11 Nov Watch this short video on Social Mobility and the American Dream Assignment Post 1: What Did You Learn?? Often the argument is made that if you just work h

3 DB

General Discussion Board (DB) Expectations 

1.  

· Post 1 is your initial response to the prompt based on what you learned from the assigned material. Initial posts must contain appropriate APA formatted in-text citations and reference(s) to the assigned material

2. Each post must be a minimum of 200 words and the word count (WC) should be included before the reference(s) at the end of your posts.

 

Social Mobility in the US

 

 

Reminders

· Each post must be 200+ words and include a Word Count (WC) at the end of your post, before your reference(s).

· APA formatted in-text citations and references are required for your initial post (and in response posts if assigned material is used)

· Please review the full DB Expectations.

 

Required Sources

· Read  Chapter 8  Stratification and Mobility in the US,  in the Schaefer textbook

· Specifically, review the information under the heading Social Mobility in the U.S.

· Watch this short video on  Social Mobility and the American Dream

 

Assignment

Post 1:  What Did You Learn? 

Often the argument is made that if you “just work hard enough” you can be financially secure. Sociological research demonstrates that the answer is more complicated than that.

· According to evidence from both Chapter 8 and the video, how realistic is it to be financially secure from “hard work”? In other words, what factors beyond “hard work” impact the likelihood of upward mobility in the US?

· Be sure to include appropriate APA formatted in-text citations and references

 

 

APA Formatting Resources

Make sure to include APA formatted in-text citations and references to assigned

,

CHAPTER

8

STRATIFICATION AND SOCIAL MOBILITY IN THE UNITED STATES

CHAPTER OUTLINE

SYSTEMS OF STRATIFICATION

Slavery

Castes

Estates

Social Classes

SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON STRATIFICATION

Karl Marx’s View of Class Differentiation

Max Weber’s View of Stratification

Interactionist Perspective

IS STRATIFICATION UNIVERSAL?

Functionalist Perspective

Conflict Perspective

Lenski’s Viewpoint

STRATIFICATION BY SOCIAL CLASS

Objective Method of Measuring Social Class

Gender and Occupational Prestige

Multiple Measures

INCOME AND WEALTH

POVERTY

Studying Poverty

Who Are the Poor?

Feminization of Poverty

The Underclass

Explaining Poverty

LIFE CHANCES

SOCIAL MOBILITY

Open Versus Closed Stratification Systems

Types of Social Mobility

Social Mobility in the United States

SOCIAL POLICY AND STRATIFICATION: EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION

Boxes

Research Today: Precarious Work

Research Today: Taxes as Opportunity

Research Today: Calculating Your Risk of Poverty

Sociology on Campus: Student Debt

	LEARNING OBJECTIVES			WHAT’S NEW IN CHAPTER 8
· Describe the four general systems of stratification: slavery, castes, the estate system, and the class system. · Describe the class model in the United States. · Analyze stratification using the three major sociological perspectives, including the views of Karl Marx and Max Weber. · Compare and contrast the functionalist and conflict perspectives on the existence and necessity of social stratification. · Summarize the factors used to measure stratification. · Describe the distribution of income and wealth in the United States. · Explain poverty in the United States using the conflict and functionalist perspectives. · Explain how life chances are linked to stratification. · Describe social mobility. · Explain the relationship of various social factors to social mobility in the United States.		· Chapter-opening image showing a celebrity serving in a soup kitchen. · Chapter-opening vignette based on a speech by Jerome Powell, Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (2019). · Revised material on the shrinking middle class with Research Today box, “Precarious Work.” · Complete revision of section on class warfare, focusing on recent tax changes that benefit the rich. · Enhanced coverage on women’s unpaid labor and efforts to measure its economic value. · Updated coverage of differences in wealth between racial and ethnic groups. · Expanded treatment of intergenerational mobility, focusing on the Millennials. · Coverage of the differential impact of the coronavirus pandemic on different classes. · Enhanced discussion of poverty, including new focus on geographic distribution of both poverty and affluence. · Key term treatment of “precarious work.” · Updated tables “Human Trafficking Report,” “Prestige Rankings of Occupations,” and “Who are the Poor in the United States?” · Updated figures “The 50 States: Contrasts in Income and Poverty Levels, 2018”. “Mean Household Income by Quintile, 2018” “Distribution of Family Wealth in the United States,” “U.S. Minimum Wage Adjusted for Inflation,” and “Poverty in Selected Countries.”

