Social Stratification
Social Class
And
Social Mobility
1
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.
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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.
3
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
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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
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Characteristics of A Caste System
• Caste systems shape people’s lives in four
crucial ways:
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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..
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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.
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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.
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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.
9
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.
10
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.
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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
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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
13
• Three primary methods are employed
by sociologists in identifying social
classes:
• the objective method,
• the self-placement method,
• the reputational method.
14
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 underrewarded.
• 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.
15
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.
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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.
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Sociological Study of Stratification Systems
Sociologists typically take a
multidimensional view of stratification,
identifying three components:
• economic standing (wealth and income)
• prestige
• Power
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Sociological Study of Stratification Systems
• Questions Sociologists Ask about Stratification
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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
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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.
20
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
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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.
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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
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• 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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
28
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
29
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
30
Social Mobility
• Occupational Mobility
– 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
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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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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 33
join
political organizations than people in the lower class.
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
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imagination.
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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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 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
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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
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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.
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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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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. 2007.
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People Below Poverty Level
Source: 2006 census data presented in Bureau
of the Census 2007d: Tables R1701, 1901.
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Education Pays: Full-Time,
Year-Round Workers, Ages 25–64, 2006
Source: U.S. Census 2007f.
© 2006 Alan S. Berger
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• 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.
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• Young people are remaining at home.
• 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.
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• 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
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lack of work in central cities.
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.
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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
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