define davis moore thesis

Davis-Moore Thesis: 10 Examples, Definition, Criticism

The Davis-Moore thesis is a sociological theory that posits that social stratification , or the division of society into hierarchical levels, is an inevitable and necessary feature of any complex society. 

Developed by American sociologists Talcott Parsons and Kingsley Davis in the 1940s and later expanded upon by William J. Moore, the thesis argues that social inequality is natural and functional for society.

Researchers believe social inequality plays a crucial role in society by incentivizing the most talented and skilled individuals to be rewarded based on their abilities, thus promoting a healthier and more prosperous overall community.

The thesis proposes that jobs that require more remarkable skills and have a more significant societal impact—such as doctors, lawyers, and scientists—should be paid higher salaries than less-skilled jobs, such as janitors and factory workers.

The Davis-Moore thesis has been a subject of much debate and criticism in sociology, but it remains an influential and widely cited theory in the study of social stratification.

Definition of Davis-Moore Thesis

The Davis-Moore thesis is a sociological theory that asserts that social stratification is a functional necessity, as it ensures the allocation of individuals into social positions according to their abilities and qualifications.

According to Macionis and Plummer (2012),

“…the Davis – Moore thesis implies that a productive society is a meritocracy , a system of social stratification based on personal merit” (p. 202). 

Sernau (2019) states that “stratification is universal, occurring in all societies, because it is necessary and inevitable, resulting from the need for a working social order” (p. 31).

The Davis-Moore thesis posits that individuals with more skills, knowledge, and education are more valuable to society and, thus, should be rewarded with higher social status , prestige, and income. 

This differential treatment motivates individuals to strive for excellence in their chosen fields, acquire new skills and knowledge, and perform critical social roles , contributing to society’s overall well-being.

So, in simple terms, the Davis-Moore thesis proposes that social stratification is an inevitable feature of any complex society and serves a functional purpose.

10 Examples of Davis-Moore Thesis

• Education : The Davis-Moore thesis proposes that education is correlated to social status, with higher educational attainment often leading to a more decent place in society. After all, those who have gone the extra mile and pursued further studies are usually better equipped for influential social roles within their communities.
• Income inequality : The Davis-Moore thesis maintains that income inequality is both expected and obligatory in our society. Its argument states that highly paid people have attained higher levels of education, skills, and knowledge, enabling them to complete essential social tasks more competently than others.
• Professional sports : The Davis-Moore thesis posits that professional athletes often receive some of the highest compensations in society thanks to their remarkable skills and abilities. Such a high income rewards these athletes’ invaluable contributions – entertaining people and igniting motivation in others – to our community.
• Military service : The Davis-Moore thesis would argue that military personnel occupies a high status in society because of their vital role in defending the nation and maintaining social order.
• Medical professions : Doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals are often seen as occupying high-status positions in society because of their specialized knowledge and skills.
• CEO compensation : The Davis-Moore thesis would suggest that CEOs of large companies are among the highest-paid individuals in society because of their essential role in guiding the strategic direction of their organizations and ensuring their long-term success.
• Political leadership : According to the Davis-Moore thesis, those who occupy political leadership positions are not just randomly chosen – they must possess remarkable abilities and be capable of motivating others. These individuals have outstanding skills, knowledge, and charisma that make them uniquely qualified to guide their peers effectively.
• Scientific research : The Davis-Moore thesis would suggest that scientists who make essential discoveries or contribute to the advancement of knowledge occupy high-status positions in society because of their valuable contributions to humanity’s collective knowledge.
• Creative professions : Artists, musicians, and writers are often seen as occupying high-status positions in society because of their unique skills and talents that allow them to produce works of art and literature that entertain and inspire others.
• Entrepreneurship : The Davis-Moore thesis would predict that successful entrepreneurs occupy high-status positions in society because of their innovative ideas, risk-taking behavior, and ability to create new businesses and generate wealth.

Origins of the Davis-Moore Thesis

The Davis-Moore thesis was developed in the mid-twentieth century by two American sociologists Talcott Parsons and Kingsley Davis. 

Davis’ groundbreaking article, “The Theory of Social Stratification,” was published in the  American Sociological Review  in 1940 and set the stage for Parsons to develop these ideas further. His magnum opus on this topic, The Social System , was released nearly a decade later in 1951 (Hauhart, 2003).

The origins of the Davis-Moore thesis can be traced back to earlier work in functionalist sociology, which emphasized the importance of social institutions in maintaining social order and stability.

This viewpoint considered social stratification an essential part of our world since it provided recognition to those with high skills and capabilities in return for their meaningful contributions to society (Berberoglu, 2017).

Davis and Moore built upon this functionalist perspective by arguing that social stratification was inevitable and beneficial for society.

They argued that social inequality encouraged individuals to acquire the skills and knowledge necessary to perform critical social roles while incentivizing them to work hard and contribute to society’s overall well-being.

Social Stratification vs. Social Differentiation

Social stratification implies that individuals are placed into distinct classes based on their economic and social power. In contrast, social differentiation pushes the idea that people’s talents and traits impact which vocations they are suited for.

Social stratification systematically arranges individuals and groups into hierarchical categories based on social status, power, and wealth (Macionis & Plummer, 2012).

In contrast, social differentiation refers to how people and groups develop distinct characteristics, including capabilities, knowledge base, and values.

Social differentiation can arise through various means, such as education level, career path, cultural background, and gender.

However, social stratification is primarily based on an individual’s positioning within the societal ladder and typically depends upon financial standing, educational attainment, and vocation (Umanailo et al., 2020).

Social differentiation can lead to differences in status, power, and wealth, but these differences are not necessarily hierarchical or unequal.

In contrast, social stratification is characterized by a systematic and unequal distribution of resources and rewards across different social positions (Umanailo et al., 2020).

So, unlike social differentiation, a less structured form of separation, social stratification has rigid hierarchies where resources are unequally distributed among different social ranks.

Why Is Social Stratification Necessary?

According to the Davis-Moore thesis, social stratification is both necessary and inevitable in modern societies since it helps motivate individuals, allocate talents, entourage education, and maintain social order. 

Here are some of the key reasons why social stratification is necessary:

• Motivation: The unequal distribution of rewards motivates individuals to acquire the skills and knowledge necessary to occupy higher positions in the social hierarchy. It, in turn, leads to greater productivity and innovation in society.
• Allocating Talent: Social stratification allows society to allocate talent and resources where they are most needed (Berberoglu, 2017). Individuals who possess valuable skills and knowledge are rewarded with higher positions in the social hierarchy, which allows society to benefit from their talents and abilities.
• Encouraging Education and Training: The presence of social stratification incentivizes people to dedicate themselves to education and training, as these skills are often crucial in obtaining the competencies and expertise needed to attain higher positions in the social structure.
• Maintaining Social Order : Social stratification is crucial for keeping society in order. It provides a structure of power and authority that makes it easier to comprehend one’s place within the social hierarchy while emphasizing individual rights and obligations (Umanailo et al., 2020). As such, this system enables citizens to understand their roles better and what they are entitled to or expected of them.

So, the Davis-Moore thesis professes that social stratification is essential for a functioning society.

Though one may view the unequal distribution of rewards as unjust, they argue it encourages individuals to obtain skills and knowledge needed to benefit their communities.

Criticism of Davis-Moore Thesis

The Davis-Moore thesis has been severely contested due to its assumption that merit alone determines social ranking and for disregarding the considerable power of social systems as well as institutions.

Here are some of the key criticisms of the Davis-Moore thesis:

• Not all rewards are based on merit : The Davis-Moore thesis suggests that prizes are allocated based on an individual’s talent and contributions to the public. Sadly, however, many rewards remain available due to external factors such as social class, skin color, and gender rather than genuine merit (Hurst et al., 2020).
• Ignores the role of power : This theory fails to analyze the role of power in constructing social stratification, overlooking the fact that those who possess higher positions have more authority and sway. Consequently, this allows them to sustain their status and restrict others from rising through the ranks.
• Overemphasizes the benefits of social stratification : According to the Davis-Moore thesis, social stratification is required and positive for society. Yet, this viewpoint has been criticized as it overlooks the potentially damaging consequences of unequal distributions of wealth, such as poverty, criminal behavior, and civil unrest.
• Ignores the role of social institutions : The Davis-Moore thesis overlooks the influence of social institutions, like the education and media sectors, in shaping social stratification. These institutions can reinforce and maintain social inequality instead of advancing meritocracy.
• Has inadequate empirical evidence : Critics have contended that the Davis-Moore thesis lacks sufficient empirical evidence, despite offering a theoretical framework for comprehending social stratification. The theory has been criticized for needing more practical support (Hauhart, 2003).

These criticisms highlight the pitfalls and oversights of the Davis-Moore thesis, thereby indicating that further research is needed to understand social stratification better. 

The Davis-Moore thesis proposes that social stratification is an inevitable and necessary feature of any complex society. It ensures that individuals are allocated to social positions according to their abilities, talents, and qualifications. 

According to the thesis, social inequality significantly impacts society as it motivates capable and skilled individuals to be acknowledged and rewarded for their abilities, ultimately contributing to the well-being and prosperity of the community.

Despite the ongoing controversy and debates surrounding this idea in sociology, it remains prominent and frequently referenced when analyzing social stratification.

The Davis-Moore thesis has provided several examples of high-status societal positions based on individual meritocracies, such as political leadership, medical professions, and successful entrepreneurship. 

 The Davis-Moore thesis continues to inform ongoing debates about social inequality and its role in shaping society.

Berberoglu, B. (2017).  Social theory: Classical and contemporary – a critical perspective . Routledge, an Imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group.

Hauhart, R. C. (2003). The davis-moore theory of stratification: The life course of a socially constructed classic.  The American Sociologist ,  34 (4), 5–24. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27700363

Hurst, C. E., Fitz, H. M., & Nurse, A. (2020).  Social inequality: Forms, causes, and consequences . Routledge.

Macionis, J. J., & Plummer, K. (2012).  Sociology: A global introduction  (5th ed.). Pearson/Prentice Hall. (Original work published 1997)

Sernau, S. R. (2019).  Social inequality in a global age . Sage Publications.

Umanailo, M. C. B., Umanailo, A. R., & Umanailo, A. D. S. (2020). Stratification and differentiation in the social life. In  SSOAR . SSOAR. https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-73973-5

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Open Education Sociology Dictionary

Davis-Moore thesis

Table of Contents

Definition of Davis-Moore Thesis

( noun )  Theory asserting that stratification and inequality are necessary and beneficial to society to motivate individuals to train for and perform complex roles .

Example of Davis-Moore Thesis

• Medical doctors must undergo years of education and training. Therefore they are economically rewarded and respected within society .

Etymology of Davis-Moore Thesis

• Developed by Kingsley Davis (1908–1997) and Wilbert E. Moore (1914–1987) and published in “ Some Principles of Stratification ” (1945).

Davis-Moore Thesis Pronunciation

Pronunciation Usage Guide

Syllabification : da·vis moore the·sis

Audio Pronunciation

International Phonetic Alphabet

• American English – /ˈdeɪvəs-mɔr ˈθisəs/
• British English – /ˈdeɪvɪs-mʊə ˈθiːsɪs/

Usage Notes

• The Davis-Moore thesis is a functionalist theory that contends  society is a meritocracy and rewards people for their efforts and abilities through mobility and monetary rewards.
• The Davis-Moore thesis is still contested in the social sciences and referred to as the Davis-Moore debate .
• Davis-Moore hypothesis
• Davis-Moore theory
• Davis-Moore theory of stratification

Related Quotations

• “If the rights and perquisites of different positions in a  society must be unequal, then the  society must be stratified , because that is precisely what stratification means. Social inequality is thus an unconsciously evolved device by which  societies insure that the most important positions are conscientiously filled by the most qualified persons . Hence every society , no matter how simple or complex, must differentiate persons in terms of both prestige and esteem, and must therefore possess a certain amount of institutionalized inequality ” (Davis and Moore 1945:243).
• “In 1945 Davis and Moore, following an earlier formulation by Davis, proposed a functional theory of stratification that was intended to account for what they contended was the “universal necessity” for social inequality in any social order. Beginning with an article by [Melvin] Tumin in 1953, the Davis-Moore theory elicited regular analysis , commentary, criticism, and debate through the 1970s. Although professional work on the theory has largely ceased since the late 1980s, the Davis-Moore theory remains perhaps the single most widely cited paper in American introductory sociology and stratification textbooks and constitutes “required reading” in hundreds, if not thousands, of undergraduate and graduate courses throughout the United States ” (Hauhart 2003:5).

Additional Information

• Word origin of “thesis” – Online Etymology Dictionary: etymonline.com
• Abrahamson, Mark. 1973. “Functionalism and the Functional Theory of Stratification: An Empirical Assessment.” American Journal of Sociology   78(5):1236–46. doi: 10.1086/225429 .
• Bershady, Harold J. 1970. “On Davis and Moore Again, or Dissensus and the Stability of Social Systems.” The British Journal of Sociology   21(4):446–54. doi: 10.2307/588499 .
• Betz, Michael, Kemp Davis, and Patrick Miller. 1978. “Scarcity, Income Advantage, and Mobility: More Evidence on the Functional Theory of Stratification.” Sociological Quarterly   19(3):399–413. doi: 10.1111/j.1533-8525.1978.tb01184.x .

Davis, Kingsley, and Wilbert E. Moore. 1945. “Some Principles of Stratification.” American Sociological Review  10(2):242–49. doi: 10.2307/2085643 .

• Kimberly, James C. 1970. “The Emergence and Stabilization of Stratification in Simple and Complex Social Systems.” Sociological Inquiry   40(2):73–101. doi: 10.1111/j.1475-682x.1970.tb01003.x .

Hauhart, Robert C. 2003. “The Davis-Moore theory of Stratification: The Life Course of a Socially Constructed Classic.” The American Sociologist  34(4):5–24. doi: 10.1007/s12108-003-1013-y .

