1. Social Stratification
Social Class
And
Social Mobility

2. Characteristics of Stratification Systems
Social stratification describes the structured ranking of individuals and groups and their grading into horizontal layers or strata.
Social stratification depends upon social differentiation – the process by which a society becomes increasingly specialized over time.
Where people can change their status with relative ease, sociologists refer to the arrangement as an open system.
Where people can not change their status with relative ease, sociologists refer to the arrangement as a closed system.

3. Characteristics of Stratification Systems
Social stratification is a system by which a society ranks categories of people in a hierarchy.
There are four basic principles of stratification:
Social stratification is a feature of society, not simply a function of individual differences.
Social stratification persists over generations.
However, most societies allow some social mobility or changes in people’s position in a system of social stratification.
Social mobility may be upward, downward, or horizontal.
Social stratification is universal but variable.
Social stratification involves not just inequality but beliefs.

4. Stratification and Inequality
Social inequality: condition in which members of society have different amounts of wealth, prestige, or power
Stratification: structured ranking of entire groups of people that effects unequal economic rewards and power in a society
Four major stratification systems: slavery, caste, estate, and class

5. Caste Systems
A caste system is social stratification based on ascription (social status by birth) or birth.
Caste systems are typical of agrarian (rural) societies because the lifelong routines of agriculture depend on a rigid sense of duty and discipline

6. Characteristics of A Caste System
Caste systems shape people’s lives in four crucial ways:
Caste largely determines occupation.
Illustrations: India and South Africa.
Systems generally mandate endogamy.
Caste systems limit outgroup social contacts.
Powerful cultural beliefs underlie caste systems..

7. Caste in Japan Feudal Japan was divided into several castes: Nobility.
Samurai or warriors.
Commoners.
The burakumin or outcasts.
Japan today consists of “upper,” “upper-middle,” “lower-middle,” and “lower” classes, and people move between classes over time. But they may still size up one’s social standing through the lens of caste.

8. 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.
In class systems, status consistency, the degree of consistency of a person’s social standing across various dimensions of social inequality, is lower than in caste systems.

9. The Soviet System The former Soviet Union.
Although the former Soviet Union claimed to be classless, the jobs people held actually fell into four unequal categories:
Apparatchiks or high government officials.
Soviet intelligentsia.
Manual workers.
Rural peasantry
The second Russian Revolution.
Gorbachev introduced perestroika, and in 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed.
Social mobility is relatively common in the Soviet Union, especially structural social mobility, a shift in the social position of large numbers of people due more to changes in society itself than to individual efforts.

10. Chinese Stratification
Sweeping political and economic changes are taking place in the People’s Republic of China.
A new class system is emerging with a mix of the old political hierarchy and a new business hierarchy.

11. The Persistence of Stratification
Stratification persists across generations because it is backed up by an ideology, a set of cultural beliefs that justify social stratification and inequality .
Plato explained that every culture considers some type of inequality “fair.”
Marx understood this fact, although he was far more critical of inequality than Plato.

12. Characteristics of Estate Systems
Estate stratification systems were agrarian and peasants were required to work land leased to them by nobles in exchange for military protection and other services.
During the feudal era, British society was divided into three estates:
The first estate was the hereditary nobility. (elite)
The second estate was the clergy.(priesthood)
The third estate was the commoners. (Bourgeois)
The United Kingdom today is a class society, but it retains important elements of its former caste system

13. 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

14. Three primary methods are employed by sociologists in identifying social classes:
the objective method,
the self-placement method,
the reputational method.

15. Functional Analysis of Stratification
The Davis-Moore thesis is the assertion that social stratification has beneficial consequences for the operations of a society.
It is difficult to specify the functional importance of a given occupation; some are clearly over- or under-rewarded.
Davis-Moore ignores how social stratification can prevent the development of individual talents.
The theory also ignores how social inequality may promote conflict and revolution.

16. Conflict Analysis of Stratification
Marx saw classes as defined by people’s relationship to the means of production.
Capitalists (or the bourgeoisie) are people who own factories and other productive businesses.
The proletarians sell their productive labor to the capitalists.
Big Bucks: Are the Rich Worth What They Earn? Equating income with social worth is risky business.
Critiques
Marxism is revolutionary and highly controversial.
Marxism fails to recognize that a system of unequal rewards may be necessary to motivate people to perform their social roles effectively.
The revolutionary developments Marx considered inevitable within capitalist societies have failed to happen.

