celebrates individual autonomy and achievement. We tend to interact with people like ourselves
© Alan S. Berger

7. Social Inequality in the US
The United States is an affluent society.
Income consists of wages or salaries from work and earnings from investments. U.S. society has more income inequality than most other industrial societies.
Wealth consists of the total amount of money and other assets, minus outstanding debts. It is distributed even less equally than income.
© Alan S. Berger

8. Income and Wealth
Income: wages and salaries measured over some period, such as per hour or per year
Wealth: total of a person’s material assets, including savings, land, stocks, and other types of property, minus his or her debts at a single point in time
© Alan S. Berger

9. Mean Household Income by Quintile, 2006
Source: U.S. Census 2007d.
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10. Power is also unequally distributed.
Occupational prestige. Occupation serves as a key source of social prestige since we commonly evaluate each other according to what we do.
Schooling affects both occupation and income.
Social Stratification and Birth.
Ancestry. Family is our point of entry into the social system.
Gender. On average, women have less income, wealth, and occupational prestige than men.
Race and ethnicity. Race is closely linked to social position in the United States.
© Alan S. Berger

11. Why Stratification ?
Explanations of social stratification involve value judgments.
The Bell Curve Debate: Are Rich People Really Smarter?:
A series of claims made in The Bell Curve (Murray, Charles and Hernstein, Richard J., Free Press, 1994) that Race and class are related to intelligence.
© Alan S. Berger

12. Is Getting Rich "The Survival of the Fittest"?
Historical patterns of ideology. Ideology changes as a society’s economy and technology change.
Is Getting Rich "The Survival of the Fittest"?
Spencer’s view that people get more or less what they deserve in life remains part of our individualistic culture.
Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic
© Alan S. Berger

13. Social Mobility
The process of moving from one stratification level to another
takes a number of forms:
vertical
horizontal
intergenerational
intragenerational.
Intragenerational social mobility is a change in social position occurring during a person’s lifetime;
intergenerational social mobility is upward or downward social mobility of children in relation to their parents.
© Alan S. Berger

14. Social Mobility
When sociologists speak of social mobility, they usually mean intergenerational occupational mobility.
More Americans are upwardly mobile than downwardly mobile across generations.
The processes of status attainment are different for women and blacks than for white males.
© Alan S. Berger

15. Social Mobility Social Classes in the United States.
The upper class. Historically, though less so today, the upper class has been composed of white Anglo-Saxon Protestants.
The upper-upper class includes less than 1 percent of the U.S. population.
The lower-upper class are the “working rich”; earnings rather than inherited wealth are the primary source of their income.
Color of Money: Being Rich in Black and White. The number of affluent African Americans has increased markedly in recent years, but well-to-do blacks differ from their white counterparts in significant ways.
© Alan S. Berger

16. Social Mobility Religion.
Historically, people of English ancestry have enjoyed the most wealth and wielded the greatest power in the United States.
Throughout our history, upward mobility has sometimes meant converting to a higher-ranking religion
© Alan S. Berger

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Social Mobility
Education
Impact of formal schooling is even greater than that of family background
Important means of intergenerational mobility
Critical factor in development of cultural capital
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18. © 2009 The McGraw Hill Companies
Social Mobility
Occupational Mobility
Common among males
Most mobility is minor
Income and Wealth
Mobility occurs, but most do not move very far
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19. The Shrinking Middle Class
Contributing factors:
Disappearing opportunities for those with little education
Global competition and rapid advances in technology
Growing dependence on temporary workforce
Rise of new-growth industries and nonunion workplaces
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20. What Difference Does Class Make
Health -
Richer people live, on average, seven years longer
because they eat more nutritious food,
live in safer and less stressful environments, and receive better medical care.
© Alan S. Berger

21. Values. Affluent people with greater education and financial security are more tolerant of controversial behavior, while working-class people tend to be less tolerant.
Politics.
Well-off people tend to be more conservative on economic issues but more liberal on social issues. The reverse is true for those people of lower social standing.
Higher-income people are more likely to vote and join political organizations than people in the lower class.
© Alan S. Berger