• Huaco, George A. 1966. “The Functionalist Theory of Stratification: Two Decades of Controversy.” Inquiry   9(1–4):215–40. doi: 10.1080/00201746608601459 .
• Panayotakis, Costas. 2014. “Capitalism, Meritocracy, and Social Stratification: A Radical Reformulation of the Davis-Moore Thesis.” American Journal of Economics and Sociology   73(1):126–50. doi: 10.1111/ajes.12068 .
• Wanner, Richard A., and Lionel S. Lewis. 1978. “The Functional Theory of Stratification: A Test of Some Structural Hypotheses.” Sociological Quarterly   19(3):414–28. doi: 10.1111/j.1533-8525.1978.tb01185.x .

Related Terms

• functionalism
• meritocracy
• stratification

Works Consulted

Abercrombie, Nicholas, Stephen Hill, and Bryan Turner. 2006. The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology . 5th ed. London: Penguin.

Griffiths, Heather, Nathan Keirns, Eric Strayer, Susan Cody-Rydzewski, Gail Scaramuzzo, Tommy Sadler, Sally Vyain, Jeff Bry, Faye Jones. 2016. Introduction to Sociology 2e . Houston, TX: OpenStax.

Jary, David, and Julia Jary. 2000. Collins Dictionary of Sociology . 3rd ed. Glasgow, Scotland: HarperCollins.

Macionis, John. 2012.  Sociology . 14th ed. Boston: Pearson.

Ravelli, Bruce, and Michelle Webber. 2016. Exploring Sociology: A Canadian Perspective . 3rd ed. Toronto: Pearson.

Scott, John, and Gordon Marshall. 2005. A Dictionary of Sociology . New York: Oxford University Press.

Turner, Bryan S., ed. 2006. The Cambridge Dictionary of Sociology . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wikipedia contributors. (N.d.) Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia . Wikimedia Foundation. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/ ).

Cite the Definition of Davis-Moore Thesis

ASA – American Sociological Association (5th edition)

Bell, Kenton, ed. 2013. “Davis-Moore thesis.” In Open Education Sociology Dictionary . Retrieved May 11, 2024 ( https://sociologydictionary.org/davis-moore-thesis/ ).

APA – American Psychological Association (6th edition)

Davis-Moore thesis. (2013). In K. Bell (Ed.), Open education sociology dictionary . Retrieved from https://sociologydictionary.org/davis-moore-thesis/

Chicago/Turabian: Author-Date – Chicago Manual of Style (16th edition)

Bell, Kenton, ed. 2013. “Davis-Moore thesis.” In Open Education Sociology Dictionary . Accessed May 11, 2024. https://sociologydictionary.org/davis-moore-thesis/ .

MLA – Modern Language Association (7th edition)

“Davis-Moore thesis.” Open Education Sociology Dictionary . Ed. Kenton Bell. 2013. Web. 11 May. 2024. < https://sociologydictionary.org/davis-moore-thesis/ >.

Module 7: Stratification and Inequality

Theoretical perspectives on social stratification, learning outcomes.

• Describe functionalist views of social stratification
• Describe conflict theorists’ explanations of social stratification
• Explain how symbolic interactionists conceptualize social stratification
• Differentiate between conflict, interactionist, and functionalist explanations of social stratification

Functionalism

In sociology, the functionalist perspective examines how society’s parts operate. It is a macroanalytical view that focuses on the way that all aspects of society are integral to the continued health and viability of the whole. According to functionalism, different aspects of society exist because they serve a needed purpose. What is the function of social stratification?

In 1945, sociologists Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore published the Davis-Moore thesis , which argued that the greater the functional importance of a social role, the greater must be the reward. The theory posits that social stratification represents the inherently unequal value of different work. Certain tasks in society are more valuable than others. Qualified people who fill those positions must be rewarded more than others.

According to Davis and Moore, a firefighter’s job is more important than, for instance, a grocery store cashier’s. The cashier position does not require the same skill and training level as firefighting. Without the incentive of higher pay and better benefits, why would someone be willing to rush into burning buildings? If pay levels were the same, the firefighter might as well work as a grocery store cashier. Davis and Moore believed that rewarding more important work with higher levels of income, prestige, and power encourages people to work harder and longer.

Davis and Moore stated that, in most cases, the degree of skill required for a job determines that job’s importance. They also stated that the more skill required for a job, the fewer qualified people there would be to do that job. Certain jobs, such as cleaning hallways or answering phones, do not require much skill. The employees don’t need a college degree. Other work, like designing a highway system or delivering a baby, requires immense skill.

In 1953, Melvin Tumin countered the Davis-Moore thesis in “Some Principles of Stratification: A Critical Analysis.” Tumin questioned what determined a job’s degree of importance. The Davis-Moore thesis does not explain, he argued, why a media personality with little education or talent becomes famous and rich on a television show or politically successful on the campaign trail. The thesis also does not explain inequalities in the education system or inequalities due to race or gender. Tumin believed social stratification prevented qualified people from attempting to fill roles (Tumin 1953). For example, an underprivileged youth has less of a chance to become a scientist, no matter how smart she is, because of the relative lack of opportunity available to her. The Davis-Moore thesis also does not explain why a basketball player earns millions of dollars a year when a doctor who saves lives, a soldier who fights for others’ rights, and a teacher who helps form the minds of tomorrow will likely not make millions over the course of their careers.

The Davis-Moore thesis, though open for debate, was an early attempt to explain why stratification exists. The thesis states that social stratification is necessary to promote excellence, productivity, and efficiency, thus giving people something to strive for. Davis and Moore believed that the system serves society as a whole because it allows everyone to benefit to a certain extent. This supports meritocracy as an ideological system.

A functionalist might also focus on why we have global inequality and what social purposes it serves. This view might assert, for example, that we have global inequality because some nations are better than others at adapting to new technologies and profiting from a globalized economy, and that when core nation companies locate new operations in peripheral nations, they expand the local economy and benefit the workers.

Conflict Theory

Figure 1.  These people are protesting a decision made by Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville, Tennessee, to lay off custodians and outsource the jobs to a private firm to avoid paying employee benefits. Private job agencies often pay lower hourly wages and do not offer retirement benefits or health insurance. Is the decision fair? (Photo courtesy of Brian Stansberry/Wikimedia Commons)

Conflict theory focuses on the creation and reproduction of inequality. Conflict theorists are deeply critical of social stratification, asserting that it benefits only some people, not all of society. For instance, to a conflict theorist, it seems wrong that a basketball player is paid millions for an annual contract while a public school teacher earns $35,000 a year. Stratification, conflict theorists believe, perpetuates inequality. Conflict theorists try to bring awareness to inequalities, such as how a rich society can have so many poor members.

Many conflict theorists draw on the work of Karl Marx. During the nineteenth-century era of industrialization, Marx believed social stratification resulted from workers’ relationship to the means of production. People were divided by a single line: they either owned factories or worked in them. In Marx’s time, bourgeois capitalists owned high-producing businesses, factories, and land, as they still do today. Proletarians were the workers who performed the manual labor to produce goods. Upper-class capitalists raked in profits and got rich, while working-class proletarians earned meager wages and struggled to survive. With such opposing interests, the two groups were divided by differences of wealth and power. Marx theorized that workers experienced deep alienation, isolation and misery resulting from their sense of powerlessness and inferior status (Marx 1848). Marx argued that the proletarians were oppressed by the bourgeois.

Today, while working conditions have improved, conflict theorists believe that the strained working relationship between employers and employees still exists. Capitalists own the means of production, and a system is in place to make business owners rich and keep workers poor. According to conflict theorists, the resulting stratification creates class conflict. If he were alive in today’s economy–one still recovering from a prolonged recession–Marx would likely argue that the recession resulted from the greed of capitalists, who profited at the expense of working people.

When examining global stratification, a conflict theorist would likely address the systematic inequality created when core nations exploit the resources of peripheral nations. For example, how many U.S. companies take advantage of overseas workers who lack the constitutional protections and guaranteed minimum wages that exist in the United States? And how many establish overseas operations in countries with weak or nonexistent environmental protections? Doing so allows them to maximize profits, but at what cost?

Symbolic Interactionism

Symbolic interactionism is a theory that uses everyday interactions of individuals to explain society as a whole. Symbolic interactionism examines stratification from a micro-level perspective. This analysis strives to explain how people’s social standing affects their everyday interactions.

In most communities, people interact primarily with others who share the same social standing. It is precisely because of social stratification that people tend to live, work, and associate with others like themselves, people who share their income level, educational background, or racial background, and even tastes in food, music, and clothing. The built-in system of social stratification groups people together. This is one of the reasons why it was rare for a royal prince like England’s Prince William to marry a commoner.

Symbolic interactionists also note that people’s appearance reflects their perceived social standing. Housing, clothing, and transportation indicate social status, as do hairstyles, taste in accessories, and other symbolic elements of personal style.

Figure 2.  (a) A group of construction workers on the job site, and (b) a group of businessmen. What categories of stratification do these construction workers share? How do construction workers differ from executives or custodians? Who is more skilled? Who has greater prestige in society? (Photo (a) courtesy of Wikimedia Commons; Photo (b) courtesy of Chun Kit/flickr)

To symbolically communicate social standing, people often engage in conspicuous consumption , which is the purchase, use, and display of certain products to make a social statement about status. Carrying pricey but eco-friendly water bottles could indicate a person’s social standing. Some people buy expensive, trendy sneakers even though they will never wear them to jog or play sports. A $17,000 car provides transportation as effectively as a $100,000 vehicle, but the luxury model makes a social statement that the less expensive car does not. All these symbols of stratification are worthy of examination by an interactionist.

When examining global stratification, a symbolic interactionist would study the day-to-day impact of global inequality, the meanings individuals attach to global stratification, and the subjective nature of poverty. Someone applying this view to global inequality would probably focus on understanding the difference between what someone living in a core nation defines as poverty (relative poverty, defined as being unable to live the lifestyle of the average person in your country) and what someone living in a peripheral nation defines as poverty (extreme poverty, defined as being barely able, or unable, to afford basic necessities such as food).

FACTORY GIRLS

In the book  Factory Girls: From Village to City in Changing China , Leslie T. Chang uses the symbolic interactionist approach to study global inequality. Chang follows two young women (Min and Chunming) employed at a handbag plant. They help manufacture coveted purses and bags for the global market. As part of the growing population of young people who are leaving behind the homesteads and farms of rural China, these female factory workers are ready to enter the urban fray and pursue an ambitious income.

Although Chang’s study is based in a town many have never heard of (Dongguan), this city produces one-third of all the shoes on the planet (Nike and Reebok are major manufacturers here), and 30 percent of the world’s computer disk drives, in addition to an abundance of apparel (Chang 2008).

But Chang’s focus is centered less on this large-scale global phenomenon itself than on how it affects these two women. As a symbolic interactionist would do, Chang examines the daily lives and interactions of Min and Chunming—their workplace friendships, family relationships, gadgets and goods—in this evolving global space where young women can leave tradition behind and shape their own futures. Their story is one that all people, not just scholars, can learn from as we contemplate sociological issues like global economies, cultural traditions and innovations, and opportunities for women in the workforce.

Watch this video to review the ways that each of the three main paradigms explain social stratification.

Walk through this interactive to see how people from each of the three different theoretical perspectives (Alex, Taylor, and Jordan) view social stratification.

Think It Over

• Analyze the Davis-Moore thesis. Do you agree with Davis and Moore? Does social stratification play an important function in society? What examples can you think of that support the thesis? What examples can you think of that refute the thesis?
• Consider social stratification from the symbolic interactionist perspective. How does social stratification influence the daily interactions of individuals? How do systems of class, based on factors such as prestige, power, income, and wealth, influence your own daily routines, as well as your beliefs and attitudes? Illustrate your ideas with specific examples and anecdotes from your own life and the lives of people in your community.

Key takeaways

• Why is there Social Stratification?: Crash Course Sociology #22. Provided by : CrashCourse. Located at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtxtI5IGrfw&index=23&list=PL8dPuuaLjXtMJ-AfB_7J1538YKWkZAnGA . License : Other . License Terms : Standard YouTube License
• Modification, adaptation, and original content. Provided by : Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution
• Stratification interactive. Authored by : Florencia Silviera for Lumen Learning. Provided by : Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution
• Theoretical Perspectives on Social Stratification. Authored by : OpenStax CNX. Located at : https://cnx.org/contents/[email protected]:NPqtAPW1@2/Theoretical-Perspectives-on-Social-Stratification . License : CC BY: Attribution . License Terms : Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/[email protected]
• Global Stratification and Classification. Provided by : OpenStax. Located at : https://cnx.org/contents/[email protected]:7TCPamHd@3/Global-Stratification-and-Classification . License : CC BY: Attribution . License Terms : Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/[email protected].
• Theoretical Perspectives on Global Stratification. Authored by : OpenStax College. Located at : https://cnx.org/contents/[email protected]:yXcMwYQV@2/Theoretical-Perspectives-on-Global-Stratification . License : CC BY: Attribution . License Terms : Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/[email protected].

9.4 Theoretical Perspectives on Social Stratification

Learning objectives.

By the end of this section, you should be able to:

• Apply functionalist, conflict theory, and interactionist perspectives on social stratification

Basketball is one of the highest-paying professional sports and stratification exists even among teams in the NBA. For example, the Toronto Raptors hands out the lowest annual payroll, while the New York Knicks reportedly pays the highest. Stephen Curry, a Golden State Warriors guard, is one of the highest paid athletes in the NBA, earning around $43 million a year (Sports Illustrated 2020), whereas the lowest paid player earns just over $200,000 (ESPN 2021). Even within specific fields, layers are stratified, members are ranked, and inequality exists.

In sociology, even an issue such as NBA salaries can be seen from various points of view. Functionalists will examine the purpose of such high salaries, conflict theorists will study the exorbitant salaries as an unfair distribution of money, and symbolic interactionists will describe how players display that wealth. Social stratification takes on new meanings when it is examined from different sociological perspectives—functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism.

Functionalism

In sociology, the functionalist perspective examines how society’s parts operate. According to functionalism, different aspects of society exist because they serve a vital purpose. What is the function of social stratification?

In 1945, sociologists Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore published the Davis-Moore thesis , which argued that the greater the functional importance of a social role, the greater must be the reward. The theory posits that social stratification represents the inherently unequal value of different work. Certain tasks in society are more valuable than others (for example, doctors or lawyers). Qualified people who fill those positions are rewarded more than others.

