What is social stratification?
Based on its characteristics, meaning, and types.
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Introduction
When we read through world history, there are different types of stratification system with varies from their degree of vertical mobility. Education is the key factor that influences these social stratifications. However, sociologist mentioned that social stratification is the differentiation of any population into their respective classes. The categorization of people into their socioeconomic levels is based on features like wealth, income, power, race, and education that are composed of upper and lower social classes (Mangal, 2015). There are also some inequalities in larger social patterns, sociologists noted that stratification not all about the systematic differences based on classes and group membership, even in some societies, where properties and wealth are mainly non-existent inequality differences vary on individuals based on on on gender and age-set. It is also true that no person rich or poor is answerable for social inequalities but individuals can support these differences by creating social stratification and society as a whole. To explain this process of stratification is at work of every society and group Reece McGee, (1969) mentioned that all human societies for an instant the simplest have strata of social rank as one of the factors persuading how their members relate to one another.
This paper is set to ascertain the theoretical dimensions of social stratification in the United States. The effects of education on social stratification and social mobility, this paper will also focus on the social stratification of social risk, class, and responsibility where the outcome will provide clear evidence of a continuing influence of social classes.
Impacts of Social Stratification in the United States and Globally
Measures of social stratification
Many sociologist discussions on stratification draw on the important set up of the proportions derived from gender work. These dimensions include the power, status, and class.
Social class
Personal social class is determining and reflected strongly by his or her wealth and income. Members of some class many are ranked closely in terms of income capacity and wealth. For an instant, multibillionaire entrepreneurs usually belong to the same class. The terms mostly used to describe the person’s social class are upper class, working class, middle class, and lower class who provides part-time service. American scholar, Gilbert, (2015) explains this relationship between income, occupation, and social class by representing the American populations in each class, showing a large number of people are in working and lower class than those in the upper class.
Power
This another dimension of social stratification. It simply means the ability to get others and make them do want to be done either by their choice or not. People who are in power are rank high in the stratification level while those without power are considered to be at the bottom. This is clear evidence in the U.S. during politics where the President is rank high in the power position, while the remaining millions of American population are now considered to have comparatively little political power. In that connection, the greater income is mainly associated with more power where 12% 0f the household with under 18 children had breadwinner moms in 1960, but this has risen to 40% in 2011 (Mundy,2012). In addition to that, “alpha wives and moms” women have more income than their husbands (Chea, 2015). In 1960 and 2011, there has been ab increase from 4% to 23% of those wives who had a greater income than their husbands. Despite their greater income, moms, wives, and breadwinners still lack more power in marital relationships but are required to be content with sharing power with their husbands (Cherlin, 2010).
Status
Status being the third dimension, relates to the prestige occupied by a person position within the community or workplace. The improvement and of this demonstrate other than money with are consider valuable in society. The Harris Poll of 2220 U.S. adult doctors, for example, was the most prestigious paid well, followed by the less well- paid scientist and lastly the comparatively modestly paid firefighter (Harris Interactive, 2016).
The Social Class Structure in America
This should be evident but it is not easy to calculate the specific number of social classes that exist in the United States. For the past decades, sociologists have come up with some social classes and strategies to find a specific number of social classes based on factors like occupation, income, and education. This mostly affects the lifestyle like how students attend schools, family standing position in every society, how new or old people’s wealth is. This evidence is indicated in the Subjective Social Class Membership (Gilbert,2011) that has the lower class, working class, middle class, and upper class. Despite that, some subcategories groups exit within these board categories, as they still capture the most important difference in American class structure. Below are some of the classes levels;
The upper class
Regardless of how the meaning can be defined, the upper class consists of about 4.5% of the U.S. population that composed of households with annual income with is above $200,000. (Davis-Walt $ Smith 2010). While some scholars would raise the income by reducing the upper class to households with an increment income of $500,000 or by reducing the class to 1% of the total population. Associates of upper-class have long-standing (old) money that has been invested from families for generations. These people have the following characteristics; they live in exclusive neighborhoods, their chilled learn in expensive private schools, serve in the corporation board, and have a more powerful influence in the political process. While members of the lower class have “new” money that is acquired through lucky investments and hard work. Despite having some similarities to those of old money, they do not appreciate the prestige that old-money counterparts.
The Middle Class
This class is about 46% of all the households with an annual income range between $50,000 to $200,000. This broad range suggests that the middle class composed of people with different incomes, different types of jobs, and education levels. It has two distinguished classes; The upper-middle-class the household’s income is about $180,000. They typically graduated and have professional degrees, live in urban areas, and are managers and financial advisers.
The lower-middle-class household’s income is about $70,000, amounting to 19% of all families. They work mainly as white-collar jobs as teachers, nurses. Most of them have college degrees that are from less impressive colleges.
Working-class
The annual households for the working class are about $30,000 to $50,000. They mostly work in blue-collar jobs less skilled clerical positions like industrial work and, construction and the service industries. People in these categories lack high school degrees. Even if most are not working, their financial situation is very uncomfortable in that one expensive car repair and a large hospital bill would be impossible to pay without having a considerable debt.
The lower class
Composed of many people lacks education and most are unemployed or work part-time in semiskilled jobs. They mainly serve as house cleaners, laborers, and janitors. Their household income is as low as $25,000.
Effects of Education On Social Stratification
Education is an activity that has existed since early human life and is the greatest determinant of a person’s social environment. Therefore, the higher the person’s education in the community can calculate one’s social status. This occurrence leads to layers in the society with different person’s positions that are vertically in positions thus resulting in social set-up in the society. (Roumeliotis, 2019) Since society is made up of different sets of varying power and classes to access the resources. Some sociologist has tried to come with the distribution of people from different groups.
Conclusion
We can, therefore, conclude that the social stratification system is based mostly on three important measures of social stratification with include status, social class, and power. For example, the stratification system in the United States of money based, wealth, income being the major determinants of social class. For the past three decay, there has been increasing income inequality. However, the biggest economic difference in the U.S. is a result of wealth where wealthy people frequently have high status, class, and power and have the ability to pass them in future generations. Social stratification is connected to consumption in some aspects in that individuals in higher classes can acquire expensive items easily than those in lower classes. While the middle-class have declined after some period resulting in a large gap in the stratification system in comparison to the upper and the lower classes.
Reference
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