CHAPTER SUMMARY

The term social inequality denotes a condition in which members of a society have different amounts of wealth, prestige, or power. When a system of social inequality is based on a hierarchy of groups, sociologists refer to it as stratification. This is a structured ranking of entire groups of people. The consequences of stratification are evident in the unequal distribution of income and wealth. Income refers to salaries and wages, earned interest, dividends, and rental incomes. Wealth refers to all of a person’s material assets.

To help understand stratification systems, one must discern between ascribed and achieved statuses. An ascribed status is a social position assigned to a person without regard for that person’s unique characteristics or talents. An achieved status is a social position attained by a person largely through their own efforts.

The most extreme form of legalized social inequality is slavery, the ownership of human beings as property. Castes are hereditary systems of social inequality, usually religiously dictated. Social mobility (or movement between economic levels) is severely restricted in a caste system. The estate system, also known as feudalism, was a stratification system in which peasants were required to work the land of a noble in exchange for military protection and other services. A class system is a social ranking based primarily on economic position. Sociologist Daniel Rossides has suggested that only 1–2% of the people in the United States are in the upper class, whereas the lower class consists of approximately 20–25% of the population. The lower class is disproportionately composed of Blacks, Hispanics, single mothers, and people who cannot find work or must make do with low-paying work. Sandwiched between the upper and lower classes are the middle classes: upper-middle class, lower-middle class, and working class. Class conflict has resulted from growing economic disparities among the classes.

Karl Marx viewed class differentiation as the crucial determinant of social, economic, and political inequality. Marx focused on the two classes within capitalism that emerged as the estate system declined: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The bourgeoisie is the capitalist class that owns and controls the means of production, and the proletariat comprises working-class people who are exploited by the capitalist class. Marx argued that exploitation of the proletariat will inevitably lead to workers’ revolt and destruction of the capitalist system; but first, the working class must develop class consciousness—awareness of common vested interests and the need for collective action—and overcome false consciousness or an attitude held by members of a class that does not accurately reflect their objective position.

Unlike Marx, Max Weber insisted that no single characteristic totally defines a person’s social position. Weber identified three components of stratification: class, status, and power. His use of the term class refers to a group of people with a similar level of wealth and income, status group refers to people who have the same prestige or lifestyle, and power is the ability to exercise one’s will over others.

Interactionists are interested in how class shapes a person’s lifestyle at the micro level. Thorstein Veblen introduced the concept of conspicuous consumption to describe how the well-off convert some of their income into extravagant consumer goods.

The functionalist view of stratification suggests that society must distribute its members among a variety of social positions or jobs. Social stratification is deemed necessary so that qualified people will be motivated to fill functionally important positions. Contemporary conflict theorists, on the other hand, believe that human beings are prone to conflict over scarce resources such as wealth, status, and power. Conflict theorists argue the powerful strive to maintain their status through control of resources and even culture; the term dominant ideology describes a set of cultural beliefs and practices that helps to maintain powerful social, economic, and political interests. Conflict theorists argue that stratification will inevitably lead to instability and social change. Finally, in his sociocultural evolution approach, Gerhard Lenski proposed a view of society in which technological increases cause greater stratification as a society ages, and that those with wealth, status, and power primarily control the allocation of resources.

In the objective method of measuring social class, class is viewed largely as a statistical category. A researcher decides the individual’s position by using indicators or causal factors like prestige or esteem. Prestige refers to the respect and admiration an occupation holds in society, and esteem refers to the reputation that a specific person has earned within an occupation. Studies of social class have for years ignored the occupations or income of women as a measure of social rank; feminist sociologists have worked to change that imbalance. When researchers use multiple measures, they typically speak of socioeconomic status (SES), a measure of social class that is based on income, education, and occupation.

