Social Stratification - Basics of Sociology - Lecture Notes, Study notes of Introduction to Sociology

Download Social Stratification - Basics of Sociology - Lecture Notes and more Study notes Introduction to Sociology in PDF only on Docsity! 1 | S o c i a l S t r a t i f i c a t i o n SOCIAL STRATIFICATION Learning Outcomes At the end of this chapter you will be able to do the following. Define social stratification. Compare GNI PPP for various countries. Examine poverty. Compare life chances for specific groups. Contrast class and caste systems. Examine mobility. STRATIFICATION Take a look at this photo of the Grand Canyon.1 Notice the layer of rock. When layers occur in nature it is called stratification. Layers occur almost everywhere in nature in tissues of the human body, rock formations in the ground, atmospheres around the earth, and in societies of every nation on the earth. We call these layers strata and the process of layering, stratification. Social stratification is the socio-economic layering of society’s members according to wealth, power, and prestige. Wealth is all income, property, investments, and other assets. Power is the ability to get one’s way even in the face of opposition to one’s goals. Prestige is the degree of social honor attached to your position in society. As things go, those with lots of property tend to also have lots of power and social prestige. Those with less property tend to have less power and prestige. Docsity.com 2 | S o c i a l S t r a t i f i c a t i o n The key concept of this chapter is that there are layers of social stratification in every society, and, even at the global level, there are the “haves” (Marx’s bourgeoisie) who own most of the wealth, and along with it comes much of the prestige and power. The masses of people are the “have-nots” (Marx’s proletariat). Marx and Weber focused heavily on wealth and poverty in the complex social systems of their day. In our current social world there are a very few who are extremely wealthy. Forbes.com reported that even the richest in the world got poorer between 2008-2009, just like the classes below them.2 The richest billionaires lost 23% of their wealth but they are still billionaires! In fact, in 2008 there were 1,125 billionaires worldwide, some slipped down into the millionaire’s category (we can feel sad for them in our spare time). In March 2009 there were only 793 billionaires who had an average wealth of three billion U.S. dollars with Bill Gates III leading the list.3 GLOBAL STRATIFICATION In spite of the rare and isolated wealth of these 793 people, billions of other people still experience hunger, poverty, preventable illness, early deaths, and famines and wars. In a reference we use often in this textbook, you will find the Population Reference Bureau’s World Population Data Sheet can be very enlightening in this discussion.4 The PRB uses a measure of relative economic well being called the GNI PPP. The GNI PPP is the gross national income of a country converted to international dollars using a factor called the purchasing power parity. In other words, this lets you understand how much a person could buy in the U.S. with a given amount of money, regardless of the country’s currency. It lets the United Nations and Population Reference Bureau have a common value to compare countries with when they look at international stratification issues. The 2008 estimates include key information from the World Bank. The higher the GNI PPP the better off the average person in that country. Look at Table 1 to see GNI PPP values for selected countries and regions of the world. Luxembourg ranks highest at $64,400 per capita (per person) while the U.S. is only 71% of that at $45,840 per capita. The U.S. is the sixth wealthiest behind Luxembourg, Norway, Kuwait, Brunei, and Singapore (see Figure 1). Contrast that to Liberia’s score of just $290 per year. The only other nation as poor as Liberia is the Democratic Republic of the Congo, also at $290. You can already see that there is clear evidence of stratification at a global level. The average cell phone owner in the U.S. spends more on their annual bill than the average Liberian makes in a year. The developed world is over six times wealthier than the less developed world. More developed nations are nations with comparably higher wealth than most countries of the world including Western Europe, Canada, United States, Japan, and Australia-these are also called now rich countries. Less developed nations are nations Docsity.com 5 | S o c i a l S t r a t i f i c a t i o n Table 2. Comparison of U.S. Personal Income by Race, 1990-2008.10 Race Mean Income 1990 Mean Income 2008 All 35,353 61,521 White 36,915 65,000 Black 21,423 39,879 Asian 42,246 73,578 Hispanic 23,431 40,466 Figure 3. A Comparison of U.S. Personal Income by Race and Between Males and Females 2006.11 Figure 4 shows stratification by marital status. The data are presented in constant 2006 U.S. dollars which simply means they are adjusted for cost of living changes for each year. The first thing you see is that dual-earner marrieds (both husband and wife work in labor force) by far have the highest income levels between 1990 and 2006. Sole-earner married (husband only in labor force) comes in next followed closely by single males. Single females reported the lowest income. In sum, the females with the highest income are married. Docsity.com 6 | S o c i a l S t r a t i f i c a t i o n Figure 4. Comparison of U.S. Personal Income by Marital Status (includes duel versus sole breadwinner homes) in Constant 2006 U.S. Dollars.12 Figure 5 shows the stratification in our U.S. society by educational level. Basically, the higher the education, the higher the annual income in 2007. This is typically true every year. The income levels are again higher for Whites and Asians followed by Blacks and Hispanics; however, the layers are clearly visible by education level. Figure 5. Comparison of U.S. Personal Income of Full-Time Workers by Education Level 2007.13 Docsity.com 7 | S o c i a l S t r a t i f i c a t i o n Figure 6 begins to show you why the layers look the way they do in society. Dropping out of high school hurts your income and overall socio-economic well-being. Asians had the lowest dropout rates followed closely by Whites. Over 40% of Hispanics, African Americans, and Native Americans dropped out. Dropping out is a personal income buster that hurts the individual, community, and society at large. Dropping out is a very bad economic choice. However, not all economic disadvantage results from our choices. In the U.S., non-Whites, non-Asians, and non-males are more likely to be found in the lower layers. If the U.S. population were divided into three groups, the top 10% would be the extremely wealthy, the next 20% wealthy, and the remaining 70% middle and lower classes. The top 10% of our country owns the lion’s share of all the wealth available to be owned. In