According to Davis and Moore, a firefighter’s job is more important than, for instance, a grocery store cashier’s job. The cashier position does not require similar skill and training level as firefighting. Without the incentive of higher pay, better benefits, and increased respect, why would someone be willing to rush into burning buildings? If pay levels were the same, the firefighter might as well work as a grocery store cashier and avoid the risk of firefighting. Davis and Moore believed that rewarding more important work with higher levels of income, prestige, and power encourages people to work harder and longer.

Davis and Moore stated that, in most cases, the degree of skill required for a job determines that job’s importance. They noted that the more skill required for a job, the fewer qualified people there would be to do that job. Certain jobs, such as cleaning hallways or answering phones, do not require much skill. Therefore, most people would be qualified for these positions. Other work, like designing a highway system or delivering a baby, requires immense skill limiting the number of people qualified to take on this type of work.

Many scholars have criticized the Davis-Moore thesis. In 1953, Melvin Tumin argued that it does not explain inequalities in the education system or inequalities due to race or gender. Tumin believed social stratification prevented qualified people from attempting to fill roles (Tumin 1953).

Conflict Theory

Conflict theorists are deeply critical of social stratification, asserting that it benefits only some people, not all of society. For instance, to a conflict theorist, it seems wrong that a basketball player is paid millions for an annual contract while a public school teacher may earn $35,000 a year. Stratification, conflict theorists believe, perpetuates inequality. Conflict theorists try to bring awareness to inequalities, such as how a rich society can have so many poor members.

Many conflict theorists draw on the work of Karl Marx. During the nineteenth-century era of industrialization, Marx believed social stratification resulted from people’s relationship to production. People were divided into two main groups: they either owned factories or worked in them. In Marx’s time, bourgeois capitalists owned high-producing businesses, factories, and land, as they still do today. Proletariats were the workers who performed the manual labor to produce goods. Upper-class capitalists raked in profits and got rich, while working-class proletariats earned skimpy wages and struggled to survive. With such opposing interests, the two groups were divided by differences of wealth and power. Marx believed workers experience deep alienation, isolation and misery resulting from powerless status levels (Marx 1848). Marx argued that proletariats were oppressed by the bourgeoisie.

Today, while working conditions have improved, conflict theorists believe that the strained working relationship between employers and employees still exists. Capitalists own the means of production, and a system is in place to make business owners rich and keep workers poor. According to conflict theorists, the resulting stratification creates class conflict.

Symbolic Interactionism

Symbolic interactionism uses everyday interactions of individuals to explain society as a whole. Symbolic interactionism examines stratification from a micro-level perspective. This analysis strives to explain how people’s social standing affects their everyday interactions.

In most communities, people interact primarily with others who share the same social standing. It is precisely because of social stratification that people tend to live, work, and associate with others like themselves, people who share their same income level, educational background, class traits and even tastes in food, music, and clothing. The built-in system of social stratification groups people together. This is one of the reasons why it was rare for a royal prince like England’s Prince William to marry a commoner.

Symbolic interactionists also note that people’s appearance reflects their perceived social standing. As discussed above, class traits seen through housing, clothing, and transportation indicate social status, as do hairstyles, taste in accessories, and personal style. Symbolic interactionists also analyze how individuals think of themselves or others interpretation of themselves based on these class traits.

To symbolically communicate social standing, people often engage in conspicuous consumption , which is the purchase and use of certain products to make a social statement about status. Carrying pricey but eco-friendly water bottles could indicate a person’s social standing, or what they would like others to believe their social standing is. Some people buy expensive trendy sneakers even though they will never wear them to jog or play sports. A $17,000 car provides transportation as easily as a $100,000 vehicle, but the luxury car makes a social statement that the less expensive car can’t live up to. All these symbols of stratification are worthy of examination by an interactionist.

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Chapter 9. Social Inequality

9.4. Theoretical Perspectives on Social Inequality

Social inequality is defined by unequal access to rewards in society. Research has shown a growing gap in wealth and income between the economic elites and all the other segments of the population in Canada and elsewhere over the last 40 years (Osberg, 2021; Alvaredo et al., 2018). In 2021, Forbe’s annual list of global billionaires increased by 660 to a new record of 2755 individuals, during a global pandemic which had placed severe economic hardship on the majority of the world’s population. Together their wealth added up to $13.1 trillion (US), up $5 trillion from 2020 (Dolan, 2021).  In 2020, Oxfam calculated that the world’s 2,153 billionaires had more wealth than lowest 4.6 billion people combined, or more than 60 per cent of the planet’s population (Lawson et al., 2020). Similarly, Canada’s top 20 billionaires had become $37 billion wealthier over the first 6 months of the pandemic (CCPA, 2020).

What accounts for social inequality? In sociology, the issue is studied from various points of view. Structural functionalists examine the purpose or social function of wealth discrepancies, while critical sociologists examine the accumulation of wealth as a product of the unequal distribution of power in society. Interpretive sociologists are interested in how the meanings of social inequality, status and class are constructed and deployed in the conduct of everyday life. The question of how to account for social inequality opens up several debates in sociology.

Structural Functionalism

In sociology, the structural functionalist perspective examines how society’s structures operate to maintain the overall functioning of the system. Different aspects of society like social inequality persist because they serve a needed purpose. What is the social function of social inequality?

In 1945, sociologists Kingsley Davis (1908–1997) and Wilbert Moore (1914–1987) put forward the Davis-Moore thesis , which argued that the greater the functional importance of a social role, the greater must be the reward. The theory argues that systems of social stratification have a social function, which reflects the inherently unequal value of different types of work. Certain tasks in society are more valuable than others. Qualified people who fill those positions must be rewarded more than others. Therefore the function of stratification or social inequality in societies is “the requirement faced by any society of placing and motivating individuals in the social structure. As a functioning mechanism a society must somehow distribute its members in social positions and induce them to perform the duties of these positions.” Societies do this through the unequal distribution of rewards, esteem and social prestige between different social positions, which ensures that “the most important positions are conscientiously filled by the most qualified persons” (Davis and Moore, 1945).

Davis and Moore (1945) presented this theory of stratification as universally applicable to all societies. They argued that “Every society … must differentiate persons in terms of both prestige and esteem, and must therefore possess a certain amount of institutionalized inequality” (Davis and Moore, 1945). However, how inequality manifests differs from society to society. To try to explain this, they outlined two principles to explain variations between systems of stratification in different types of society: (1) the functional importance of a social position for that society, and (2) scarcity of personnel due to the level of specific skills or capacities required for the position.

So according to Davis and Moore, a firefighter’s job is both more functionally important and more skilled than, for instance, a grocery store cashier’s job. The cashier position does not require the same skill, commitment and level of training as firefighting. Without the incentive of higher pay and better benefits, why would someone be willing to rush into burning buildings? If pay levels were the same, the firefighter might as well work as a grocery store cashier and not risk their life. Davis and Moore believed that rewarding more important and scarce work with higher levels of income, prestige, and power encourages people to go through lengthy training procedures and to work harder and longer. The more skill required for a job, the fewer qualified people there would be to do that job. Certain jobs, such as cleaning hallways or answering phones, do not require much skill. The employees do not need a university degree. Other work, like designing a highway system or removing a cataract, requires immense skill and years of training.

In 1953, Melvin Tumin (1919–1994) countered the Davis-Moore thesis in Some Principles of Stratification: A Critical Analysis . Tumin (1953) questioned what determined a job’s degree of functional importance. The Davis-Moore thesis does not explain why a media personality with little education, skill, or talent becomes famous and rich on a reality show or a campaign trail. Similarly, during the global pandemic of 2020-2021, it was revealed that some of the poorest paid members of society like store clerks and cashiers were in fact the most functionally “essential workers” needed to keep society operating in a time of crisis and lock-down. The thesis also does not explain inequalities in the education system, or inequalities due to race or gender. Contra Davis and Moore, Tumin believed social stratification was dysfunctional because it prevented qualified people from attempting to fill roles. For example, an underprivileged youth has less chance of becoming a scientist, no matter how smart they are, because of the relative lack of opportunity available.

The Davis-Moore thesis, though open for debate, was an early attempt to explain why stratification exists. The thesis states that social stratification is necessary to promote excellence, productivity, and efficiency, thus giving people something to strive for. Davis and Moore believed that the stratification system serves society as a whole because it allows everyone to benefit from a functional economy, even if they benefit unequally.

Critical Sociology

Critical sociologists are deeply critical of social inequality, asserting that it benefits only some people not all of society. For instance, to a critical sociologist it seems problematic that after a long period of increasing equality of incomes from World War II to the 1970s, the wealthiest 1 per cent of income earners have been increasing their share of the total income of Canadians from 7.7 per cent in 1977 to 13.8 per cent in 2007 (Yalnizyan, 2010). In 1982, the median income earner in the top 1 per cent of incomes earned seven times more than the median income earner in the other 99 percent. In 2010, the median income earner in the top 1 per cent earned ten times more. Moreover, while the median income for the top 1 per cent increased from $191,600 to $283,000 in constant dollars (i.e., adjusted for inflation), the median income for the bottom 99 per cent only increased from $28,000 to $28,400 (Statistics Canada, 2013). Canada’s richest 1 per cent took almost a third (32 percent) of all growth in incomes 2007 (Yalnizyan, 2010).

Critical sociologists view this “great U-turn” in income equality over the 20th and 21st centuries as a product of both the ability of corporate elites to grant themselves huge salary and bonus increases and the shift toward neo-liberal public policy and tax cuts (see Chapter 4. Society and Modern Life ). Rather than creating conditions in which wealth trickles down, tax cuts and neo-liberal policies tremendously benefit the rich at the expense of the poor. This is an example of the way that stratification perpetuates inequality. Contrary to the analysis of functionalists, huge corporate bonuses continued to be awarded even when dysfunctional corporate and financial mismanagement of the economy led to the global financial crisis of 2008. Nor is it the case that corporate elites work harder to merit more rewards. Over the period of increasing inequality in income, the only group not working more weeks and hours in the paid workforce is the richest 10 per cent of families (Yalnizyan, 2007). Critical sociologists argue that the functionalist explanation of inequality cannot account for the growing gap of wealth and income inequality over the last 40 years. Social functions and scarcity of personnel remain relatively unchanged through this period, whereas the unique historical configuration of globalization, neo-liberal policy, new technologies and markets and the decline of labour unions has enhanced the power of the owning classes.

Critical sociologists try to bring awareness to the structural nature of social inequalities, such as how a rich society can have so many poor members.  The work of Karl Marx has been an important resource in this analysis. In the 19th century, Marx analyzed the way the owning class or capitalists accumulated profit and wealth in the new industrial economies, while working-class proletarians experienced deep exploitation, alienation, and misery (Marx, 1848). For Marx, differences of wealth and power were products of class structures and class power rather than the qualities of individuals. In particular, ownership and control over private property or capital defined where individuals stood within the class structure and conferred great power on the owners while dispossessing the power of wage earners. He also predicted that the growing collective impoverishment of the working class would lead them, through the leadership of unions, to recognize their common class interests. A common class “consciousness” uniting different types of labour would lead to the revolutionary conditions whereby the working class could remove their “fetters” and overthrow the capitalists. Marx imagined that with the abolition of private property (i.e., privately controlled capital),  collective ownership of the means of production would end class conflict forever. A “communist” society that abolished the private ownership of the means of production would remove a key non-democratic source of power and become a true democracy.

Marx did not live to see the state socialist systems in the Soviet Union and elsewhere that called themselves communist but ended up replacing capitalist-based inequality with bureaucratic-based inequality, but his analysis of class structure and the control of economic wealth remains a key source of insight into the sources and dynamics of social inequality. Today, the class structure of capitalism still exists. Capitalists own the means of production, and a neo-liberal economic system is in place that keeps them rich and keeps workers poor, especially when capitalism is regarded on a global scale. Moreover, the privileged position of the middle classes, which emerged as a result of the changing nature of the capitalist economy in the 20th century, has been steadily eroded in the 21st century by growing inequalities of wealth and income. Some sociologists argue that the middle class is becoming proletarianized , meaning that in terms of income, property, control over working conditions, and overall life chances, the middle class is becoming more and more indistinguishable from the traditional wage-earning working class (Abercrombie & Urry, 1983).  Nevertheless, according to critical sociologists, increasing social inequality is neither inevitable nor necessary.

Other critical sociologists focus on social inequalities based on gender, sexuality, colonialism, race and ethnicity as discussed in the chapters ahead. It is important to note that none of these forms of inequality stand alone. They intersect, with one social determinant of inequality like class compounding the effects of others like gender and race. Intersectionality refers to an analysis which examines the overlapping effects of multiple vectors of social inequality. Kimberly Crenshaw argues that the inequality and discrimination experienced by a Black woman in the United States, for example, is more than simply gender inequality and racial inequality added together. As she puts it, “Because the intersectional experience is greater than the sum of racism and sexism, any analysis that does not take intersectionality into account cannot sufficiently address the particular manner in which Black women are subordinated” (Crenshaw, 1989).

Interpretive Sociology

Within interpretive sociology, determining the meanings of social inequality, status and class for individuals is key to being able to explain the nature of social interactions and social identities. The distribution of privileges in society is something that can be objectively measured by various indicators such as income, class position, and surveys of status, etc., but its role in every day life is a matter of lived experience. The meanings attributed to privilege can be examined at a micro and macro level in interpretive sociology.

Symbolic interactionism is a paradigm that uses everyday micro-level interactions of individuals to explain the operation of society. This analysis strives to explain how people’s social standing affects their everyday interactions. For example, Erving Goffman (1967) describes the elaborate rituals of deference that come into play when people recognize they have a difference in status. Deference includes ceremonial and symbolic acts and events “by which appreciation is regularly conveyed to a recipient,” including avoidance and presentation rituals.