22. What Difference Does Class Make
Family and gender.
Most lower-class families are somewhat larger than middle-class families.
Working-class parents encourage conventional norms and respect to authorities
whereas parents of higher social standing transmit a different “cultural capital” to their children, stressing individuality and imagination.
© Alan S. Berger

23. © 2009 The McGraw Hill Companies
Life Chances
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
In times of danger, affluent and powerful have a better chance of surviving than people of ordinary means
Digital divide is recent aspect of social inequality
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24. The Shrinking Middle Class
Only about 22 percent of American households qualified as middle class in 2006, compared to 28 percent in 1967
About half rose to higher ranking, and half dropped to lower position
Suggests broadly based middle class is being replaced by two growing groups of rich and poor
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Poverty
In 2012, 16 percent of the U.S. population—were living in poverty
20 percent of children
Poverty level family of four was $23,050
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Defining Poverty
Absolute poverty:
minimum level of subsistence that no family should be expected to live below
This is federal government’s poverty line
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27. © 2009 The McGraw Hill Companies
Who Are the Poor?
Our stereotypes about poverty are flawed
Likelihood of being in poverty is shaped by factors such as age, race, ethnicity, and family type
Feminization of poverty is a worldwide phenomenon
Underclass: long-term poor who lack training and skills
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28. Who Are the Poor in the United States?
Note: Data for 2006, as reported by the Bureau of the Census in 2007.
Source: DeNavas-Walt et al
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29. People Below Poverty Level
Source: 2006 census data presented in Bureau
of the Census 2007d: Tables R1701, 1901.
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30. Education Pays: Full-Time, Year-Round Workers, Ages 25–64, 2006
© Alan S. Berger
Source: U.S. Census 2007f.

31. Four general conclusions about social mobility in the United States:
Myth versus reality.
Four general conclusions about social mobility in the United States:
Social mobility over the course of the last century has been fairly high.
The long-term trend in social mobility has been upward.
Within a single generation, social mobility is usually small.
Social mobility since the 1970s has been uneven.
Mobility varies by income level.
Mobility varies by race, ethnicity and gender.
The "American Dream:" Still a reality?
For many workers, earnings have stalled.
Multiple job-holding is up.
More jobs offer little income.
Young people are remaining at home.
© Alan S. Berger

32. The Great Mansions Return
CEOs Get Richer:
The Great Mansions Return
The Global Economy and U.S. class structure. Much of the industrial production that gave U.S. workers high-paying jobs a generation ago has moved overseas. In their place, the economy now offers “service work,” which often pays far less.
© Alan S. Berger

33. Explaining poverty.
One view: The poor are mostly responsible for their own poverty.
The poor become trapped in a culture of poverty, a lower-class subculture that can destroy people’s ambition.
Another view: Society is primarily responsible for poverty.
Most of the evidence suggests that it is society
William Julius Wilson points out that while people continue to talk about welfare reform, neither major political party has said anything about the lack of work in central cities. He didn’t say the same problem exists in rural communities
© Alan S. Berger

34. A family’s socioeconomic status
In % of families non rural Maine earned less than $25,000 a year. In rural Maine families that number was 26%.
15% of rural Maine’s children live in poverty compared to 12% of non rural Maine.
A family’s socioeconomic status
is the best predictor of school readiness, academic success, physical, social, emotional development and future occupational choices
Making Kids Count in Rural Northern New England – prepared by Northern NE Kids Count collaborative (2004)
© Alan S. Berger

35. 1930s Elm Grove, CA
© Alan S. Berger

36. Maine 2001, Adam waiting for his mom
© Alan S. Berger

37. © 2009 The McGraw Hill Companies
Social Mobility
Race and Ethnicity
Class system more rigid for African Americans than for other racial groups
Typical Hispanic has less than 10 percent of the wealth that a White person has
Gender
Traditional mobility studies have ignored gender
Women especially likely to be trapped in poverty
© The McGraw Hill Companies