Class #19, October 8 Classnotes

Social Inequality and Socioeconomic Status

Terms

socioeconomic status
ethnic stratification
income
wealth
vertical social mobility
horizontal social mobility
social status
status inconsistency

  1. Last class we defined social stratification and talked about explanations for why we have social inequality
    1. We talked about how the division of labor leads to inequality in the value of jobs
      1. We talked about how we want people a different levels to receive different incomes reflecting the value of their abilities, the effort they put in, risks they take, and the scarcity of their skills
      2. We recognized that in the perspective of neo-classical economics and in the theory of the market, differences in income reflect these differences in value to the society.
      3. Since we expect that people will be rewarded for their value and jobs will be given out to people in a way that reflects their skills, inequality is understood as being based on merit, and society then would be what we call a meritocracy
      4. This represents the strtuctural functional view and because it endorses the social system as it exists we call it a social order perspective that emphasizes the stability and continuity of the current social order.
      5. Inequality in this model reflects a fine gradation of difference and stratification is a continuous gradation from higher to lower
    2. We contrasted this with the conflict perspective, especially the perspective of Karl Marx
      1. Marx saw society as sharply divided along class lines made up of an elite or capitalist class and a class of workers as well as a group that are shut out of the economy all together.
      2. In the Marxist view, the economy is the central institution of society and all other social relations are determined by the structure of the "means of production"---by the way work is done and productive arrangements are owned.
      3. In the wake of the industrial revolution, owners of manufacturing plants or capitalists emerged as the dominant economic actors
      4. As cities grew with the growth of a manufacturing economy, workers living conditions became squalid and desperate and their working conditions were a big contributor
      5. Capitalists in Marx's time were solely concerned with expanding their wealth, had no concern for the health of workers and were willing to pay them minimal salaries, and they also had a powerful influence on government
      6. Whether or not owners of manufacturing firms have become more responsible and concerned, Marxists would argue that we continue to have sharp class divisions, so that working class and upper middle class life experiences are very different
      7. Marxists also would argue that elites control government and major institutions to serve elite class interests
    3. We then talked about Max Weber, why his perspective is included in the conflict category, and how he differs from structural functionalists in his orientation
      1. Where Marxists see our understanding of society as anchored in the economy, Weber saw three factors shaping society: class, status, and power
        1. Class refers to economic position although it also includes recognition that bureaucracies and large organizations are key units and the people who run them are key actors (managers and professionals) as opposed to the dominant role of owners (capitalists) in Marx
        2. Status refers to the relative power and influence of cultural groups, which are mostly defined by ethnicity, religion, race, and geographic location.
        3. Power refers to influence that comes from the political system
          1. Politics has its own logic, based on people wanting to remain in power of government by controlling votes or the influence required to remain powerful, so political machines are an important factor here and they are more or less independent of class and status.
          2. Political systems also have a monopoly on coercive force, the police and the army, and this makes the system somewhat independent of the control structures that operate in the economy and in the cultural system.
      2. A key addition from Weber, then, is seeing that social status comes from multiple factors, in contrast to Marx, but that it also comes from the conflict or competition between groups so it is not rational, as in the market/structural functional viewpoint.
    4. Moving beyond Marx, we recognize the theory of Warner who gives a clear hierarchical theory of class, but one that is based on an understanding of economic and cultural differences; his class scheme was the first careful description of the stratification hierarch in American society
    5. This leads into a multivariate model of social inequality and quantitative studies of the characteristics of inequality and the causes of inequality
  2. Dimensions of inequality
    1. Income inequality---p. 289---treating the whole society as a continuum of income from high to low with no breaks in the distribution
      1. Top vs. bottom
        1. the top 5% earn 20% of all income
        2. the top 2% owns as much as the bottom 95%
        3. Both kinds of inequality, in income and wealth, have become progressively more extreme over the last 25 years.
      2. Categorical poverty refers to high concentrations of low income within particular social categories
        1. So, blacks and Hispanics (p. 297) make on average about $2000 less per year than average whites
        2. Women at all levels earn 75% as much as men and are dramatically overrepresented among the poor.
        3. for low income levels there is a shortage in the absolute number of jobs available so that if people want to work they cannot
    2. We also want to pay attention to institutionally and organizationally related inequality
      1. Inequality in access to schooling and in educational attainment levels---low income people have lower achievement and worse access to schooling and this limits their life chances
      2. There is a "social class gradient of disease" such that for every step down in the income ladder there is an immediate increase in both the rate of disease for every disease and the rate of death
      3. Low income people and minorities are dramatically overrepresented in prison and are targets of the criminal justice sytem
      4. historically cash assistance (welfare) was available to low income people but since the welfare reform of 1997 access has been dramatically reduced and many fewer people are on welfare.
      5. poor people and racial minorities are targets of discrimination and have much lower quality housing which affects health and their exposure to crime and neighborhood violence.