Ranking high on some dimensions of social class and low on others is considered _________

Social class refers to a group of people with similar levels of wealth, influence, and status. Sociologists typically use three methods to determine social class:

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SOCIOLOGY 100 • Survey of General Sociology
Notes to Social Class and Stratification
What are the 3 levels of social class?
What are the 5 social classes?
What is social class measurement?
What are the four characteristics of social class?

The objective method measures and analyzes “hard” facts.
The subjective method asks people what they think of themselves.
The reputational method asks what people think of others.

Results from these three research methods suggests that in the United States today approximately 15 to 20 percent are in the poor, lower class; 30 to 40 percent are in the working class; 40 to 50 percent are in the middle class; and 1 to 3 percent are in the rich, upper class.

The lower class is typified by poverty, homelessness, and unemployment. People of this class, few of whom have finished high school, suffer from lack of medical care, adequate housing and food, decent clothing, safety, and vocational training. The media often stigmatize the lower class as “the underclass,” inaccurately characterizing poor people as welfare mothers who abuse the system by having more and more babies, welfare fathers who are able to work but do not, drug abusers, criminals, and societal “trash.” The working class are those minimally educated people who engage in “manual labor” with little or no prestige. Unskilled workers in the class—dishwashers, cashiers, maids, and waitresses—usually are underpaid and have no opportunity for career advancement. They are often called the working poor. Skilled workers in this class—carpenters, plumbers, and electricians—are often called blue collar workers. They may make more money than workers in the middle class—secretaries, teachers, and computer technicians; however, their jobs are usually more physically taxing, and in some cases quite dangerous. The middle class are the “sandwich” class. These white collar workers have more money than those below them on the “social ladder,” but less than those above them. They divide into two levels according to wealth, education, and prestige. The lower middle class is often made up of less educated people with lower incomes, such as managers, small business owners, teachers, and secretaries. The upper middle class is often made up of highly educated business and professional people with high incomes, such as doctors, lawyers, stockbrokers, and CEOs. Comprising only 1 to 3 percent of the United States population, the upper class holds more than 25 percent of the nation's wealth. This class divides into two groups: lower‐upper and upper‐upper. The lower‐upper class includes those with “new money,” or money made from investments, business ventures, and so forth. The upper‐upper class includes those aristocratic and “high‐society” families with “old money” who have been rich for generations. These extremely wealthy people live off the income from their inherited riches. The upper‐upper class is more prestigious than the lower‐upper class.

Wherever their money comes from, both segments of the upper class are exceptionally rich. Both groups have more money than they could possibly spend, which leaves them with much leisure time for cultivating a variety of interests. They live in exclusive neighborhoods, gather at expensive social clubs, and send their children to the finest schools. As might be expected, they also exercise a great deal of influence and power both nationally and globally.

SOCIOLOGY 100 • Survey of General Sociology

I. WHAT IS SOCIAL STRATIFICATION?

A. Social stratification

Social stratification is the hierarchical arrangement of large social groups based on their control over basic resources (food, clothing, shelter, health care, education -- ie, anything valued and limited in a society).

B. life chances

Max Weber's term life chances describes the extent to which persons within a particular layer of stratification have access to important scarce resources (clothing, food, shelter, education, health care) (So people in lower classes don't have the same life chances as people in upper classes)
Resources are anything valued in society, ranging from money and property to medical care and education; scare because unequal distribution among social categories.
Poverty narrows and closes life chances (Relate to film if possible, but don’t get tied there…)

Higher socioeconomic class have money so greater life chances.
Life chances affected by class, race, and gender (the three main areas of stratification in our society, according to sociologists.
Functionalists believe that education and life-chances are directly linked.

II. GLOBAL SYSTEMS OF STRATIFICATION

Systems of stratification may be open or closed based on the availability of social mobility-the movement of individuals or groups from one level in a stratification system to another.

A. Based on degree of flexibility

1. open system

The class system is a type of stratification based on the ownership and control of resources and on the type of work people do.
People’s positions are influenced, in part, by their achieved statuses. The idea here is that you can change your social class by working hard.

