This document discusses systems of social stratification and inequality in the United States. It covers four main systems - slavery, castes, estates, and social classes. For social classes, it describes the five-class model used to analyze the US class system, including the upper, upper-middle, lower-middle, working, and lower classes. It also discusses perspectives on social stratification from sociological theorists like Marx, Weber, and Lenski.

1. Stratification and Social
Mobility in the United States 8
3rd edition
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Sociology in Modules
Richard T. Schaefer

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Systems of Stratification
• Social inequality: situation in which
members of society have different
amounts of wealth, prestige, or power
– Stratification: structured ranking of entire
groups of people that perpetuates unequal
economic rewards and power in a society
– Income: salaries and wages
– Wealth: inclusive term encompassing all
a person’s material assets

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Figure 26-1: The 50 States:
Contrasts in Income and Poverty Levels

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Systems of Stratification
• Four general systems of stratification—
slavery, castes, estates, and social classes
—as ideal types useful for
purposes of analysis
– Ascribed status: social position assigned
to person by society without regard for the
person’s unique talents or characteristics
– Achieved status: social position that a person
attains largely through his or her own efforts

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Four Forms of Stratification
• Slavery: individuals owned by other
people, who treat them as property
• Universal Declaration of Human
Rights prohibits slavery in all forms
– More people enslaved today than in world
history

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Table 26-1: Human Trafficking Report

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Castes
• Castes: hereditary ranks that are usually
religiously dictated and that tend to be
fixed and immobile
• An ascribed status
• Generally associated with Hinduism
in India
– Varnas

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Estates
• Estate system, or feudalism: peasants
worked land leased to them in exchange
for military protection and other services

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Social Classes
• Class system: social ranking based
primarily on economic position in which
achieved characteristics can influence
social mobility
• Class standing heavily dependent on
family and ascribed factors
– Race, ethnicity

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Social Classes
• Rossides (1997) uses five-class
model to describe U.S. class system:
– Upper class
– Upper-middle class
– Lower-middle class
– Working class
– Lower class

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Social Classes
• Upper and Lower Classes
– Upper class: 1% to 2% of U.S.
• Very wealthy
– Lower class: 20% to 25% of U.S.
• Lacks wealth and income and politically weak
• Middle Class
– Upper-middle class: 10% to
15% of U.S.; includes professionals
– Lower-middle class: 30% to 35%;
includes less affluent professionals

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Social Classes
• Factors contributing to shrinking size of
middle class:
– Disappearing opportunities for those with little
education
– Global competition and advances in
technology
– Growing dependence on temporary workforce
– Rise of new growth industries and nonunion
workplaces

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Social Classes
• Working Class
– 40 to 45% of U.S. population
– People who hold regular manual or blue-collar
jobs
– Some may have income above those of the
lower-middle class

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Social Classes
• Class Warfare
– Occupy Wall Street
• Political leaders began to speak of class conflict
– Gulf between rich and everyone
else in U.S. grew over last 50 years
• Rich just as likely as poor to say class conflict
exists

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Sociological Perspectives
on Stratification
• Sociologists hotly debate
stratification and social inequality
and reach varying conclusions
– No theorist stressed significance of class
for society more strongly than Karl Marx

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Karl Marx’s View
of Class Differentiation
• Social relations depend on who
controls the primary mode of production
– Capitalism: means of production held largely
in private hands, and main incentive for
economic activity is accumulation of profits
– Bourgeoisie: capitalist class;
own the means of production
– Proletariat: working class

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Karl Marx’s View
of Class Differentiation
• Class consciousness: subjective
awareness of common vested interests
and the need for collective political
action to bring about change
• False consciousness: attitude held
by members of class that does not
accurately reflect their objective position

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Max Weber’s View of
Stratification
• No single characteristic totally defines a
person’s position within the stratification
system
– Class: group of people who have similar
level of wealth and income
– Status group: people who have the same
prestige or lifestyle
– Power: ability to exercise one’s will over
others

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Interactionist Perspective
• Interactionists interested in importance
of social class in shaping a person’s
lifestyle
– Veblen: top of the social hierarchy typically
convert part of their wealth into conspicuous
consumption—purchasing goods not to
survive but to flaunt superior wealth and
social standing

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Is Stratification Universal?
• All societies maintain some form of social
inequality among their members
• Functionalist Perspective
– Social inequality necessary so people will be
motivated to fill functionally important
positions
• Does not explain the wide disparity between
rich and poor

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Is Stratification Universal?
• Conflict Perspective
– Human beings prone to conflict over scarce
resources such as wealth, status, and power
– Stratification major source of societal tension
• Leads to instability and social change
– Dominant ideology: set of cultural beliefs
and practices that helps to maintain powerful
social, economic, and political interests

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Is Stratification Universal?
• Lenski’s Viewpoint
– As a society advances technologically,
it becomes capable of producing surplus
of goods
– Emergence of surplus resources expands
possibilities for inequality
– Allocation of surplus goods and services by
holders of power and wealth reinforces social
inequality