By all measures, income in the United States is unevenly distributed, and the income gap between the richest and poorest groups in the United States is widening. During one recent 25-year period, the top 1% of income earners saw their after-tax incomes rise 228%, compared to only 21% for households in the middle quintile.

Approximately 15% of people in the United States live below the poverty line. Women and other minority groups are overrepresented in the lower income groups and underrepresented at the top. Absolute poverty refers to a minimum level of subsistence that no family should be expected to live below. Relative poverty is a floating standard of deprivation by which people at the bottom of a society are judged to be disadvantaged in comparison with the nation as a whole. The feminization of poverty refers to the modern trend in which women constitute an increasing proportion of the poor in the United States and the world. Some sociologists have used the term underclass to describe long-term poor people who lack training and skills. Sociologist Herbert Gans has applied functionalist analysis to an understanding of the existence of poverty and argues that various segments of society actually benefit from the existence of the poor.

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. The lower classes have considerably fewer life chances than those of the upper classes.

Social mobility is the movement of individuals or groups from one position in a society’s stratification system to another. Theoretically, in an open system, the position of each person is influenced by their achieved status. In a closed system (such as a caste system), there is little or no possibility of individual social mobility. Horizontal mobility involves the movement of an individual from one social position to another of the same rank. Vertical mobility involves upward or downward movement from one social position to another of a different rank. The two types of vertical social mobility are intergenerational mobility or intragenerational mobility. Both have been common among males, but much of this mobility in the United States is minor, in that changes in occupational level are incremental. Education, race and ethnicity, and gender are important factors in shaping one’s chances for upward mobility. Although education is a major enabler of mobility, its impact has diminished in the past decade. For certain U.S. racial groups, especially African Americans, the class system is more rigid than for others. Gender remains an important factor in shaping social mobility, with women in the United States especially likely to be trapped in poverty.

LECTURE OUTLINE

Introduction

•. Excerpt from a speech by Jerome Powell, Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (2019).

• Social inequality denotes a condition in which members of a society have different amounts of wealth, prestige, or power.

• Stratification is a structured ranking of entire groups of people that perpetuates unequal economic rewards and power in a society.

• Income refers to salaries and wages, earned interest, stock dividends, and rental income.

• Wealth is an inclusive term encompassing all of a person’s material assets.

I. Systems of Stratification

• Ascribed status is a social position assigned to a person by society without regard for that person’s unique talents or characteristics.

• Achieved status is a social position attained by a person largely through their own efforts.

A. Slavery

• Slavery is a system of enforced servitude in which enslaved individuals are owned by other people.

• Slaves in ancient Greece were captives of war or piracy, but their status was not necessarily permanent or passed on to the next generation. In the United States, slavery was an ascribed status, and racial and legal barriers prevented slaves from being freed.

• More people are enslaved today in the world than at any point in human history.

B. Castes

• A caste system is a hereditary system of rank, usually religiously dictated. Example: There are four major castes, or varnas, in India.

• Urbanization and technological advancement have brought more change to India’s caste system in the past decade or two than the government was able to effect since formally outlawing the practice in 1950.

• The term caste can also be applied in recent historical contexts outside India, such as to the system of stratification that characterized the southern United States after the Civil War. Apartheid is another example. In both cases, race was a defining factor.

C. Estates

• The estate system, also known as feudalism, is associated with feudal societies in the Middle Ages, where peasants worked land leased to them by nobles in exchange for military protection or other services.

D. Social Classes

• A class system is a social ranking, based primarily on economic position, in which achieved status can affect or influence social mobility.

• One can move from one stratum to another.

• Unequal distribution of wealth and power is a basic characteristic of a class system.

• Daniel Rossides’s five-class model of the class system in the United States differentiates among the upper class, the upper middle class, the lower middle class, the working class, and the lower class.

1. Upper and Lower Classes

• Upper: about 1 or 2% of the population of the United States.

• Lower: about 20–25%, disproportionally consisting of Blacks, Hispanics, single mothers with dependent children, and people who cannot find regular work or must make do with low-paying work.

• Both reflect the importance of ascribed status and achieved status.

• Galbraith: The rich are the most noticed and the least studied.

2. Middle Class

• Upper middle class: 10–15% of population.