Intergenerational mobilityis the social movement experienced by family members from one generation to the next. Your parents come to this country with nothing, work hard to send you to school, then you get an education and then a good job and ultimately, your social class is higher than theirs was -- ie, a change from one generation to the next.
Intragenerational mobilityis the social movement of individuals within their own lifetime. Just different emphasis.

Also, vertical (includes both upward and downward mobility. For instance, if suddenly you lose everything and you are poor, that's vertical mobility)
and horizontal mobility This is very common in this country. A person moves along the same strata in their lifetime, maybe getting better jobs, but not enough of a pay increase to actually change their social class.

But some argue that USA is really more like a caste system, in that we are most likely to continue being in the same class in which we were born., as with closed systems.

2. closed system

A caste system is a system of social inequality in which people's status is permanently determined at birth based on their parents' ascribed characteristics

Contemporary India—based on occupation, families performing same work for generations.
South Africa, in contrast, was based on racial classifications and the belief of white South Africans that they were morally superior to the black majority.

Slavery, a closed system, is an extreme form of stratification in which some people are owned by others (Ancient Greece, Roman Empire, USA, Caribbean, Brazil, Africa, Asia)
In all closed systems, group membership is hereditary, and almost impossible to move up within the structure.

III. CLASSICAL PERSPECTIVES ON SOCIAL CLASS

A. Conflict Approach: Karl Marx: Relation to Means of Production

According to Marx, class position in capitalistic societies is determined by people's work situation, or relationship to the means of production.
The capitalist class or bourgeoisie consists of those who privately own the means of production;
The working class or proletariat must sell its labor power to the owners in order to earn enough money to survive.
Class relationships involve inequality and exploitation; workers are exploited as capitalists expropriate a surplus value from their labor. This exploitation results in workers' alienation. They feel no connection to their job, because it's just a job to make money.

--The capitalist class maintained its position by control of the society's superstructure-comprised of the government, schools, and other social institutions which produce and disseminate ideas perpetuating the existing system. (Ideology that we are doing it the way we are supposed to be doing it thus we are taught not to question it).

--No revolution, but maybe because many changes since Marx’s time:

Today, ownership and control have largely been separated (managerial class)
Also, rising standard of living so people feel content
Also, too busy to have revolution, consumed with consuming…

B. Max Weber: Wealth, Power, Prestige

--Weber's multidimensional approach to stratification focused on the interplay among wealth, power, and prestige as being necessary in determining a person's class position. Identified additional classes to Marx’s model.

--Weber placed people who have a similar level of Wealth-the value of all of a person's or family's economic assets (including income, personal property, and income-producing property) in the same class.

--Also looked at power and prestige.

Power-the ability of people or groups to carry out their own goals despite opposition from others gives some people the ability to shape society in accordance with their own interests and to direct the actions of others.
Prestigeis the respect or regard with which a person or status position is regarded by others, and those who share similar levels of social prestige belong to the same status group regardless of their level of wealth.

Wealth, prestige, and power are separate continuums on which people can be ranked from high to low; individuals may be high on one dimension while being low on another.

--Both Marx and Weber emphasized the importance of class to people’s life-chances, but saw different futures for capitalism and the social system: Overthrow and increasing bureaucratization of life even without capitalism

Weber suggested that bureaucracies were so powerful that even a worker's revolution would not lessen social inequality.

IV. SOCIOLOGICAL MODELS OF THE U.S. CLASS

STRUCTURE

--Socioeconomic status (SES)

--A combined measure that attempts to classify individuals, families, or households in terms of indicators such as income, occupation, and education-is used to determine class location.

A. Weberian approach: education, occupation, family income

Gilbert and Kahl, who are Functionalists, developed this widely used model based on Weber’s focus of ed., occup., and income.

--The Upper (or Capitalist) Class is the wealthiest and most powerful class, comprised of people who own substantial income-producing assets (old [upper upper] and new upper [lower upper] class (come from prominent families who have access to high culture, socialized to believe they are different from the rest, children educated in prestigious, private schools and Universities).

