Chapter 8: Stratification and Social Mobility in the United States

Social Inequality

A condition of society in which members of a society have differing amounts of wealth, prestige, or power; in al societies.

Stratification

A structured ranking of entire groups of people that perpetuates unequal economic rewards and power in a society. Involves the ways in which one generation passes on social inequalities to the next.

Wealth

An inclusive term that encompasses all of one’s material assets, including land, sticks, and other types of property.

Income

Salaries and wages, interest on savings, stock dividends, and rental income.

Slavery

An extreme form of social inequality where people are owned. It has been abolished, but persists in the form of human trafficking.

Castes

A scribed status where ranks are usually religiously dictated and tend to be fixed and immobile; sharply defined and marriage within the same caste.

Estate System

A stratification system also known as feudalism, where peasants worked the land owned by nobles to earn military protection and other services.

Class System

A social ranking based primarily on economic position in which achieved characteristics can influence social mobility; Maintain stable stratification hierarchies; heavily dependent upon family and ascribed status.

Daniel Rossides

A sociologist who developed a model of five classes to describe the class system of the United States.

Upper Class

Consists of 1-2% of the population which accumulates wealth and passes it off to the next generation.

Lower Class

Consists of 20-25%, disproportionately black and hispanic, single mothers, and people who cannot find regular work/have low-income jobs. Too weak to exercise political power.

Upper-Middle Class

10-15% of the population where they consist of professionals like doctors, lawyers, and architects.

Lower-Middle Class

30-35% of population that includes less affluent professionals like elementary school teachers, nurses, small business owners, and a sizable number of clerical workers.

Precarious Work

Employment that is poorly paid as well as insecure and unprotected.

Indicators of Increased Precarious Work

Decline in average time with an employer. Increase in long-term unemployment.

Working Class

40-45% of the population that includes those who hold manual or blue collar jobs; declining in size.

Bourgeoisie

The capitalist class that owns the means of production.

Proletariat

The working class.

Class Consciousness

A subjective awareness of common vested interests and the need for collective political action to bring about social change.

False Consciousness

An attitude held by some members of a class that does not accurately reflect their objective position, such as an individualistic approach.

Max Weber - Stratification

No single characteristic totally defines a person’s position within the stratification system. Stratification holds three components: status, class, and power.

Class

A group of people who have a similar level of wealth and income.

Status Group

A group of people who have the same prestige or lifestyle.

Power

The ability to exercise ones’s will over others.

Conspicuous Consumption

Noted by Thorstein Veblen, it refers to the practice of the wealthy to make purchases for the purpose to flaunt their superior wealth and social standing.

Conspicuous Leisure

Coined by Thorstein Veblen, it refers to the action of going to a remote or historic location long enough for something simple like dinner.

Dahrendorf - Social Classes

Groups of people who share common interests resulting from their authority relationships.

Dahrendorf

Applied Marx’s ideas of capitalist society to modern capitalism; identified the powerful as not only the bourgeoisie, but also the managers of industry, legislators, the judiciary, heads of gov bureaucracy, and others. Recognized that power is an important element in stratification.

Lenski’s Sociocultural Evolution Approach

A theory that explains that economic systems change as technology advances and becomes more complex. Emergence of surplus leads to expansion of inequality, enabling a rigid class system. Elites share a portion to avoid problems but not enough to lose their power.

Objective Method

A way of measuring social class through characteristics like occupation, eduction, income, and place of residence.

First Step of Objective Method

Identifying which factors will be measured objectively.

Prestige

The respect and admiration that an occupation holds in a society; easier to measure; independent of the individual.

Esteem

The reputation that a person has earned within a specific occupation.

Socioeconomic Status

A measure of social class that is based upon multiple factors: income, education, and occupation.

Contributor to Poverty Rate

Large number of workers at minimum wage

Absolute Poverty

The minimum level of subsidence that no family should be expected to live below.

Poverty Line

The estimated minimum income level necessary for a family to meet basic needs for food, clothing, and shelter.

Relative Poverty

A floating standard of deprivation by which people at the bottom of society are judged to be disadvantaged in comparison with the nation as a whole.

Supplemental Poverty Measure

A more comprehensive measure of poverty that considers additional factors such as housing costs, medical expenses, and geographic variations in cost of living.

Feminization of Poverty

The increased percentage of women householders who live below the poverty line, rising from 26% in 1959 to 33% in 2018.

Underclass

Coined by William Julius Wilson, it describes the long-term poor who lack training and skills.

Herbert Gans

Sociologist who used functionalist perspective on poverty. It enables dirty work to be done cheaply, provide jobs to serve poor, identify punishment of poor as deviants to hard work, guarantee a higher standard of living for affluent, and have them pay the cost of social change.

Life Chances

The opportunities that individuals have to improve their quality of life, influenced by factors such as education, income, and social status.

Social Mobility

The movement of individuals or groups from one position in a society’s stratification to another.

Open System

A type of stratification system that indicates that the position of each individual is influenced by their achieved status.

Closed System

A type of stratification system that indicates there is little to no possibility of an individual’s social mobility.

Horizontal Mobility

A type of social mobility where an individual moves within the same social status level, without significant change in position or rank.

Vertical Mobility

A type of social mobility where an individual moves up or down the social hierarchy, resulting in a significant change in social status.

Pitirim Sorokin

The first sociologist to distinguish horizontal and vertical mobility.

Intergenerational Mobility

A type of mobility where changes in social status occur between different generations within a family.

Intragenerational Mobility

A type of social mobility that refers to changes in social status that occur within an individual's lifetime.