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Table 26-2: Sociological Perspectives on Social Stratification

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Stratification by Social Class
• Sociologists generally rely on the objective
method to determine a person’s class
position
• Prestige: respect and admiration
an occupation holds in society
• Esteem: reputation a specific person
has earned within an occupation

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Objective Method of Measuring
Social Class
• Researcher, not person being classified,
identifies the person’s class position
• Class largely viewed as a statistical
category
– Occupation
– Education
– Income
– Place of residence

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Objective Method of Measuring
Social Class
• Gender and Occupational Prestige
– Past studies of social class tended to neglect
occupations and incomes of women as
determinants of social rank
• Multiple Measures
– Socioeconomic status (SES): measure of
social class based on income, education,
and occupation

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Table 27-1: Prestige Rankings of Occupations

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Income and Wealth
• Income in U.S. distributed unevenly
– Modest redistribution of income past 80 years
• Redistribution has not always been to the benefit
of poor or middle class
• Past 30 years of tax policies tended to
accentuate trend toward income inequality
– Wealth in U.S. much more unevenly
distributed than income
• White households now have 18 times the median
wealth of Latino households and 20 times that of
Blacks

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Figure 27.1: Mean Household Income by Quintile

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Figure 27-2: Distribution of Wealth in the United States

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Poverty and Social Mobility
• Studying Poverty
– Absolute poverty: minimum level of
subsistence that no family should live below
– Relative poverty: floating standard by which
people at the bottom of a society are judged
as being disadvantaged in comparison
to the nation as a whole

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Studying Poverty
• Who Are the Poor?
– Many poor adults do work outside the home
– Majority live outside of urban slums
• Feminization of Poverty
– Since World War II, increasing proportion
of poor in U.S. have been women
• The Underclass
– Long-term poor who lack training and skills

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Table 28-1: Who Are the Poor in the United States?

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Explaining Poverty
• Gans: poverty and the poor satisfy positive
functions for many non-poor groups
– Society’s dirty work performed at low cost
– Creates jobs that serve the poor
– Upholds conventional social norms
– Guarantees higher status of more affluent
– Poor absorb costs of social change

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Figure 28-1: Poverty in Selected Countries

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Life Chances
• Max Weber saw class closely related to
people’s life chances
– Life chances: opportunities to provide
material goods, positive living conditions,
and favorable life experience
• Wealth, status: provide additional ways
of coping with problems and disappointments

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Social Mobility
• Social mobility: movement of individuals
or groups from one position in a society’s
stratification system to another

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Open versus Closed
Stratification Systems
• Open system: position of each individual
influenced by the person’s achieved status
• Closed system: allows little or no
possibility of moving up
– Slavery and caste systems

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Types of Social Mobility
• Horizontal mobility: movement
within same range of prestige
• Vertical mobility: movement from one
position to another of a different rank
• Intergenerational mobility: changes in
children’s position relative to their parents
• Intragenerational mobility: social
position changes within person’s adult life

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Figure 28-2: Intergenerational Income Mobility

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Social Mobility
in the United States
• Occupational Mobility
• The Impact of Education
• The Impact of Race and Ethnicity
• The Impact of Gender

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Social Policy and Stratification:
Minimum Wage Laws
• Looking at the Issue
– Minimum wage not high enough to support
workers
– Contributes to a high poverty rate and a larger
underclass
– Minimum wage shrinks in value over time
– Federal minimum wage does not apply to
many jobs, such as tip-based jobs

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Social Policy and Stratification:
Minimum Wage Laws
• Applying Sociology
– Conflict theorists: low-wage workers
vulnerable in multiple ways, such as lack of
enforcement of minimum wage laws
• Workers vulnerable to wage theft
– Interactionists focus on social contact benefits
of low-wage workplace
• Many low-wage workers also report extreme
alienation

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Social Policy and Stratification:
Minimum Wage Laws
• Initiating Policy
– Difficult for researchers to measure the impact
of increases in minimum wage
– Opponents charge it will cause higher labor
costs and reduction in jobs
– Economists cannot agree on variables to be
measured
– Many advocate for establishment of a living
wage, which meets quality of life standards

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Table 28-2: Minimum Wage Rates by State

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28-1: Precarious Work
– Has the trend toward increasing
reliance on precarious work touched
your family or friends? Has anyone you
know been unemployed longer than six
months?
– Looking forward to your own career,
can you think of a strategy for avoiding
precarious work, frequent job loss, and
long-term unemployment?
Research Today

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28-2: Social Class and Financial Aid
– How important are student loans to
you and your friends? Without them,
would you be able to cover your college
expenses?
– Aside from a reduction in individual
social mobility, what might be the
long-term effects of the shortage of
need-based financial aid?
Relate your answer to the trend
toward globalization.
Sociology on Campus