Avoidance rituals are practices people use to keep both a physical and social distance from status superiors. These include the use of politeness, formality and terms of respect. Status or honour places an “ideal sphere” of inviolability around the privileged individual, which is guarded by a “system of deferential stand-off arrangements.” For intimates this sphere can be violated more or less freely, like a mother wiping her child’s nose, but the greater the status difference, the more this distance is protected by extensive and elaborate taboos against contact. Use of avoidance rituals can therefore be used as a social indicator of status differences in a society. On the other hand, presentation rituals are practices by which individuals display the esteem they hold for others and indicate how they will treat them in an interaction. These include interactions involving salutations, invitations, compliments, and minor services. Noticing someone’s new hair style or clothes with a compliment, regardless of what one might actually think about the change, is a kind of group acknowledgement of the new status claimed or undertaken by the recipient. Presentation rituals concretely demonstrate a person’s appreciation for the recipient, but as Goffman notes, to the degree that they violate a recipient’s privacy or reserve by commenting on personal matters there is an awkward conflict between the two types of deference ritual in interactions between people of unequal status.

In most communities, people interact primarily with others who share the same social standing, which may account for why structures of inequality persist through time. It is precisely because of social stratification that people tend to live, work, and associate with others like themselves; people who share their same income level, educational background, or racial background, and even tastes in food, music, and clothing. The built-in system of social stratification groups similar people together. George Homans’ (1961) examined the interactions between students at the New York State Training School for Girls to try to explain this phenomena from a micro-level perspective. He developed the concept of social exchange as the explanation for why the girls tended to spend their leisure time with status equals rather than with superiors or inferiors.

Homans’ exchange theory suggests that human behaviour can be modeled on the basis of calculated social exchanges of resources including tangible gifts, but also more intangible resources like favours, time, attention, etc. The principle is that a norm of reciprocity governs exchanges, meaning that, in an equal relationship, the gifts given equal the gifts received. Inequality in status is therefore understood as a product of unequal exchanges of gifts: there are net creditors and debtors in relationships. If spending time with a person is a form of gift giving, then persons of higher status give more than persons of lower status because their time is considered to be more valuable. Therefore, for the girls at the school and others, people tend not to spend time with people of either higher or lower status because it is difficult to feel comfortable when one is aware of being a either debtor or creditor in the relationship (or is uncertain of ones status with respect to the other).

Symbolic interactionists also note that people’s appearance reflects their perceived social standing. Housing, clothing, and transportation indicate social status, as do hairstyles, taste in accessories, and personal style. On a broader, macro-scale of interpretive sociology, Pierre Bourdieu’s (1930–2002) concept of cultural capital suggests that the cultural “assets” embodied in people’s appearance, such as education and taste, are accumulated and passed down between generations in the same manner as financial capital or wealth (1984). This capital marks individuals from an early age by such things as knowing how to wear a suit or having an educated manner of speaking. In fact the children of parents with a postsecondary degree are 60 per cent likely to attend university themselves, while the children of parents with less than a high school education have only a 32 per cent chance of attending university (Shaienks & Gluszynski, 2007). This relates back to Bourdieu’s concept of habitus , discussed at the beginning of the chapter. Habitus is in a sense the physical embodiment of cultural capital, the deeply ingrained habits, skills, and dispositions that people possess due to the cultural capital inherited through their family upbringing and location in the social hierarchy.

Cultural capital is capital also in the sense of an investment, as it is expensive and difficult to attain while eventually “paying off” by providing access to better occupations, financial rewards, life styles, health and privileges. Bourdieu argued that the privilege accorded to those who hold cultural capital is a key means of reproducing the power of the ruling classes. People with the “wrong” cultural attributes have difficulty attaining the same privileged status or the same ability move freely within a social milieu. Cultural capital becomes a key measure of distinction between social strata. For example, cultural capital and habitus also apply to people’s “taste” in cultural objects such as art, food, and clothing. Matters of taste are often key markers of distinction, which people detect in each other almost immediately.

In the Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) , Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929) described the activity of conspicuous consumption as the tendency of people to buy things as a display of status rather than out of need. Conspicuous consumption refers to buying certain products to make a social statement about status. Carrying pricey but eco-friendly water bottles could indicate a person’s social standing. Some people buy expensive trendy sneakers even though they will never wear them to jog or play sports. A $17,000 car provides transportation as easily as a $127,000 Tesla Model S, but the luxury car makes a social statement that the less-expensive car can not live up to. All of these symbols of social inequality are worthy of examination by interpretive sociologists because their social significance is determined by the shared meanings people recognize in them.

In North American culture, displays of conspicuous consumption can be complex. For example, Randall Collins (2008) describes the dynamic of visual appearance according to the “street code” of Black inner city poverty areas in the United States. The street code is a product of the experience of unreliable police protection in which each individual attempts to demonstrate to others their ability to take care of themselves, using violence if necessary. In terms of individual self-presentation through clothing style, grooming and accessories, it has two contradictory implications. On one hand, 1990s street style for Black males involved wearing baggy pants low on the hips, untied sneakers or work boots, and caps worn backwards. These were counter-cultural markers or displays that rejected the conventions and symbols of success in white mainstream society. On the other hand, wearing expensive athletic suits and shoes, or prestigious brand-named gear, was meant as a conspicuous claim to status within that community. It meant that owner had overcome poverty by “street means” rather than selling out, and since ostentatious displays of wealth marked one as a potential target of theft, wearing these symbolic objects also communicated the ability to protect oneself as a kind of “visual boast.” They signified street status.

The irony of hip hop style being picked up by white youth far from the inner city worlds where it developed was that it carried a meaning or counter-cultural gesture of survival under conditions of oppression, which itself became a treasured symbol of prestige and conspicuous consumption under more affluent conditions.

Media Attributions

• Figure 9.22   Inequality of the Drifting Chain by Thomas Hawk, via Flickr, is used under a CC BY-NC 2.0 licence.
• Figure 9.23  Towards the Dawn by the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation by the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, via Wikimedia Commons, is in the public domain .
•   Figure 9.24  Imelda Marcos shoes by Vince Lamb used under a CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 licence.
• Figure 9.25 Josh Gooch [23/25] by Liam Higgens, via Flickr, is used under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 licence.

Introduction to Sociology – 3rd Canadian Edition Copyright © 2023 by William Little is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book

SOC101: Introduction to Sociology (2020.A.01)

Social stratification in the united states.

• Read the introduction to social stratification, paying attention to Robert and Joan's story. Make guesses or connections between the example provided and why you think this example might be an introduction to stratification.
• Take notes on the bold terms as well as on the three systems of stratification. What stratification system is found in the U.S.? How might this affect one's life chances?
• Take note of the different classes found in the United States and the types of mobility. Other than homes or luxury items, what are some things money can buy that are not readily available to people living in the lower class? How might being in the lower class affect one's chances at upward social mobility?
• Read the two sections found in this chapter. In addition, you should spend a few minutes comparing the two photos in Figure 1, jotting down some thoughts on the photos and the accompanying text.
• Take note of the three different theoretical approaches to studying social stratification. How do you think Marx would view the Davis-Moore thesis?

Theoretical Perspectives on Social Stratification

Learning objectives.

• Understand and apply functionalist, conflict theory, and interactionist perspectives on social stratification

Basketball is one of the highest-paying professional sports. There is stratification even among teams. For example, the Minnesota Timberwolves hand out the lowest annual payroll, while the Los Angeles Lakers reportedly pay the highest. Kobe Bryant, a Lakers shooting guard, is one of the highest paid athletes in the NBA, earning around $30.5 million a year (Forbes 2014). Even within specific fields, layers are stratified and members are ranked. In sociology, even an issue such as NBA salaries can be seen from various points of view. Functionalists will examine the purpose of such high salaries, while conflict theorists will study the exorbitant salaries as an unfair distribution of money. Social stratification takes on new meanings when it is examined from different sociological perspectives - functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism.

Functionalism

In sociology, the functionalist perspective examines how society's parts operate. According to functionalism, different aspects of society exist because they serve a needed purpose. What is the function of social stratification? In 1945, sociologists Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore published the Davis-Moore thesis , which argued that the greater the functional importance of a social role, the greater must be the reward. The theory posits that social stratification represents the inherently unequal value of different work. Certain tasks in society are more valuable than others. Qualified people who fill those positions must be rewarded more than others. According to Davis and Moore, a firefighter's job is more important than, for instance, a grocery store cashier's. The cashier position does not require the same skill and training level as firefighting. Without the incentive of higher pay and better benefits, why would someone be willing to rush into burning buildings? If pay levels were the same, the firefighter might as well work as a grocery store cashier. Davis and Moore believed that rewarding more important work with higher levels of income, prestige, and power encourages people to work harder and longer. Davis and Moore stated that, in most cases, the degree of skill required for a job determines that job's importance. They also stated that the more skill required for a job, the fewer qualified people there would be to do that job. Certain jobs, such as cleaning hallways or answering phones, do not require much skill. The employees don't need a college degree. Other work, like designing a highway system or delivering a baby, requires immense skill. In 1953, Melvin Tumin countered the Davis-Moore thesis in "Some Principles of Stratification: A Critical Analysis". Tumin questioned what determined a job's degree of importance. The Davis-Moore thesis does not explain, he argued, why a media personality with little education, skill, or talent becomes famous and rich on a reality show or a campaign trail. The thesis also does not explain inequalities in the education system or inequalities due to race or gender. Tumin believed social stratification prevented qualified people from attempting to fill roles (Tumin 1953). For example, an underprivileged youth has less chance of becoming a scientist, no matter how smart she is, because of the relative lack of opportunity available to her. The Davis-Moore thesis also does not explain why a basketball player earns millions of dollars a year when a doctor who saves lives, a soldier who fights for others' rights, and a teacher who helps form the minds of tomorrow will likely not make millions over the course of their careers. The Davis-Moore thesis, though open for debate, was an early attempt to explain why stratification exists. The thesis states that social stratification is necessary to promote excellence, productivity, and efficiency, thus giving people something to strive for. Davis and Moore believed that the system serves society as a whole because it allows everyone to benefit to a certain extent.

Conflict Theory

Figure 9.13 These people are protesting a decision made by Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville, Tennessee, to lay off custodians and outsource the jobs to a private firm to avoid paying employee benefits. Private job agencies often pay lower hourly wages. Is the decision fair? Conflict theorists are deeply critical of social stratification, asserting that it benefits only some people, not all of society. For instance, to a conflict theorist, it seems wrong that a basketball player is paid millions for an annual contract while a public school teacher earns $35,000 a year. Stratification, conflict theorists believe, perpetuates inequality. Conflict theorists try to bring awareness to inequalities, such as how a rich society can have so many poor members. Many conflict theorists draw on the work of Karl Marx. During the nineteenth-century era of industrialization, Marx believed social stratification resulted from people's relationship to production. People were divided by a single line: they either owned factories or worked in them. In Marx's time, bourgeois capitalists owned high-producing businesses, factories, and land, as they still do today. Proletariats were the workers who performed the manual labor to produce goods. Upper-class capitalists raked in profits and got rich, while working-class proletariats earned skimpy wages and struggled to survive. With such opposing interests, the two groups were divided by differences of wealth and power. Marx saw workers experience deep alienation, isolation and misery resulting from powerless status levels (Marx 1848). Marx argued that proletariats were oppressed by the money-hungry bourgeois. Today, while working conditions have improved, conflict theorists believe that the strained working relationship between employers and employees still exists. Capitalists own the means of production, and a system is in place to make business owners rich and keep workers poor. According to conflict theorists, the resulting stratification creates class conflict. If he were alive in today's economy, as it recovers from a prolonged recession, Marx would likely have argued that the recession resulted from the greed of capitalists, satisfied at the expense of working people.

Symbolic Interactionism

Symbolic interactionism is a theory that uses everyday interactions of individuals to explain society as a whole. Symbolic interactionism examines stratification from a micro-level perspective. This analysis strives to explain how people's social standing affects their everyday interactions. In most communities, people interact primarily with others who share the same social standing. It is precisely because of social stratification that people tend to live, work, and associate with others like themselves, people who share their same income level, educational background, or racial background, and even tastes in food, music, and clothing. The built-in system of social stratification groups people together. This is one of the reasons why it was rare for a royal prince like England's Prince William to marry a commoner. Symbolic interactionists also note that people's appearance reflects their perceived social standing. Housing, clothing, and transportation indicate social status, as do hairstyles, taste in accessories, and personal style.

Figure 9.14 (a) A group of construction workers on the job site, and (b) a group of businessmen. What categories of stratification do these construction workers share? How do construction workers differ from executives or custodians? Who is more skilled? Who has greater prestige in society? To symbolically communicate social standing, people often engage in conspicuous consumption , which is the purchase and use of certain products to make a social statement about status. Carrying pricey but eco-friendly water bottles could indicate a person's social standing. Some people buy expensive trendy sneakers even though they will never wear them to jog or play sports. A $17,000 car provides transportation as easily as a $100,000 vehicle, but the luxury car makes a social statement that the less expensive car can't live up to. All these symbols of stratification are worthy of examination by an interactionist.

6 Social Stratification and Inequality

Eric grew up on a farm in rural Ohio, left home to serve in the Army, and returned to take over the family farm a few years later. He moved into the same house he had grown up in and soon married a young woman with whom he had attended high school. As they began to have children, they quickly realized that the income from the farm was no longer sufficient to meet their needs. With little experience beyond the farm, Eric accepted a job as a clerk at a local grocery store. It was there that his life and the lives of his wife and children were changed forever.

One of the managers at the store liked Eric, his attitude, and his work ethic. He took Eric under his wing and began to groom him for advancement at the store. Eric rose through the ranks with ease. Then the manager encouraged him to take a few classes at a local college. This was the first time Eric had seriously thought about college. Could he be successful, Eric wondered? Could he actually be the first to earn a degree in his family? Fortunately, his wife also believed in him and supported his decision to take his first class. Eric asked his wife and his manager to keep his college enrollment a secret. He did not want others to know about it in case he failed.

Eric was nervous on his first day of class. He was older than the other students, and he had never considered himself college material. Through hard work and determination, however, he did very well in the class. While he still doubted himself, he enrolled in another class. Again, he performed very well. As his doubt began to fade, he started to take more and more classes. Before he knew it, he was walking across the stage to receive a Bachelor’s degree with honors. The ceremony seemed surreal to Eric. He couldn’t believe he had finished college, which once seemed like an impossible feat.

Shortly after graduation, Eric was admitted into a graduate program at a well-respected university, where he earned a Master’s degree. He had not only become the first in his family to attend college but also earned a graduate degree. Inspired by Eric’s success, his wife enrolled at a technical college, obtained a degree in nursing, and became a registered nurse working in a local hospital’s labor and delivery department. Eric and his wife both worked their way up the career ladder in their respective fields and became leaders in their organizations. They epitomized the American Dream—they worked hard and it paid off.