fact, they own as much as 100 times the average U.S. person’s wealth. For a relative few they earn more in a year than most will earn in a lifetime. The next 20% wealthy, holds the high ranking jobs, they run for elected office, and they hold the CEO-level positions in the major corporations. These types of jobs pay more, require more education, require more abstract thought, and allow for more self-directed autonomy in their daily activities. Figure 6. Percentage of United States High School Dropouts by Race for 2007.14 UNDERSTANDING POVERTY AND NEAR POVERTY The U.S. has an official definition of being poor or in poverty. The poverty line is the official measure of those whose incomes are less than three times what it takes to provide an “adequate” food budget. This definition has been the U.S.’s official poverty definition since the 1930s with only a few adjustments. Near poverty is up to 25% above the poverty line. The U.S. Health and Human Services 2009 poverty guidelines with estimates of near poverty levels are presented in Table 3. Most who qualify as living below poverty also qualify for state and federal welfare which typically includes health care benefits, food assistance, housing and utility assistance, and some cash aid. Those near poverty may or may not qualify depending upon current state and federal regulations. Docsity.com 10 | S o c i a l S t r a t i f i c a t i o n can see, life chances vary from house to house, state to state, region to region, and nation to nation. MEASURING ECONOMIC SYSTEMS: CLASS AND CASTE The United States has an open class system of life chances and opportunities in the market place. An open class system is an economic system that has upward mobility, is achievement-based, and allows social relations between the levels. A closed caste system is an economic system that is ascribed-based, allows no mobility between levels, and does not allow social relations between the levels. A person is born into the caste you stay in your entire life, and you can’t have social relations between the castes. India has a highly structured caste system which has five distinct caste layers: Brahman (Priests or scholars), Kshatriya (Nobles and warriors), Vaishva (Merchants and skilled artisans), Shudra (Common laborers), and Harijan (Outcasts/dirty workers). In India, you typically are born into a caste and that is your destiny for life. This was basically true up until the 1980s when multi-national corporations began to set up various types of business enterprises in India. Western corporations hired thousands based upon their personal skills and achievements (a class trait in the West). The Indians have experienced cultural disruptions because talented individuals have worked their way above higher caste members in the organizational structure. We find similar violations of caste rules here in the U.S. where Indians who migrate here find themselves with many opportunities. Their life chances increase by virtue of their being able to shift residence from a caste to a class society. Sociologists like to study how people improve or diminish their economic status. We call this social mobility, the movement between economic strata in a society’s system. There are a few key types of mobility. Upward mobility is moving from a lower to higher class. Downward mobility is moving from a higher to a lower class. Horizontal Mobility is remaining in the same class. We can compare mobility between or within generations of family members. Inter-generational mobility is the mobility between generations (e.g., grandparents to parents to grandchildren to great-grandchildren). When most people list the occupation their grandparents, parents, and they have and rank them by wealth, power, and prestige. This is a measure of inter-generational mobility at the personal level. Intra- generational mobility is the mobility within a generation. When the wealth, power, and prestige between a person and her siblings or cousins differ. Structural mobility is mobility in social class which is attributable to changes in social structure of a society at the larger social, not personal level. The United States has experienced collective upward social mobility for the entire nation over the last 40 plus years. Figure 9 shows the median household income in 2006 dollars from 1967 to 2006. It is clear that there has been upward structural social mobility. In other words, the median household income has gone up nation-wide from 1967 to 2006. Remember these are inflation adjusted 2006 constant dollars so they can be compared between years. Notice Docsity.com 11 | S o c i a l S t r a t i f i c a t i o n that most of the declines were seasonal and came soon after a recessionary time in the economy. Overall, this represents one measure of upward structural mobility in the U.S. Figure 9. United States Median Household Income in 2006 Dollars from 1967 to 2006.20 Another measure of economic well-being is health care coverage. The U.S. Census Bureau reported that in 2007 about 15.3% or over 45 million in the U.S. had no health care coverage.21 Health care coverage is a major economic resource. Again, White and Asian categories are in the higher strata on this resource. They have the lowest uninsured rates (see Table 4). Hispanics have the highest level of uninsured by racial group and it’s over twice as high as for Whites. Since nearly 60% of insurance is provided by employers, it makes sense that the young adult 18-34 year olds would be less likely to be insured because they are still getting their formal education and establishing their careers. But, what about the nearly 11% of children without insurance or the nearly 18% of children in poverty? This is difficult to justify in today’s modern society. Every country that the U.S. compares itself to as being a similarly more developed nation offers health insurance as a right to all, not just a privilege to the wealthier people in the higher strata. The less income one has per year, the higher the uninsured rates. About 1 in 4 who worked part-time or did not work at all have no insurance, while only 17% of full-time workers went without. Yes, there are layers in society. Through sociology’s theories and statistical style you can begin to better understand how they develop and how they are perpetuated in various forms both within and between countries. Docsity.com 12 | S o c i a l S t r a t i f i c a t i o n Table 4. U.S. Percent of Uninsured by Selected Characteristics 2007.22 Category % Uninsured White 14.3 Black 19.5 Asian 16.8 Hispanic 32.1 < 6 years old 10.5 6-11 years old 10.3 12-17 years old 12.0 <18 years old 11.0 18-24 years old 28.1 25-34 years old 25.7 35-44 years old 18.3 45-64 years old 14.0 65+ years old 1.9 Children in Poverty 17.6 <$25,000 per year income 24.5 $25-49,999 per year income 21.1 $50-74,999 per year income 14.5 $75,000+ per year income 7.8 Worked Full-time 17.0 Worked Part-time 23.4 Did Not Work 25. Docsity.com