--The Upper-Middle Class is based on a combination of three factors: university degrees, authority, and independence on the job, and high income. Examples of occupations for this class are highly educated professionals such as physicians, stockbrokers, or corporate managers.

--Of all classes, the Upper-Middle class is most shaped by formal education.

--The Middle Class is characterized by a minimum of a high school diploma or a community college degree (medical technicians, nurses, legal and medical secretaries, lower-level managers, semiprofessionals, and non-retail sales-workers).

--American Dream is eroding for this class: increasing housing costs, occupational insecurity, little job mobility, cost of living

--Class distinctions between middle and working class are blurred due to overlapping characteristics.

The Working Class is comprised of semiskilled machine operatives, clerks and salespeople in routine, mechanized jobs, and workers in pink collar occupations-relatively low-paying, non-manual, semiskilled positions primarily held by women (day care workers, check-out clerks, cashiers, and restaurant servers).

--Working class earn less than middle class families and have less financial security, (lay-offs and plants closing) many have HS diploma or less, finding themselves in low-paying jobs in the service sector of the economy, like fast-food restaurants, often placing them among the working poor.

--The Working Poor live from just above to just below the poverty line; they hold unskilled jobs, seasonal migrant employment in agriculture, lower-paid factory jobs, and service jobs (e.g., such as counter help at restaurants).

--Employed single mothers often belong to this class, thus the kids are over represented here.

--Also African-Americans and other racial-ethnic minority groups are over represented here.

--These classes have no economic security, in case of emergencies of what have you…

--The Underclass includes people who are poor, seldom employed, and caught in long term deprivation.

--Results from low levels of education and income and high rates of unemployment.

Also disabilities and discrimination
single mothers are here, too ‘cause of lack of jobs, affordable child care, etc.

--Meaningful employment opportunities are important for this class, job creation is needed for decent wage, medical coverage, and to live meaningful and productive lives, and raise kids in safe environment (all tied to The American Dream).

B. Marxian approach: based on ownership of the

means of production.

1. Erik Olin Wright

--Erik Olin Wright outlined four criteria for placement in the class structure:

ownership of the means of production;
purchase of the labor of others (employing others);
control of the labor of others (supervising others on the job); and
sale of one's own labor (being employed by someone else).

According to Wright, basic class location- positions in the class structure where issues of property ownership and control are relatively clear- is determined by factors of ownership and authority.
Contradictory class locationrefers to positions within the productive process that possess a combination of elements from two different basic class locations.

--Conflict Model of the Class Structure:

The Capitalist Class is composed of those who have inherited fortunes, own major corporations, or are top corporate executives who own extensive amounts of stock or control company investments. They control the means of production.

Men who made Forbes list gained fortunes through entrepreneurship of being CEOs of large corporations
Women acquired wealth through inheritance, marriage, or both:

Only 5 women have headed major corporations over the past decade, and most of those headed up family-owned business enterprises.

The Managerial Class includes upper-level managers -supervisors and professionals who typically do not participate in company wide decisions, and lower-level managers who may be given some control over employment practices, such as the hiring and firing of some workers.

Top professionals (physicians, attorneys, accountants, engineers)—all control the structure of their own work but typically do not own the means of production.

--Capitalist class depends on Managerial Class’s specialized knowledge.

--Members of the managerial class occupy a contradictory class location between the capitalist and working classes:

Don’t own the means of production, and usually earn a regular salary, like working class.
BUT typically have control over the work of others and authority over production, like capitalists.

But tend to align themselves with the basic interests of the capitalist class (high income)
Few people of color and white women here

The Small-Business Class consists of small business owners, craftspeople, and some doctors and lawyers who may hire a small number of employees but largely do their own work.

American Dream is big here: People desire this as part of the Dream, but roughly 5% of US pop is in the small-business class.

The Working Class (about half of all employees in the US) is made up of:

blue-collar workers, including skilled workers (e.g., electricians, plumbers, and carpenters),
unskilled blue-collar workers (e.g., laundry and restaurant workers),
and white-collar workers (Secretaries, other clerical worker, and sales workers).

do not own the means of production,
do not control the work of others,
and are relatively powerless in the workplace.
Take orders from others and under constant supervision, putting them at bottom of structure in terms of domination and control in the workplace.