This story may sound familiar. After all, nearly one in three first-year college students is a first-generation degree candidate, and it is well documented that many are not as successful as Eric. According to the Center for Student Opportunity, a national nonprofit, 89 percent of first-generation students will not earn an undergraduate degree within six years of starting their studies. In fact, these students “drop out of college at four times the rate of peers whose parents have postsecondary degrees” (Center for Student Opportunity quoted in Huot 2014).

Why do students with parents who have completed college tend to graduate more often than those students whose parents do not hold degrees? That question and many others will be answered as we explore social stratification.

Learning Objectives

• Differentiate between open and closed stratification systems
• Distinguish between caste and class systems
• Understand meritocracy as an ideal system of stratification

Sociologists use the term social stratification to describe the system of social standing.  Social stratification  refers to a society’s categorization of its people into rankings of socioeconomic tiers based on factors like wealth, income, race, education, and power.

You may remember the word “stratification” from geology class. The distinct vertical layers found in rock, called stratification, are a good way to visualize the social structure. Society’s layers are made of people, and society’s resources are distributed unevenly throughout the layers. The people who have more resources represent the top layer of the social structure of stratification. Other groups of people, with progressively fewer and fewer resources, represent the lower layers of our society.

In the United States, people like to believe everyone has an equal chance at success. To a certain extent, Aaron illustrates the belief that hard work and talent—not prejudicial treatment or societal values—determine social rank. This emphasis on self-effort perpetuates the belief that people control their own social standing.

However, sociologists recognize that social stratification is a society-wide system that makes inequalities apparent. While there are always inequalities between individuals, sociologists are interested in larger social patterns. Stratification is not about individual inequalities but about systemic inequalities based on group membership, classes, and the like. No individual, rich or poor, can be blamed for social inequalities. The structure of a society affects a person’s social standing. Although individuals may support or fight inequalities, social stratification is created and supported by society as a whole.

Factors that define stratification vary in different societies. In most societies, stratification is an economic system, based on  wealth , the net value of money and assets a person has, and  income , a person’s wages or investment dividends. While people are regularly categorized based on how rich or poor they are, other important factors influence social standing. For example, in some cultures, wisdom and charisma are valued, and people who have them are revered more than those who don’t. In some cultures, the elderly are esteemed; in others, the elderly are disparaged or overlooked. Societies’ cultural beliefs often reinforce the inequalities of stratification.

One key determinant of social standing is the social standing of our parents. Parents tend to pass their social position on to their children. People inherit not only social standing but also the cultural norms that accompany a certain lifestyle. They share these with a network of friends and family members. Social standing becomes a comfort zone, a familiar lifestyle, and an identity. This is one of the reasons first-generation college students do not fare as well as other students.

Other determinants are found in a society’s occupational structure. Teachers, for example, often have high levels of education but receive relatively low pay. Many believe that teaching is a noble profession, so teachers should do their jobs for the love of their profession and the good of their students—not for money. Yet no successful executive or entrepreneur would embrace that attitude in the business world, where profits are valued as a driving force. Cultural attitudes and beliefs like these support and perpetuate social inequalities.

Recent Economic Changes and U.S. Stratification

As a result of the Great Recession that rocked our nation’s economy in the last few years, many families and individuals found themselves struggling like never before. The nation fell into a period of prolonged and exceptionally high unemployment. While no one was completely insulated from the recession, perhaps those in the lower classes felt the impact most profoundly. Before the recession, many were living paycheck to paycheck or even had been living comfortably. As the recession hit, they were often among the first to lose their jobs. Unable to find replacement employment, they faced more than a loss of income. Their homes were foreclosed, their cars were repossessed, and their ability to afford healthcare was taken away. This put many in the position of deciding whether to put food on the table or fill a needed prescription.

While we’re not completely out of the woods economically, there are several signs that we’re on the road to recovery. Many of those who suffered during the recession are back to work and are busy rebuilding their lives. The Affordable Health Care Act has provided health insurance to millions who lost or never had it.

But the Great Recession, like the Great Depression, has changed social attitudes. Where once it was important to demonstrate wealth by wearing expensive clothing items like Calvin Klein shirts and Louis Vuitton shoes, now there’s a new, thriftier way of thinking. In many circles, it has become hip to be frugal. It’s no longer about how much we spend, but about how much we don’t spend. Think of shows like  Extreme Couponing  on TLC and songs like Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop.”

Systems of Stratification

Sociologists distinguish between two types of systems of stratification. Closed systems accommodate little change in social position. They do not allow people to shift levels and do not permit social relationships between levels. Open systems, which are based on achievement, allow movement and interaction between layers and classes. Different systems reflect, emphasize, and foster certain cultural values and shape individual beliefs. Stratification systems include class systems and caste systems, as well as a meritocracy.

The Caste System

Caste systems are closed stratification systems in which people can do little or nothing to change their social standing. A  caste system  is one in which people are born into their social standing and will remain in it their whole lives. People are assigned occupations regardless of their talents, interests, or potential. There are virtually no opportunities to improve a person’s social position.

In the Hindu caste tradition, people were expected to work in the occupation of their caste and to enter into marriage according to their caste. Accepting this social standing was considered a moral duty. Cultural values reinforced the system. Caste systems promote beliefs in fate, destiny, and the will of a higher power, rather than promoting individual freedom as a value. A person who lived in a caste society was socialized to accept his or her social standing.

Although the caste system in India has been officially dismantled, its residual presence in Indian society is deeply embedded. In rural areas, aspects of the tradition are more likely to remain, while urban centers show less evidence of this past. In India’s larger cities, people now have more opportunities to choose their own career paths and marriage partners. As a global center of employment, corporations have introduced merit-based hiring and employment to the nation.

The Class System

A  class system  is based on both social factors and individual achievement. A  class  consists of a set of people who share similar status with regard to factors like wealth, income, education, and occupation. Unlike caste systems, class systems are open. People are free to gain a different level of education or employment than their parents. They can also socialize with and marry members of other classes, which allows people to move from one class to another.

In a class system, occupation is not fixed at birth. Though family and other societal models help guide a person toward a career, personal choice plays a role.

In class systems, people have the option to form  exogamous marriages  and unions of spouses from different social categories. Marriage in these circumstances is based on values such as love and compatibility rather than on social standing or economics. Though social conformities still exist that encourage people to choose partners within their own class, people are not as pressured to choose marriage partners based solely on those elements. Marriage to a partner from the same social background is an endogamous union .

Meritocracy

Meritocracy is an ideal system based on the belief that social stratification is the result of personal effort—or merit—that determines social standing. High levels of effort will lead to a high social position and vice versa. The concept of meritocracy is ideal—because a society has never existed where social rank was based purely on merit. Because of the complex structures of societies, processes like socialization, and the realities of economic systems, social standing is influenced by multiple factors—not merit alone. Inheritance and pressure to conform to norms, for instance, disrupt the notion of a pure meritocracy. While a meritocracy has never existed, sociologists see aspects of meritocracies in modern societies when they study the role of academic and job performance and the systems in place for evaluating and rewarding achievement in these areas.

Status Consistency

Social stratification systems determine social position based on factors like income, education, and occupation. Sociologists use the term  status consistency to describe the consistency, or lack thereof, of an individual’s rank across these factors. Caste systems correlate with high-status consistency, whereas the more flexible class system has lower status consistency.

To illustrate, let’s consider Susan. Susan earned her high school degree but did not go to college. That factor is a trait of the lower-middle class. She began doing landscaping work, which, like other manual labor, is also a trait of the lower-middle class or even lower class. However, over time, Susan started her own company. She hired employees. She won larger contracts. She became a business owner and earned a lot of money. Those traits represent the upper-middle class. There are inconsistencies between Susan’s educational level, her occupation, and her income. In a class system, a person can work hard and have little education and still be in the middle or upper class, whereas in a caste system that would not be possible. In a class system, low-status consistency correlates with having more choices and opportunities.

SOCIAL POLICY AND DEBATE

The Commoner Who Could Be Queen

Figure 6.6 Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, who is in line to be king of England, married Catherine Middleton, a so-called commoner, meaning she does not have royal ancestry. Prince Harry married Meghan Markle, a person of mixed race. (Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

On May 19, 2018, in St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle in the United Kingdom, Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, married Meghan Markle, a commoner. It is rare, though not unheard of, for a member of the British royal family to marry a commoner. Markle is the second American and the first person of mixed-race heritage to marry into the British royal family. Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, and the elder brother of Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, received similar reactions to their marriage choices. Prince William, who is in line to be King of England, married Kate Middleton, who has an upper-class background but does not have royal ancestry. Her father was a former flight dispatcher and her mother was a former flight attendant and owner of Party Pieces. According to Grace Wong’s 2011 article titled “Kate Middleton: A family business that built a princess,” “[t]he business grew to the point where [her father] quit his job . . . and it’s evolved from a mom-and-pop outfit run out of a shed . . . into a venture operated out of three converted farm buildings in Berkshire.” Kate and William met when they were both students at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland (Köhler 2010).

Britain’s monarchy arose during the Middle Ages. Its social hierarchy placed royalty at the top and commoners at the bottom. This was generally a closed system, with people born into positions of nobility. Wealth was passed from generation to generation through primogeniture , a law stating that all property would be inherited by the firstborn son. If the family had no son, the land went to the next closest male relation. Women could not inherit property, and their social standing was primarily determined through marriage.

The arrival of the Industrial Revolution changed Britain’s social structure. Commoners moved to cities, got jobs, and made better livings. Gradually, people found new opportunities to increase their wealth and power. Today, the government is a constitutional monarchy with the prime minister and other ministers elected to their positions, and the royal family’s role is largely ceremonial. The long-ago differences between nobility and commoners have blurred, and the modern class system in Britain is similar to that of the United States (McKee 1996).

Today, the royal family still commands wealth, power, and a great deal of attention. When Queen Elizabeth II retires or passes away, Prince Charles will be first in line to ascend the throne. If he abdicates (chooses not to become king) or dies, the position will go to Prince William. If that happens, Kate Middleton will be called Queen Catherine and hold the position of queen consort. She will be one of the few queens in history to have earned a college degree (Marquand 2011).

There is a great deal of social pressure on her not only to behave like a royal but also to bear children. In fact, Kate and Prince William welcomed their first son, Prince George, on July 22, 2013, and are expecting their second child. The royal family recently changed its succession laws to allow daughters, not just sons, to ascend the throne. Kate’s experience—from commoner to the potential queen—demonstrates the fluidity of social position in modern society.

• Understand the U.S. class structure
• Describe several types of social mobility
• Recognize characteristics that define and identify class

Most sociologists define social class as a grouping based on similar social factors like wealth, income, education, and occupation. These factors affect how much power and prestige a person has. Social stratification reflects an unequal distribution of resources. In most cases, having more money means having more power or more opportunities. Stratification can also result from physical and intellectual traits. Categories that affect social standing include family ancestry, race, ethnicity, age, and gender. In the United States, standing can also be defined by characteristics such as IQ, athletic abilities, appearance, personal skills, and achievements.

Standard of Living

In the last century, the United States has seen a steady rise in its  standard of living, the level of wealth available to a certain socioeconomic class in order to acquire the material necessities and comforts to maintain its lifestyle. The standard of living is based on factors such as income, employment, class, poverty rates, and housing affordability. Because the standard of living is closely related to the quality of life, it can represent factors such as the ability to afford a home, own a car, and take vacations.

In the United States, a small portion of the population has the means to achieve the highest standard of living. A Federal Reserve Bank study shows that a mere one percent of the population holds one-third of our nation’s wealth (Kennickell 2009). Wealthy people receive the most schooling, have better health, and consume the most goods and services. Wealthy people also wield decision-making power. Many people think of the United States as a “middle-class society.” They think a few people are rich, a few are poor, and most are fairly well off, existing in the middle of the social strata. But as the study mentioned above indicates, there is not an even distribution of wealth. Millions of women and men struggle to pay rent, buy food, find work, and afford basic medical care. Women who are single heads of households tend to have a lower income and lower standard of living than their married or male counterparts. This is a worldwide phenomenon known as the “feminization of poverty”—which acknowledges that women disproportionately make up the majority of individuals in poverty across the globe.

In the United States, as in most high-income nations, social stratifications and standards of living are in part based on occupation (Lin and Xie 1988). Aside from the obvious impact that income has on someone’s standard of living, occupations also influence social standing through the relative levels of prestige they afford. Employment in medicine, law, or engineering confers high status. Teachers and police officers are generally respected, though not considered particularly prestigious. At the other end of the scale, some of the lowest rankings apply to positions like a waitress, janitor, and bus driver.

The most significant threat to the relatively high standard of living we’re accustomed to in the United States is the decline of the middle class. The size, income, and wealth of the middle class have all been declining since the 1970s. This is occurring at a time when corporate profits have increased more than 141 percent, and CEO pay has risen by more than 298 percent (Popken 2007).

G. William Domhoff, of the University of California at Santa Cruz, reports that “In 2010, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 35.4% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 53.5%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 89%, leaving only 11% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers)” (Domhoff 2013).

While several economic factors can be improved in the United States (inequitable distribution of income and wealth, feminization of poverty, stagnant wages for most workers while executive pay and profits soar, declining middle class), we are fortunate that the poverty experienced here is most often relative poverty and not absolute poverty. Whereas absolute poverty is deprivation so severe that it puts survival in jeopardy, relative poverty is not having the means to live the lifestyle of the average person in your country.

As a wealthy developed country, the United States has the resources to provide the basic necessities to those in need through a series of federal and state social welfare programs. The best-known of these programs is likely the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which is administered by the United States Department of Agriculture. (This used to be known as the food stamp program.)

The program began in the Great Depression when unmarketable or surplus food was distributed to the hungry. It was not until 1961 that President John F. Kennedy initiated a food stamp pilot program. His successor Lyndon B. Johnson was instrumental in the passage of the Food Stamp Act in 1964. In 1965, more than 500,000 individuals received food assistance. In March 2008, on the precipice of the Great Recession, participation hovered around 28 million people. During the recession, that number escalated to more than 40 million (USDA).

