Chapter Eight:
Social Class in the
United States
Chapter Overview

What is Social Class?

Social Mobility

Consequences of
Social Class

Poverty
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Social Class in the United States
What is Social Class?
• Americans’ consciousness of class
• Understanding Social Stratification
•
 Class position and influence
 A form of inequality in which categories of people are systematically
ranked in a hierarchy based on access to scarce but valued resources.
Social Differentiation
 How people are set apart for differential treatment as a result of their
statuses, roles, and other social characteristics.
 Sets the stage for social inequality
• People’s unequal access to wealth, power, and prestige.
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Social Class in the United States
What is Social Class?
• Marx View on Social Class
Great disparity between owners and workers
• Means of Production
• Weber’s View on Social Class
Social class is not about ownership of the means of
production.
Wide range of specialized skills the give people power,
prestige, or property.
• Today social class is defined along Weber’s Theory
Social Class in the United States
What is Social Class?

•
•
A large group of
people who rank close
to one another in:
 Wealth
 Power
 Prestige
Determining Class
Ranking
Influences people’s life
chances or opportunities
Social Class in the United States
Components of Social Class
WEALTH


Primary dimension of social class
The total value of everything someone owns.
 Property
•
 Income
Difference between Wealth & Income
 Have much Wealth, but little income
 Have much Income, but little wealth
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Social Class in the United States
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Social Class in the United States
Social Class in the United States
Components of Social Class
Power
 The ability of an individual or
group to attain goals, control
events, and maintain influence
over others—even against the
face of resistance.

Power elite
•
Top corporate, political, and
military leaders who make the
nation’s major decisions.
• 1% families that own 33% of $31
trillion.
 Class reproduction
• Cultural capital
• Social capital
• Economic capital
Social Class in the United States
Components of Social Class
 The approval and respect an
individual receives from other
members of society.


Occupational prestige
Jobs that have greater levels of prestige:
1.
2.
3.
4.


Generally pay more
Entail more abstract thought
Require more education
Have greater autonomy
Displaying prestige
Status Inconsistency
•
People who have a mixture of high and
low rankings in the three components
of social class (wealth, power, and
prestige).
Social Class in the United States
Sociological Model of
Social Class
 Gilbert and Kahl
 Capitalist Class
 The Upper Middle Class
 The Lower Middle Class
 The Working Class
 The Working Poor
 The Underclass
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Social Class in the United States
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Social Class in the United States
Consequences of Social
Class
 Family Life
 Choice of Husband or Wife
 Divorce
 Education
 Religion
 Mental Health
 Physical Health
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Social Class in the United States
Types of
Social Mobility
• Intragenerational Mobility- changes in an
individual’s social ranking over the course of his or
her lifetime
• Intergenerational Mobility -
a change that occurs
between generations – can be either upward or
downward




Upward social mobility
Downward social mobility
Findings
Factors that influence status attainment
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Social Class in the United States
Types of Social Mobility
•
Structural Mobility – a
•
change in the social structure
that causes a large number of
people to move either up or
down the social class ladder
20th century: three factors were
important to occupational
advancement and the vast
expansion of the middle class
1. Improved technology
2. Low birthrates among those at the
top of the social hierarchy
3. Large-scale immigration
Social Class in the United States
 Poverty line
 Created in the 1960’s to determine who was poor
 People who have to spend 1/3 of their income to buy food.
 Unreliable: there is no real measurement to determine how
many people in the US are poor.
 By 2005, over 33 million Americans (12% of the population)
had incomes below the poverty line
• Because of the high turnover, the percentage of people who
experience poverty each year is closer to 20%
 The group least likely to live in poverty are the elderly
 The biggest subgroup living in poverty in the U.S. are
children
 Feminization of Poverty – the association of poverty with
women, especially single parent households headed by women
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Social Class in the United States
Social Class in the United States


Most of the Nation’s poor live in rural areas (in the south)
42 % of the poor live in the inner cities
Social Class in the United States
Education
Only 3 out of 100
people who
graduate college
are poor.
More than 1 out
of 5 H.S drop
outs are poor
Applies to all
racial/ethnic
groups
Social Class in the United States
Dynamics of
Poverty
• Culture of Poverty
• Lifestyles and Values of the poor make them different from
those who are not poor.
• Most Poverty is Short-lived – people are constantly
moving in and out of poverty
• Number of Poor Relatively Stable
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Social Class in the United States
Social Class in the United States
Social Class in the United States
 Two competing points of view:
1) Social Structure – the components of the social structure play a
strong contributing factor in the poverty rate
2) Characteristics of Individuals – people are poor because of their
own attitudes
 Sociologists tend to focus on components in the social
structure to explain poverty
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Social Class in the United States