--Both Marxian and Weberian models of the US class structure show differences in people’s occupations and access to valued resources, neither fully reflects the nature and extent of inequality in the US.

--Next section shows how poverty affects life-chances of people.

V. INEQUALITY IN THE UNITED STATES

A. Income and wealth are very unevenly distributed in

the United States.

--Income is the economic gain derived from wages, salaries, income transfers (governmental aid such as AFDC), or ownership of property.

Gulf between the rich and the poor continues to increase: Rich are getting richer, poor more likely to stay poor.

Income distribution varies by race/ethnicity, as well as class:

Over half of African-Americans (61.5%) and Latino/a (63.3%) households fall within the lowest 2 income categories
Slightly 1/3 of whites (37.8%)

--Wealth includes not only income but also property such as buildings, land, farms, houses, factories, cars, and other assets.

Wealth is computed by subtracting all debt obligations and converting the remaining assets into cash.

For most people, wealth is invested primarily in property that generates no income, like homes and cars, versus the wealth of an elite minority in the form of income-producing property.

--For upper class, wealth often comes from inheritance

--Differences in wealth:

--The net wealth of the average white household is 14x’s that of the average black household.
–44% of whites had assets of $50,000 or more and only 13% of blacks were in this category
–Married couples have higher net worth than unmarried
--and households headed by 55 and older are wealthier than those headed by younger persons.

B. Consequences of Inequality

1. health and nutrition

--As people's economic status increases so does their health status:

the poor have shorter life expectancies and are at greater risk for chronic illnesses and infectious diseases. (About 40 million people in the United States are without health insurance coverage).
Analysts suggest that people with higher income and wealth tend to smoke less, exercise more, maintain a healthy body weight, and eat nutritious meals, also, as a category, tend to be less depressed and face less psychological distress (related income, education, and job status)

2. education and life chance are directly linked

Functionalists view education as an "elevator" for social mobility, leads to greater 'life chances'.
Conflict theorists stress that schools are agencies for reproducing the capitalist class system and perpetuating inequality in society. (Different experiences).

Education perpetuates poverty
Distribution of educational resources isn’t equal: funding comes from local property taxes, so schools in central cities and poverty-stricken areas lose out

VI. POVERTY IN THE UNITED STATES

--Although some people living in poverty are unemployed, many hardworking people with fulltime jobs also live in poverty.

A. The official poverty line: based on what is considered to be the minimum amount of money required for living at a subsistence level.

Computed by determining cost of a minimally nutritious meal (fort short-term basis) and multiplying by 3 for non-food costs.

--In 2012, over 50 million people lived below the official poverty level of $16,400 for a family of 4 (14% of population)

absolute poverty-- when people do not have the means to secure the most basic necessities of life
relative poverty--when people may be able to afford basic necessities but still are unable to maintain an average standard of living.

B. Who Are the Poor?

1. age: children

--Children are more likely to be poor than older persons:

4 out of every 10 persons below the poverty line are under eighteen
In 2012, 37.2% of all African Americans under age 18 lived in poverty
36.8% of Latino/a children were also poor
compared to 16.1 percent of non-Latino white children (1999 Census).
Families headed by single mothers are at greater risk

--Older women are twice as likely to be poor as older men;

--Older African Americans and Latinos/as are much more likely to live below the poverty line than are non-Latino/a whites.

2. gender: women

--About 2/3 of all adults living in poverty are women

a. the feminization of poverty

--It is the trend in which women are disproportionately represented among individuals living in poverty.

--Women are at greater risk because they typically care for children and earn between 70-80 cents for every dollar a male earns.

--But women have always been vulnerable to poverty, and some women are more vulnerable than others (upper class women may have education and skills to support themselves with or without a man.

--Poverty is everyone’s problem.

3. race and ethnicity

--White Americans (nonLatinos/as) account for approximately 2/3 of those below the official poverty line; however, a disproportionate percentage of the poverty population is made up of African Americans, Latinos/as, and Native Americans (small portion of population, so if distributed equally, should be small portion of those living in poverty).