Social Classes in the United States

Does a person’s appearance indicate class? Can you tell a man’s education level based on his clothing? Do you know a woman’s income by the car she drives?

For sociologists, categorizing class is a fluid science. Sociologists generally identify three levels of class in the United States: upper, middle, and lower class. Within each class, there are many subcategories. Wealth is the most significant way of distinguishing classes because wealth can be transferred to one’s children and perpetuate the class structure. One economist, J.D. Foster, defines the 20 percent of U.S. citizens’ highest earners as “upper income,” and the lower 20 percent as “lower income.” The remaining 60 percent of the population makes up the middle class. But by that distinction, annual household incomes for the middle-class range between $25,000 and $100,000 (Mason and Sullivan 2010).

One sociological perspective distinguishes the classes, in part, according to their relative power and control over their lives. The upper class not only has power and control over their own lives but also their social status gives them power and control over others’ lives. The middle class doesn’t generally control other strata of society, but its members do exert control over their own lives. In contrast, the lower class has little control over their work or lives. Below, we will explore the major divisions of U.S. social class and their key subcategories.

The Upper Class

The upper class is considered the top, and only the powerful elite get to see the view from there. In the United States, people with extreme wealth make up 1 percent of the population, and they own one-third of the country’s wealth (Beeghley 2008).

Money provides not just access to material goods but also access to a lot of power. As corporate leaders, members of the upper class make decisions that affect the job status of millions of people. As media owners, they influence the collective identity of the nation. They run the major network television stations, radio broadcasts, newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, and sports franchises. As board members of the most influential colleges and universities, they influence cultural attitudes and values. As philanthropists, they establish foundations to support social causes they believe in. As campaign contributors, they sway politicians and fund campaigns, sometimes to protect their own economic interests.

U.S. society has historically distinguished between “old money” (inherited wealth passed from one generation to the next) and “new money” (wealth you have earned and built yourself). While both types may have equal net worth, they have traditionally held different social standings. People of old money, firmly situated in the upper class for generations, have held high prestige. Their families have socialized them to know the customs, norms, and expectations that come with wealth. Often, the very wealthy don’t work for wages. Some study business or become lawyers in order to manage the family fortune. Others, such as Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian, capitalize on being a rich socialite and transform that into celebrity status, flaunting a wealthy lifestyle.

However, new-money members of the upper class are not oriented to the customs and mores of the elite. They haven’t gone to the most exclusive schools. They have not established old-money social ties. People with new money might flaunt their wealth, buying sports cars and mansions, but they might still exhibit behaviors attributed to the middle and lower classes.

The Middle Class

Many people consider themselves middle class, but there are differing ideas about what that means. People with annual incomes of $150,000 call themselves middle class, as do people who annually earn $30,000. That helps explain why, in the United States, the middle class is broken into upper and lower subcategories.

Upper-middle-class people tend to hold bachelor’s and postgraduate degrees. They’ve studied subjects such as business, management, law, and medicine. Lower-middle-class members hold bachelor’s degrees from four-year colleges or associate’s degrees from a two-year community or technical colleges.

Comfort is a key concept to the middle class. Middle-class people work hard and live fairly comfortable lives. Upper-middle-class people tend to pursue careers that earn comfortable incomes. They provide their families with large homes and nice cars. They may go skiing or boating on vacation. Their children receive high-quality education and healthcare (Gilbert 2010).

In the lower-middle class, people hold jobs supervised by members of the upper-middle class. They fill technical, lower-level management, or administrative support positions. Compared to lower-class work, lower-middle-class jobs carry more prestige and come with slightly higher paychecks. With these incomes, people can afford a decent, mainstream lifestyle, but they struggle to maintain it. They generally don’t have enough income to build significant savings. In addition, their grip on class status is more precarious than in the upper tiers of the class system. When budgets are tight, lower-middle-class people are often the ones to lose their jobs.

The Lower Class

The lower class is also referred to as the working class. Just like the middle and upper classes, the lower class can be divided into subsets: the working class, the working poor, and the underclass. Compared to the lower-middle class, lower-class people have less educational background and earn smaller incomes. They work jobs that require little prior skill or experience and often do routine tasks under close supervision.

Working-class people, the highest subcategory of the lower class, often land decent jobs in fields like custodial or food service. The work is hands-on and often physically demanding, such as landscaping, cooking, cleaning, or building.

Beneath the working class is the working poor. Like the working class, they have unskilled, low-paying employment. However, their jobs rarely offer benefits such as healthcare or retirement planning, and their positions are often seasonal or temporary. They work as sharecroppers, migrant farmworkers, housecleaners, and day laborers. Some are high school dropouts. Some are illiterate and unable to read job ads.

How can people work full-time and still be poor? Even working full-time, millions of the working poor earn incomes too meager to support a family. The minimum wage varies from state to state, but in many states, it is approaching $8.00 per hour (Department of Labor 2014). At that rate, working 40 hours a week earns $320. That comes to $16,640 a year, before tax and deductions. Even for a single person, the pay is low. A married couple with children will have a hard time covering expenses.

The underclass is the United States’ lowest tier. Members of the underclass live mainly in inner cities. Many are unemployed or underemployed. Those who do hold jobs typically perform menial tasks for little pay. Some of the underclasses are homeless. For many, welfare systems provide much-needed support through food assistance, medical care, housing, and the like.

Social Mobility

Social mobility  refers to the ability to change positions within a social stratification system. When people improve or diminish their economic status in a way that affects social class, they experience social mobility.

Individuals can experience upward or downward social mobility for a variety of reasons.  Upward mobility refers to an increase—or upward shift—in social class. In the United States, people applaud the rags-to-riches achievements of celebrities like Jennifer Lopez or Michael Jordan. Bestselling author Stephen King worked as a janitor prior to being published. Oprah Winfrey grew up in poverty in rural Mississippi before becoming a powerful media personality. There are many stories of people rising from modest beginnings to fame and fortune. But the truth is that relative to the overall population, the number of people who rise from poverty to wealth is very small. Still, upward mobility is not only about becoming rich and famous. In the United States, people who earn a college degree, get a job promotion, or marry someone with a good income may move up socially. In contrast, downward mobility  indicates a lowering of one’s social class. Some people move downward because of business setbacks, unemployment, or illness. Dropping out of school, losing a job, or getting a divorce may result in a loss of income or status and, therefore, downward social mobility.

It is not uncommon for different generations of a family to belong to varying social classes. This is known as  intergenerational mobility . For example, an upper-class executive may have parents who belonged to the middle class. In turn, those parents may have been raised in the lower class. Patterns of intergenerational mobility can reflect long-term societal changes.

Similarly,  intragenerational mobility  refers to changes in a person’s social mobility over the course of his or her lifetime. For example, the wealth and prestige experienced by one person may be quite different from that of his or her siblings.

Structural mobility  happens when societal changes enable a whole group of people to move up or down the social class ladder. Structural mobility is attributable to changes in society as a whole, not individual changes. In the first half of the twentieth century, industrialization expanded the U.S. economy, raising the standard of living and leading to upward structural mobility. In today’s work economy, the recent recession and the outsourcing of jobs overseas have contributed to high unemployment rates. Many people have experienced economic setbacks, creating a wave of downward structural mobility.

When analyzing the trends and movements in social mobility, sociologists consider all modes of mobility. Scholars recognize that mobility is not as common or easy to achieve as many people think. In fact, some consider social mobility a myth.

Class Traits

Class traits , also called class markers, are the typical behaviors, customs, and norms that define each class. Class traits indicate the level of exposure a person has to a wide range of cultures. Class traits also indicate the number of resources a person has to spend on items like hobbies, vacations, and leisure activities.

People may associate the upper class with the enjoyment of costly, refined, or highly cultivated tastes—expensive clothing, luxury cars, high-end fundraisers, and opulent vacations. People may also believe that the middle and lower classes are more likely to enjoy camping, fishing, or hunting; shopping at large retailers; and participating in community activities. While these descriptions may identify class traits, they may also simply be stereotypes. Moreover, just as class distinctions have blurred in recent decades, so too have class traits. A very wealthy person may enjoy bowling as much as opera. A factory worker could be a skilled French cook. A billionaire might dress in ripped jeans, and a low-income student might own designer shoes.

SOCIOLOGICAL RESEARCH

Turn-of-the-century “social problem novels”: sociological gold mines.

Class distinctions were sharper in the nineteenth century and earlier, in part because people easily accepted them. The ideology of social order made class structure seem natural, right, and just.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, U.S. and British novelists played a role in changing public perception. They published novels in which characters struggled to survive against a merciless class system. These dissenting authors used gender and morality to question the class system and expose its inequalities. They protested the suffering of urbanization and industrialization, drawing attention to these issues.

These “social problem novels,” sometimes called Victorian realism, forced middle-class readers into an uncomfortable position: they had to question and challenge the natural order of social class.

For speaking out so strongly about the social issues of class, authors were both praised and criticized. Most authors did not want to dissolve the class system. They wanted to bring about an awareness that would improve conditions for the lower classes while maintaining their own higher class positions (DeVine 2005).

Soon, middle-class readers were not their only audience. In 1870, Forster’s Elementary Education Act required all children ages five through twelve in England and Wales to attend school. The act increased literacy levels among the urban poor, causing a rise in sales of cheap newspapers and magazines. The increasing number of people who rode public transit systems created a demand for “railway literature,” as it was called (Williams 1984). These reading materials are credited with the move toward democratization in England. By 1900 the British middle class had established a rigid definition for itself, and England’s working-class also began to self-identify and demand a better way of life.

Many of the novels of that era are seen as sociological goldmines. They are studied as existing sources because they detail the customs and mores of the upper, middle, and lower classes of that period in history.

Examples of “social problem” novels include Charles Dickens’s  The Adventures of Oliver Twist  (1838), which shocked readers with its brutal portrayal of the realities of poverty, vice, and crime. Thomas Hardy’s  Tess of the d’Urbervilles  (1891) was considered revolutionary by critics for its depiction of working-class women (DeVine 2005), and U.S. novelist Theodore Dreiser’s  Sister Carrie (1900) portrayed an accurate and detailed description of early Chicago.

• Define global stratification
• Describe different sociological models for understanding global stratification
• Understand how studies of global stratification identify worldwide inequalities

Global stratification  compares the wealth, economic stability, status, and power of countries across the world. Global stratification highlights worldwide patterns of social inequality.

In the early years of civilization, hunter-gatherer and agrarian societies lived off the earth and rarely interacted with other societies. When explorers began traveling, societies began trading goods, as well as ideas and customs.

In the nineteenth century, the Industrial Revolution created unprecedented wealth in Western Europe and North America. Due to mechanical inventions and new means of production, people began working in factories—not only men but women and children as well. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, industrial technology had gradually raised the standard of living for many people in the United States and Europe.

The Industrial Revolution also saw the rise of vast inequalities between countries that were industrialized and those that were not. As some nations embraced technology and saw increased wealth and goods, others maintained their ways; as the gap widened, the nonindustrialized nations fell further behind. Some social researchers, such as Walt Rostow, suggest that the disparity also resulted from power differences. Applying a conflict theory perspective, he asserts that industrializing nations took advantage of the resources of traditional nations. As industrialized nations became rich, other nations became poor (Rostow 1960).

Sociologists studying global stratification analyze economic comparisons between nations. Income, purchasing power, and wealth are used to calculate global stratification. Global stratification also compares the quality of life that a country’s population can have.

Poverty levels have been shown to vary greatly. The poor in wealthy countries like the United States or Europe are much better off than the poor in less-industrialized countries such as Mali or India. In 2002, the UN implemented the Millennium Project, an attempt to cut poverty worldwide by the year 2015. To reach the project’s goal, planners in 2006 estimated that industrialized nations must set aside 0.7 percent of their gross national income—the total value of the nation’s goods and services, plus or minus income received from and sent to other nations—to aid in developing countries (Landler and Sanger, 2009; Millennium Project 2006).

Models of Global Stratification

Various models of global stratification all have one thing in common: they rank countries according to their relative economic status, or gross national product (GNP). Traditional models, now considered outdated, used labels to describe the stratification of the different areas of the world. Simply put, they were named “first world,” “second world,” and “third world.” The first and second world described industrialized nations, while the third world referred to “undeveloped” countries (Henslin 2004). When researching existing historical sources, you may still encounter these terms, and even today people still refer to some nations as the “third world.”

Another model separates countries into two groups: more developed and less developed. More-developed nations have higher wealth, such as Canada, Japan, and Australia. Less-developed nations have less wealth to distribute among higher populations, including many countries in central Africa, South America, and some island nations.

Yet another system of global classification defines countries based on the per capita gross domestic product (GDP), a country’s average national wealth per person. The GDP is calculated (usually annually) in one of two ways: by totaling either the income of all citizens or the value of all goods and services produced in the country during the year. It also includes government spending. Because the GDP indicates a country’s productivity and performance, comparing GDP rates helps establish a country’s economic health in relation to other countries.

The figures also establish a country’s standard of living. According to this analysis, the GDP standard of a middle-income nation represents a global average. In low-income countries, most people are poor relative to people in other countries. Citizens have little access to amenities such as electricity, plumbing, and clean water. People in low-income countries are not guaranteed education, and many are illiterate. The life expectancy of citizens is lower than in high-income countries.

BIG PICTURE

Calculating global stratification.

A few organizations take on the job of comparing the wealth of nations. The Population Reference Bureau (PRB) is one of them. Besides having a focus on population data, the PRB publishes an annual report that measures the relative economic well-being of all the world’s countries. It’s called the Gross National Income (GNI) and Purchasing Power Parity (PPP).

The GNI measures the current value of goods and services produced by a country. The PPP measures the relative power a country has to purchase those same goods and services. So, GNI refers to productive output and PPP refers to buying power. The total figure is divided by the number of residents living in a country to establish the average income of a resident of that country.

Because the costs of goods and services vary from one country to the next, the GNI PPP converts figures into a relative international unit. Calculating GNI PPP figures helps researchers accurately compare countries’ standards of living. They allow the United Nations and Population Reference Bureau to compare and rank the wealth of all countries and consider international stratification issues (nationsonline.org).