• Lower middle class: about 30–35% of population.

• The middle class is under great pressure and shrinking. Causal factors include disappearing opportunities for those with little education, global competition, and technological advances, growing dependence on the temporary workforce, and the rise of new growth industries and nonunion workplaces.

3. Working Class

• About 40–45% of population; people who hold regular manual or blue-collar jobs.

• Most noticeably declining in size.

4. Class Warfare

• The Occupy Wall Street movement sparked greater talk of class conflict. Conflicts over tax rates of the wealthy in the United States have grown sharper.

• The gulf between the rich and everyone else has grown for the last 50 years.

II. Sociological Perspectives on Stratification

• Karl Marx viewed class differentiation as the crucial determinant of social, economic, and political inequality. Max Weber was critical of Marx’s emphasis on economic factors and argued that stratification had many dimensions.

A. Karl Marx’s View of Class Differentiation

• Differential access to scarce resources shapes the relationship between groups. Controlling the primary mode of economic production is key.

• Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production are largely privately held; profit is the major incentive for economic activity.

• The bourgeoisie—the capitalist class—owns the factories and machinery and controls most production.

• The proletariat—the working class—is exploited by the capitalist bourgeoisie.

• Marx predicted the exploited proletariat would eventually revolt and destroy the capitalist system. First, they must develop class consciousness, a subjective awareness of their plight and of the need for collective action to effect change. Often, this means overcoming false consciousness, an attitude held by members of a class that does not accurately reflect its objective position.

• Marx failed to anticipate the emergence of labor unions and did not foresee individual workers’ striving for improvement within free societies offering substantial mobility.

B. Max Weber’s View of Stratification

• Weber was a critic of Marx’s class model. He identified three distinct components of stratification: class, status, and power.

• Weber argued that the actions of individuals and groups could not be understood solely in economic terms; the level of income or wealth is not the only dimension along which persons may be stratified.

• Weber used the term class to refer to a group of people who have a similar level of wealth and income.

• A status group consists of people who have the same prestige or lifestyle, but status is not the same as economic class standing. Example: A successful thief might achieve the same income level as a college professor, but the college professor has a much higher status.

• Power is the ability to exercise one’s will over others. Individuals gain power through membership in a desirable group.

C. Interactionist Perspective

• Marx and Weber examined stratification primarily from a macrosociological perspective; interactionists are interested in microsociology as well.

• Interactionists want to understand how social class influences a person’s lifestyle.

• Thorsten Veblen’s concepts of conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure can still be applied to the behavior of wealthy people today.

III. Is Stratification Universal?

• Stratification is universal, in that all societies maintain some form of social inequality among members.

A. Functionalist Perspective

• A differential system of rewards and punishments is needed for society to operate efficiently.

• Society must distribute its members among a variety of social positions (Davis and Moore). Positions are filled with those who have the appropriate talents and abilities. The most important positions must be filled by the most capable persons. Rewards, including money and prestige, are based on the importance of a position and the scarcity of qualified personnel. Social inequality motivates people to fill critical positions.

• Functionalists fail to explain the wide disparity between rich and poor or to account for stratification systems that are largely inherited.

B. Conflict Perspective

• Competition for scarce resources results in significant political, economic, and social inequality. The writings of Marx are at the heart of this perspective.

• Contemporary conflict views include conflict based on gender, race, age, and other dimensions. Example: See Ralf Dahrendorf’s work on authority.

• Dominant ideology refers to a set of cultural beliefs and practices that helps to maintain powerful social, economic, and political interests.

• Stratification is a major source of societal tension and conflict, and will inevitably lead to instability and social change.

C. Lenski’s Viewpoint

• Economic systems change as the level of technology becomes more complex.

• As societies advance technologically, they become capable of producing a surplus of goods. The emergence of these resources, and their allocation by those with wealth and power, expands inequalities in status, influence, and power. This allows for a well-defined and rigid social class system.

• The degree of social and economic equality seen in contemporary society far exceeds what is needed to provide for goods and services.

IV. Stratification by Social Class

A. Objective Method of Measuring Social Class

• Class is viewed largely as a statis

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