About 26% of African Americans and Latinos/as were among the officially poor compared with 10.5% of non-Latino whites.
Native Americans are among the most severely disadvantaged: about 1/3 live below the poverty line, and some live in extreme poverty (no water, sewer, electricity).

C. Economic and Structural Sources of Poverty

1. economic source: low wages

--Half of all families living in poverty are headed by someone who is employed, and one-third of those family heads work full time.

2. structural sources

a. deindustrialization: millions of U.S. workers have lost jobs as corporations have disinvested here and opened facilities in other countries where "cheap labor" exists

b. job deskilling a reduction in the proficiency needed to perform a specific job that leads to a corresponding reduction in the wages paid for that job.

--Unemployment rate for blacks is twice that of whites

D. Solving the Poverty Problem

1. social welfare programs: Temporary assistance needed for families.

--But most (80%) who take advantage of system don’t even qualify as ‘poor’ (like many recipients of Social Security are older people in middle and upper-income categories

--Stigma involved here (lazy and unwilling to work)

--Welfare reform in 1996: established state-level workfare programs and mandatory time limits on welfare benefits (our film shows effects of that, the attempt to keep people off welfare. But then what happens to them? (See film ‘Take it Form Me’…)

2. lack of consensus on problem and solution

--Help the poor or help themselves?

VII. SOCIOLOGICAL EXPLANATIONS OF SOCIAL

INEQUALITY IN THE UNITED STATES

A. Functionalist Explanations of Social Inequality

According to the Davis-Moore thesis:

All societies have important tasks that must be accomplished and certain positions that must be filled.
Some positions are more important for the survival of society than others.
The most important positions must be filled by the most qualified people.
The positions that are the most important for society and require scarce talent, extensive training, or both, must be the most highly rewarded.
The most highly rewarded positions should be those which are functionally unique (no other position can perform the same function), and those positions upon which others rely for expertise, direction, or financing.

This thesis assumes that social stratification results in meritocracy- a hierarchy in which all positions are rewarded based on people's ability and credentials.

B. Conflict Explanations of Social Inequality

From a conflict perspective, inequality does not serve as a source of motivation for people; powerful individuals and groups use ideology to maintain their favored positions at the expense of others (The American Dream).
Laws and informal social norms support inequality in the United States (e.g., legalized segregation and discrimination produce higher levels of economic inequality).

VIII. THE TWENTYFIRST CENTURY AND SOCIAL

STRATIFICATION:

A. Moving toward greater inequality

--According to some social scientists, wealth will become more concentrated at the top of the U.S. class structure; as the rich have grown richer, more people have found themselves among the ranks of the poor.

--Structural sources of upward mobility are shrinking while the rate of downward mobility has increased; the persistence of economic inequality is related to profound global economic changes.

RESOURCES

Websites:
US Census Bureau

Contact: Kathleen French

Sociologists generally posit three classes: upper, working (or lower), and middle. The upper class in modern capitalist societies is often distinguished by the possession of largely inherited wealth.

Gallup has, for a number of years, asked Americans to place themselves -- without any guidance -- into five social classes: upper, upper-middle, middle, working and lower. These five class labels are representative of the general approach used in popular language and by researchers.

SSS: Subjective Social Status measures include perceptions of one's social standing using categories such as "working class" or "middle class," or perceptions of one's social position relative to others based on income, educational attainment and occupational prestige.

The following are the principal characteristics of class system:.

A system of hierarchy of status. ... .

A system of social ranking based primarily on economic position..

A system marked by unequal distribution of wealth and power..

A system more mobile than caste system..

Ranking high on some dimensions of social class and low on others is considered __________.

SOCIOLOGY 100 • Survey of General Sociology

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Ranking high on some dimensions of social class and low on others is considered __________.

SOCIOLOGY 100 • Survey of General Sociology

Notes to Social Class and Stratification

What are the 3 levels of social class?

What are the 5 social classes?

What is social class measurement?

What are the four characteristics of social class?

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