• Understand and apply functionalist, conflict theory, and interactionist perspectives on social stratification

Basketball is one of the highest-paying professional sports. There is stratification even among teams. For example, the Minnesota Timberwolves hand out the lowest annual payroll, while the Los Angeles Lakers reportedly pay the highest. Kobe Bryant, a former Lakers shooting guard, was one of the highest-paid athletes in the NBA, earning around $30.5 million a year (Forbes 2014). Even within specific fields, layers are stratified and members are ranked.

In sociology, even an issue such as NBA salaries can be seen from various points of view. Functionalists will examine the purpose of such high salaries, while conflict theorists will study the exorbitant salaries as an unfair distribution of money. Social stratification takes on new meanings when it is examined from different sociological perspectives—functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism.

Functionalism

In sociology, the functionalist perspective examines how society’s parts operate. According to functionalism, different aspects of society exist because they serve a needed purpose. What is the function of social stratification?

In 1945, sociologists Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore published the  Davis-Moore thesis , which argued that the greater the functional importance of a social role, the greater must be the reward. The theory posits that social stratification represents the inherently unequal value of different work. Certain tasks in society are more valuable than others. Qualified people who fill those positions must be rewarded more than others.

According to Davis and Moore, a firefighter’s job is more important than, for instance, a grocery store cashier’s. The cashier position does not require the same skill and training level as firefighting. Without the incentive of higher pay and better benefits, why would someone be willing to rush into burning buildings? If pay levels were the same, the firefighter might as well work as a grocery store cashier. Davis and Moore believed that rewarding more important work with higher levels of income, prestige, and power encourages people to work harder and longer.

Davis and Moore stated that, in most cases, the degree of skill required for a job determines that job’s importance. They also stated that the more skill required for a job, the fewer qualified people there would be to do that job. Certain jobs, such as cleaning hallways or answering phones, do not require much skill. The employees don’t need a college degree. Other work, like designing a highway system or delivering a baby, requires immense skill.

In 1953, Melvin Tumin countered the Davis-Moore thesis in “Some Principles of Stratification: A Critical Analysis.” Tumin questioned what determined a job’s degree of importance. The Davis-Moore thesis does not explain, he argued, why a media personality with little education, skill, or talent becomes famous and rich on a reality show or a campaign trail. The thesis also does not explain inequalities in the education system or inequalities due to race or gender. Tumin believed social stratification prevented qualified people from attempting to fill roles (Tumin 1953). For example, an underprivileged youth has less chance of becoming a scientist, no matter how smart she is, because of the relative lack of opportunity available to her. The Davis-Moore thesis also does not explain why a basketball player earns millions of dollars a year when a doctor who saves lives, a soldier who fights for others’ rights, and a teacher who helps form the minds of tomorrow will likely not make millions over the course of their careers.

The Davis-Moore thesis, though open for debate, was an early attempt to explain why stratification exists. The thesis states that social stratification is necessary to promote excellence, productivity, and efficiency, thus giving people something to strive for. Davis and Moore believed that the system serves society as a whole because it allows everyone to benefit to a certain extent.

Conflict Theory

Conflict theorists are deeply critical of social stratification, asserting that it benefits only some people, not all of society. For instance, to a conflict theorist, it seems wrong that a basketball player is paid millions for an annual contract while a public school teacher earns $35,000 a year. Stratification, conflict theorists believe, perpetuates inequality. Conflict theorists try to bring awareness to inequalities, such as how a rich society can have so many poor members.

Many conflict theorists draw on the work of Karl Marx. During the nineteenth-century era of industrialization, Marx believed social stratification resulted from people’s relationship to production. People were divided by a single line: they either owned factories or worked in them. In Marx’s time, bourgeois capitalists owned high-producing businesses, factories, and land, as they still do today. Proletariats were the workers who performed manual labor to produce goods. Upper-class capitalists raked in profits and got rich, while working-class proletariats earned skimpy wages and struggled to survive. With such opposing interests, the two groups were divided by differences in wealth and power. Marx saw workers experience deep alienation, isolation, and misery resulting from powerless status levels (Marx 1848). Marx argued that proletariats were oppressed by the money-hungry bourgeois.

Today, while working conditions have improved, conflict theorists believe that the strained working relationship between employers and employees still exists. Capitalists own the means of production, and a system is in place to make business owners rich and keep workers poor. According to conflict theorists, the resulting stratification creates class conflict. If he were alive in today’s economy, as it recovers from a prolonged recession, Marx would likely have argued that the recession resulted from the greed of capitalists, satisfied at the expense of working people.

Symbolic Interactionism

Symbolic interactionism is a theory that uses the everyday interactions of individuals to explain society as a whole. Symbolic interactionism examines stratification from a micro-level perspective. This analysis strives to explain how people’s social standing affects their everyday interactions.

In most communities, people interact primarily with others who share the same social standing. It is precisely because of social stratification that people tend to live, work, and associate with others like themselves, people who share the same income level, educational background, or racial background, and even tastes in food, music, and clothing. The built-in system of social stratification groups people together. This is one of the reasons why it was rare for a royal prince like England’s Prince William to marry a commoner.

Symbolic interactionists also note that people’s appearance reflects their perceived social standing. Housing, clothing, and transportation indicate social status, as do hairstyles, taste in accessories, and personal style.

To symbolically communicate social standing, people often engage in  conspicuous consumption , which is the purchase and use of certain products to make a social statement about status. Carrying pricey but eco-friendly water bottles could indicate a person’s social standing. Some people buy expensive trendy sneakers even though they will never wear them to jog or play sports. A $17,000 car provides transportation as easily as a $100,000 vehicle, but the luxury car makes a social statement that the less expensive car can’t live up to. All these symbols of stratification are worthy of examination by interactions.

Introduction to Global Inequality

The April 24, 2013 collapse of the Rana Plaza in Dhaka, Bangladesh which killed over 1,100 people, was the deadliest garment factory accident in history, and it was preventable (International Labour Organization, Department of Communication 2014).

In addition to garment factories employing about 5,000 people, the building contained a bank, apartments, childcare facilities, and a variety of shops. Many of these closed the day before the collapse when cracks were discovered in the building walls. When some of the garment workers refused to enter the building, they were threatened with the loss of a month’s pay. Most were young women, aged twenty or younger. They typically worked over thirteen hours a day, with two days off each month. For this work, they took home between twelve and twenty-two cents an hour, or $10.56 to $12.48 a week. Without that pay, most would have been unable to feed their children. In contrast, the U.S. federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, and workers receive wages at time-and-a-half rates for work in excess of forty hours a week.

Did you buy clothes from Walmart in 2012? What about at The Children’s Place? Did you ever think about where those clothes came from? Of the outsourced garments made in the garment factories, 32 percent were intended for U.S., Canadian, and European stores. In the aftermath of the collapse, it was revealed that Walmart jeans were made in the Ether Tex garment factory on the fifth floor of the Rana Plaza building, while 120,000 pounds of clothing for The Children’s Place were produced in the New Wave Style Factory, also located in the building. Afterward, Walmart and The Children’s Place pledged $1 million and $450,000 (respectively) to the Rana Plaza Trust Fund, but fifteen other companies with clothing made in the building have contributed nothing, including U.S. companies Cato and J.C. Penney (Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights 2014).

While you read this chapter, think about the global system that allows U.S. companies to outsource their manufacturing to peripheral nations, where many women and children work in conditions that some characterize as slave labor. Do people in the United States have a responsibility to foreign workers? Should U.S. corporations be held accountable for what happens to garment factory workers who make their clothing? What can you do as a consumer to help such workers?

• Describe global stratification
• Understand how different classification systems have developed
• Use terminology from Wallerstein’s world-systems approach
• Explain the World Bank’s classification of economies

Just as the United States’ wealth is increasingly concentrated among its richest citizens while the middle class slowly disappears,  global inequality  is concentrating resources in certain nations and is significantly affecting the opportunities of individuals in poorer and less powerful countries. In fact, a recent Oxfam (2014) report that suggested the richest eighty-five people in the world are worth more than the poorest 3.5 billion combined. The  Gini coefficient measures income inequality between countries using a 100-point scale on which 1 represents complete equality and 100 represents the highest possible inequality. In 2007, the global Gini coefficient that measured the wealth gap between the core nations in the northern part of the world and the most peripheral nations in the southern part of the world was 75.5 percent (Korseniewicz and Moran 2009). But before we delve into the complexities of global inequality, let’s consider how the three major sociological perspectives might contribute to our understanding of it.

The functionalist perspective is a macro analytical view that focuses on the way that all aspects of society are integral to the continued health and viability of the whole. A functionalist might focus on why we have global inequality and what social purposes it serves. This view might assert, for example, that we have global inequality because some nations are better than others at adapting to new technologies and profiting from a globalized economy, and that when core nation companies locate in peripheral nations, they expand the local economy and benefit the workers.

Conflict theory focuses on the creation and reproduction of inequality. A conflict theorist would likely address the systematic inequality created when core nations exploit the resources of peripheral nations. For example, how many U.S. companies take advantage of overseas workers who lack the constitutional protection and guaranteed minimum wages that exist in the United States? Doing so allows them to maximize profits, but at what cost?

The symbolic interaction perspective studies the day-to-day impact of global inequality, the meanings individuals attach to global stratification, and the subjective nature of poverty. Someone applying this view to global inequality would probably focus on understanding the difference between what someone living in a core nation defines as poverty (relative poverty, defined as being unable to live the lifestyle of the average person in your country) and what someone living in a peripheral nation defines as poverty (absolute poverty, defined as being barely able, or unable, to afford basic necessities, such as food).

Global Stratification

While stratification in the United States refers to the unequal distribution of resources among individuals,  global stratification  refers to this unequal distribution among nations. There are two dimensions to this stratification: gaps between nations and gaps within nations. When it comes to global inequality, both economic inequality and social inequality may concentrate the burden of poverty among certain segments of the earth’s population (Myrdal 1970). As the chart below illustrates, people’s life expectancy depends heavily on where they happen to be born.

Most of us are accustomed to thinking of global stratification as economic inequality. For example, we can compare the United States’ average worker’s wage to America’s average wage. Social inequality, however, is just as harmful as economic discrepancies. Prejudice and discrimination—whether against a certain race, ethnicity, religion, or the like—can create and aggravate conditions of economic equality, both within and between nations. Think about the inequity that existed for decades within the nation of South Africa. Apartheid, one of the most extreme cases of institutionalized and legal racism, created a social inequality that earned it the world’s condemnation.

Gender inequity is another global concern. Consider the controversy surrounding female genital mutilation. Nations that practice this female circumcision procedure defend it as a longstanding cultural tradition in certain tribes and argue that the West shouldn’t interfere. Western nations, however, decry the practice and are working to stop it.

Inequalities based on sexual orientation and gender identity exist around the globe. According to Amnesty International, a number of crimes are committed against individuals who do not conform to traditional gender roles or sexual orientations (however those are culturally defined). From culturally sanctioned rape to state-sanctioned executions, the abuses are serious. These legalized and culturally accepted forms of prejudice and discrimination exist everywhere—from the United States to Somalia to Tibet—restricting the freedom of individuals and often putting their lives at risk (Amnesty International 2012).

Global Classification

A major concern when discussing global inequality is how to avoid an ethnocentric bias implying that less-developed nations want to be like those who’ve attained post-industrial global power. Terms such as developing (nonindustrialized) and developed (industrialized) imply that unindustrialized countries are somehow inferior and must improve to participate successfully in the global economy, a label indicating all aspects of the economy across national borders. We must take care in how we delineate different countries. Over time, the terminology has shifted to make way for a more inclusive view of the world.

Cold War Terminology

Cold War terminology was developed during the Cold War era (1945–1980). Familiar and still used by many, it classifies countries as first-world, second-world, and third-world nations based on their respective economic development and standards of living. When this nomenclature was developed, capitalistic democracies such as the United States and Japan were considered part of the first world . The poorest, most undeveloped countries were referred to as the  third world  and included most of sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and Asia. The  second world was the in-between category: nations not as limited in development as the third world but not as well off as the first world, having moderate economies and standards of living, such as China or Cuba. Later, sociologist Manual Castells (1998) added the term fourth world  to refer to stigmatized minority groups that were denied a political voice all over the globe (indigenous minority populations, prisoners, and the homeless, for example).

Also during the Cold War, global inequality was described in terms of economic development. Along with developing and developed nations, the terms less-developed nation and underdeveloped nation were used. This was the era when the idea of  noblesse oblige  (first-world responsibility) took root, suggesting that the so-termed developed nations should provide foreign aid to the less-developed and underdeveloped nations in order to raise their standard of living.

Immanuel Wallerstein: World Systems Approach

Immanuel Wallerstein’s (1979) world systems approach uses an economic basis to understand global inequality. Wallerstein conceived of the global economy as a complex system that supports an economic hierarchy that places some nations in positions of power with numerous resources and other nations in a state of economic subordination. Those that are in a state of subordination face significant obstacles to mobilization.

Core nations  are dominant capitalist countries, highly industrialized, technological, and urbanized. For example, Wallerstein contends that the United States is an economic powerhouse that can support or deny support to important economic legislation with far-reaching implications, thus exerting control over every aspect of the global economy and exploiting both semi-peripheral and peripheral nations. We can look at free trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) as an example of how a core nation is able to leverage its power to gain the most advantageous position in the matter of global trade.

Peripheral nations have very little industrialization; what they do have often represents the outdated castoffs of core nations or the factories and means of production owned by core nations. They typically have unstable governments and inadequate social programs, and they are economically dependent on core nations for jobs and aid. There are abundant examples of countries in this category, such as Vietnam and Cuba. We can be sure the workers in a Cuban cigar factory, for example, which is owned or leased by global core nation companies, are not enjoying the same privileges and rights as U.S. workers.

Semi-peripheral nations are in-between nations, not powerful enough to dictate policy but nevertheless acting as a major source of raw material and an expanding middle-class marketplace for core nations, while also exploiting peripheral nations. Mexico is an example, providing abundant cheap agricultural labor to the U.S. and supplying goods to the United States market at a rate dictated by the U.S. without the constitutional protections offered to United States workers.

World Bank Economic Classification by Income

While the World Bank is often criticized, both for its policies and its method of calculating data, it is still a common source of global economic data. Along with tracking the economy, the World Bank tracks demographics and environmental health to provide a complete picture of whether a nation is high income, middle income, or low income.