17. Defense of Conflict theory of Stratification
Wealth remains highly concentrated.
White-collar jobs offer no more income, security, or satisfaction than blue-collar jobs did a century ago.
Class conflict continues between workers and management.
The laws still protect the private property of the rich.

18. Sociological Study of Stratification Systems
Sociologists typically take a multidimensional view of stratification, identifying three components:
economic standing (wealth and income)
prestige
Power

19. Sociological Study of Stratification Systems
Questions Sociologists Ask about Stratification
What type of system is it
How much social mobility is there
How much inequality is there and what is the basis for inequality
Why is there stratification
The founders of Sociology had several set of answers

20. Sociological Study of Stratification Systems
Many sociologists use the term socioeconomic status, a composite ranking based on various dimensions of social inequality (Income, Occupation, Power)
Inequality in history: Weber’s view. Weber noted that each of his three dimensions of social inequality stands out at different points in the evolution of human societies.
Although social class boundaries may have blurred, all industrial nations still show striking patterns of social inequality.
Income inequality has increased in recent years. Because of this trend, some think Marx’s view of the rich versus the poor is correct.

21. 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.
Their culture celebrates individual autonomy and achievement. We tend to interact with people like ourselves

22. 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.

23. 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

24. 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.

25. 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.
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

26. Social Mobility
The process of moving from one stratification level to another
takes a number of forms:
vertical
horizontal
intergenerational (between generations)
intragenerational. (within generations)
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.

27. Social Mobility
When sociologists speak of social mobility, they usually mean intergenerational occupational mobility.
More Americans are upwardly mobile than downwardly mobile across generations.
Sociologists study the course of an individual’s occupational status over the life cycle by looking at the socioeconomic life cycle.
The processes of status attainment are different for women and blacks than for white males.
Critics of status attainment research contend that it has a functionalist bias and that the dual labor market operates to sort people into core or periphery sector jobs.
There is ongoing controversy about whether the American middle class is “shrinking” and whether the American Dream is history.

28. 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.

29. 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

30. 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

31. Social Mobility Occupational Mobility Income and Wealth
Common among males
Most mobility is minor
Income and Wealth
Mobility occurs, but most do not move very far
Likelihood of ending up in same position as one’s parents has been rising since 1980

32. 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

33. 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.
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.

34. 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.

35. 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

36. 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

37. Poverty
In 2006, 36.5 million people in U.S.—12.3 percent of the population—were living in poverty
One in five households has trouble meeting basic needs

38. Defining Poverty
Absolute poverty: minimum level of subsistence that no family should be expected to live below
Common measure is federal government’s poverty line
Relative poverty: floating standard of deprivation by which people at the bottom of a society are judged as being disadvantaged in comparison with the nation as a whole

39. The Poverty Rate in Households with Children, Selected Countries
Note: Data are for 2000 except for Germany (2001) and Mexico (2002). Poverty threshold is 50 percent of nation’s median income. Source: Förster and d’Ercole 2005: 36.

40. 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

41. 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

42. People Below Poverty Level
Source: 2006 census data presented in Bureau
of the Census 2007d: Tables R1701, 1901.

43. Education Pays: Full-Time, Year-Round Workers, Ages 25–64, 2006
© Alan S. Berger
Source: U.S. Census 2007f.

44. 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.

45. Who are the poor?
Age.
2001, 16.3 percent of people under the age of eighteen (11.7 million children) were poor.
Race and ethnicity. African Americans are about three times as likely as non-Hispanic whites to be poor.
Gender and family patterns.
The feminization of poverty is the trend by which women represent an increasing proportion of the poor.
Urban and rural poverty. The greatest concentration of poverty is found in central cities.

46. 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 society rather than the
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.

47. Causes of homelessness: Personality traits. Societal factors.
Weighing the evidence. The reasons that people do not work seem consistent with the “blame society” position.
The working poor. Three percent of full-time workers earn so little that they remain poor.
Homelessness.
Counting the homeless. As many as 1.5 million people are homeless at some time during the course of a year.
Causes of homelessness:
Personality traits.
Societal factors.
Welfare reform has slashed the number of people receiving welfare, but it has done far less to reduce poverty.

48. Social Mobility Race and Ethnicity Gender
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