High-Income Nations

The World Bank defines high-income nations as having a gross national income of at least $12,746 per capita. The OECD (Organization for Economic and Cooperative Development) countries make up a group of thirty-four nations whose governments work together to promote economic growth and sustainability. According to the World Bank (2014b), in 2013, the average  gross national income (GNI) per capita (or the mean income of the people in a nation, found by dividing the total GNI by the total population) of a high-income nation belonging to the OECD was $43,903 per capita and the total population was over one billion (1.045 billion); on average, 81 percent of the population in these nations was urban. Some of these countries include the United States, Germany, Canada, and the United Kingdom (World Bank 2014b).

High-income countries face two major issues: capital flight and deindustrialization. Capital flight  refers to the movement (flight) of capital from one nation to another, as when General Motors automotive company closed U.S. factories in Michigan and opened factories in Mexico.  Deindustrialization , a related issue, occurs as a consequence of capital flight, as no new companies open to replace jobs lost to foreign nations. As expected, global companies move their industrial processes to the places where they can get the most production with the least cost, including the building of infrastructure, training of workers, shipping of goods, and, of course, paying employee wages. This means that as emerging economies create their own industrial zones, global companies see the opportunity for existing infrastructure and much lower costs. Those opportunities lead to businesses closing the factories that provide jobs to the middle class within core nations and moving their industrial production to peripheral and semi-peripheral nations.

Capital Flight, Outsourcing, and Jobs in the United States

Capital flight describes jobs and infrastructure moving from one nation to another. Look at the U.S. automobile industry. In the early twentieth century, the cars driven in the United States were made here, employing thousands of workers in Detroit and in the companies that produced everything that made building cars possible. However, once the fuel crisis of the 1970s hit and people in the United States increasingly looked to imported cars with better gas mileage, U.S. auto manufacturing began to decline. During the 2007–2009 recession, the U.S. government bailed out the three main auto companies, underscoring their vulnerability. At the same time, Japanese-owned Toyota and Honda and South Korean Kia maintained stable sales levels.

Capital flight also occurs when services (as opposed to manufacturing) are relocated. Chances are if you have called the tech support line for your cell phone or Internet provider, you’ve spoken to someone halfway across the globe. This professional might tell you her name is Susan or Joan, but her accent makes it clear that her real name might be Parvati or Indira. It might be the middle of the night in that country, yet these service providers pick up the line saying, “Good morning,” as though they are in the next town over. They know everything about your phone or your modem, often using a remote server to log in to your home computer to accomplish what is needed. These are the workers of the twenty-first century. They are not on factory floors or in traditional sweatshops; they are educated, speak at least two languages, and usually have significant technical skills. They are skilled workers, but they are paid a fraction of what similar workers are paid in the United States. For U.S. and multinational companies, the equation makes sense. India and other semi-peripheral countries have emerging infrastructures and education systems to fill their needs, without core nation costs.

As services are relocated, so are jobs. In the United States, unemployment is high. Many college-educated people are unable to find work, and those with only a high school diploma are in even worse shape. We have, as a country, outsourced ourselves out of jobs, and not just menial jobs, but white-collar work as well. But before we complain too bitterly, we must look at the culture of consumerism that we embrace. A flat-screen television that might have cost $1,000 a few years ago is now $350. That cost-saving has to come from somewhere. When consumers seek the lowest possible price, shop at big box stores for the biggest discount they can get, and generally ignore other factors in exchange for low cost, they are building the market for outsourcing. And as the demand is built, the market will ensure it is met, even at the expense of the people who wanted it in the first place.

Middle-Income Nations

The World Bank defines middle-income economies as those with a GNI per capita of more than $1,045 but less than $12,746. According to the World Bank (2014), in 2013, the average GNI per capita of an upper-middle-income nation was $7,594 per capita with a total population of 2.049 billion, of which 62 percent was urban. Thailand, China, and Namibia are examples of middle-income nations (World Bank 2014a).

Perhaps the most pressing issue for middle-income nations is the problem of debt accumulation. As the name suggests,  debt accumulation  is the buildup of external debt, wherein countries borrow money from other nations to fund their expansion or growth goals. As the uncertainties of the global economy make repaying these debts, or even paying the interest on them, more challenging, nations can find themselves in trouble. Once global markets have reduced the value of a country’s goods, it can be very difficult to ever manage the debt burden. Such issues have plagued middle-income countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as East Asian and Pacific nations (Dogruel and Dogruel 2007). By way of example, even in the European Union, which is composed of more core nations than semi-peripheral nations, the semi-peripheral nations of Italy and Greece face increasing debt burdens. The economic downturns in both Greece and Italy still threaten the economy of the entire European Union.

Low-Income Nations

The World Bank defines low-income countries as nations whose per capita GNI was $1,045 per capita or less in 2013. According to the World Bank (2014a), in 2013, the average per capita GNI of a low-income nation was $528 per capita and the total population was 796,261,360, with 28 percent located in urban areas. For example, Myanmar, Ethiopia, and Somalia are considered low-income countries. Low-income economies are primarily found in Asia and Africa (World Bank 2014a), where most of the world’s population lives. There are two major challenges that these countries face: women are disproportionately affected by poverty (in a trend toward a global feminization of poverty), and much of the population lives in absolute poverty.

• Understand the differences between relative, absolute, and subjective poverty
• Describe the economic situation of some of the world’s most impoverished areas
• Explain the cyclical impact of the consequences of poverty

What does it mean to be poor? Does it mean being a single mother with two kids in New York City, waiting for the next paycheck in order to buy groceries? Does it mean living with almost no furniture in your apartment because your income doesn’t allow for extras like beds or chairs? Or does it mean having to live with the distended bellies of the chronically malnourished throughout the peripheral nations of Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia? Poverty has a thousand faces and a thousand gradations; there is no single definition that pulls together every part of the spectrum. You might feel you are poor if you can’t afford cable television or buy your own car. Every time you see a fellow student with a new laptop and smartphone you might feel that you, with your ten-year-old desktop computer, are barely keeping up. However, someone else might look at the clothes you wear and the calories you consume and consider you rich.

Types of Poverty

Social scientists define global poverty in different ways and take into account the complexities and the issues of relativism described above.  Relative poverty is a state of living where people can afford necessities but are unable to meet their society’s average standard of living. People often disparage “keeping up with the Joneses”—the idea that you must keep up with the neighbors’ standard of living to not feel deprived. But it is true that you might feel “poor” if you are living without a car to drive to and from work, without any money for a safety net should a family member fall ill, and without any “extras” beyond just making ends meet.

Contrary to relative poverty, people who live in  absolute poverty  lack even the basic necessities, which typically include adequate food, clean water, safe housing, and access to healthcare. Absolute poverty is defined by the World Bank (2014a) as when someone lives on less than $1.25 a day. According to the most recent estimates, in 2011, about 17 percent of people in the developing world lived at or below $1.25 a day, a decrease of 26 percent compared to ten years ago, and an overall decrease of 35 percent compared to twenty years ago. A shocking number of people––88 million––live in absolute poverty, and close to 3 billion people live on less than $2.50 a day (Shah 2011). If you were forced to live on $2.50 a day, how would you do it? What would you deem worthy of spending money on, and what could you do without? How would you manage the necessities—and how would you make up the gap between what you need to live and what you can afford?

Subjective poverty describes poverty that is composed of many dimensions; it is subjectively present when your actual income does not meet your expectations and perceptions. With the concept of subjective poverty, the poor themselves have a greater say in recognizing when it is present. In short, subjective poverty has more to do with how a person or a family defines themselves. This means that a family subsisting on a few dollars a day in Nepal might think of themselves as doing well, within their perception of normal. However, a westerner traveling to Nepal might visit the same family and see an extreme need.

The Underground Economy Around the World

What do the driver of an unlicensed hack cab in New York, a piecework seamstress working from her home in Mumbai, and a street tortilla vendor in Mexico City have in common? They are all members of the  underground economy , a loosely defined unregulated market unhindered by taxes, government permits, or human protections. Official statistics before the worldwide recession posit that the underground economy accounted for over 50 percent of nonagricultural work in Latin America; the figure went as high as 80 percent in parts of Asia and Africa (Chen 2001). A recent article in the  Wall Street Journal  discusses the challenges, parameters, and surprising benefits of this informal marketplace. The wages earned in most underground economy jobs, especially in peripheral nations, are a pittance––a few rupees for a handmade bracelet at a market, or maybe 250 rupees ($5 U.S.) for a day’s worth of fruit and vegetable sales (Barta 2009). But these tiny sums mark the difference between survival and extinction for the world’s poor.

The underground economy has never been viewed very positively by global economists. After all, its members don’t pay taxes, don’t take out loans to grow their businesses, and rarely earn enough to put money back into the economy in the form of consumer spending. But according to the International Labor Organization (an agency of the United Nations), some 52 million people worldwide will lose their jobs due to the ongoing worldwide recession. And while those in core nations know that high unemployment rates and limited government safety nets can be frightening, their situation is nothing compared to the loss of a job for those barely eking out an existence. Once that job disappears, the chance of staying afloat is very slim.

Within the context of this recession, some see the underground economy as a key player in keeping people alive. Indeed, an economist at the World Bank credits jobs created by the informal economy as a primary reason why peripheral nations are not in worse shape during this recession. Women in particular benefit from the informal sector. The majority of economically active women in peripheral nations are engaged in the informal sector, which is somewhat buffered from the economic downturn. The flip side, of course, is that it is equally buffered by the possibility of economic growth.

Even in the United States, the informal economy exists, although not on the same scale as in peripheral and semi-peripheral nations. It might include under-the-table nannies, gardeners, and housecleaners, as well as unlicensed street vendors and taxi drivers. There are also those who run informal businesses, like daycares or salons, from their houses. Analysts estimate that this type of labor may make up 10 percent of the overall U.S. economy, a number that will likely grow as companies reduce headcounts, leaving more workers to seek other options. In the end, the article suggests that, whether selling medicinal wines in Thailand or woven bracelets in India, the workers of the underground economy at least have what most people want most of all: a chance to stay afloat (Barta 2009).

Who Are the Impoverished?

Who are the impoverished? Who is living in absolute poverty? The truth that most of us would guess is that the richest countries are often those with the least people. Compare the United States, which possesses a relatively small slice of the population pie and owns by far the largest slice of the wealth pie, with India. These disparities have the expected consequence. The poorest people in the world are women and those in peripheral and semi-peripheral nations. For women, the rate of poverty is particularly worsened by the pressure on their time. In general, time is one of the few luxuries the very poor have, but study after study has shown that women in poverty, who are responsible for all family comforts as well as any earnings they can make, have less of it. The result is that while men and women may have the same rate of economic poverty, women are suffering more in terms of overall wellbeing (Buvinic 1997). It is harder for females to get credit to expand businesses, to take the time to learn a new skill, or to spend extra hours improving their craft so as to be able to earn at a higher rate.

Global Feminization of Poverty

In some ways, the phrase “global feminization of poverty” says it all: around the world, women are bearing a disproportionate percentage of the burden of poverty. This means more women live in poor conditions, receive inadequate healthcare, bear the brunt of malnutrition and inadequate drinking water, and so on. Throughout the 1990s, data indicated that while overall poverty rates were rising, especially in peripheral nations, the rates of impoverishment increased for women by nearly 20 percent more than for men (Mogadham 2005).

Why is this happening? While myriad variables affect women’s poverty, research specializing in this issue identifies three causes (Mogadham 2005):

• The expansion in the number of female-headed households
• The persistence and consequences of intra-household inequalities and biases against women
• The implementation of neoliberal economic policies around the world

While women are living longer and healthier lives today compared to ten years ago, around the world many women are denied basic rights, particularly in the workplace. In peripheral nations, they accumulate fewer assets, farm less land, make less money, and face restricted civil rights and liberties. Women can stimulate the economic growth of peripheral nations, but they are often undereducated and lack access to the credit needed to start small businesses.

In 2013, the United Nations assessed its progress toward achieving its Millennium Development Goals. Goal 3 was to promote gender equality and empower women, and there were encouraging advances in this area. While women’s employment outside the agricultural sector remains under 20 percent in Western Asia, Northern Africa, and Southern Asia, worldwide it increased from 35 percent to 40 percent over the twenty-year period ending in 2010 (United Nations 2013).

The majority of the poorest countries in the world are in Africa. That is not to say there is no diversity within the countries of that continent; countries like South Africa and Egypt have much lower rates of poverty than Angola and Ethiopia, for instance. Overall, African income levels have been dropping relative to the rest of the world, meaning that Africa as a whole is getting relatively poorer. Making the problem worse, 2014 saw an outbreak of the Ebola virus in western Africa, leading to a public health crisis and an economic downturn due to the loss of workers and tourist dollars.

Why is Africa in such dire straits? Much of the continent’s poverty can be traced to the availability of land, especially arable land (land that can be farmed). Centuries of struggle over land ownership have meant that much useable land has been ruined or left unfarmed, while many countries with inadequate rainfall have never set up an infrastructure to irrigate. Many of Africa’s natural resources were long ago taken by colonial forces, leaving little agricultural and mineral wealth on the continent.

Further, African poverty is worsened by civil wars and inadequate governance that are the result of a continent re-imagined with artificial colonial borders and leaders. Consider the example of Rwanda. There, two ethnic groups cohabitated with their own system of hierarchy and management until Belgians took control of the country in 1915 and rigidly confined members of the population into two unequal ethnic groups. While, historically, members of the Tutsi group held positions of power, the involvement of Belgians led to the Hutu seizing power during a 1960s revolt. This ultimately led to a repressive government and genocide against Tutsis that left hundreds of thousands of Rwandans dead or living in diaspora (U.S. Department of State 2011c). The painful rebirth of a self-ruled Africa has meant many countries bear ongoing scars as they try to see their way toward the future (World Poverty 2012a).

While the majority of the world’s poorest countries are in Africa, the majority of the world’s poorest people are in Asia. As in Africa, Asia finds itself with a disparity in the distribution of poverty, with Japan and South Korea holding much more wealth than India and Cambodia. In fact, most poverty is concentrated in South Asia. One of the most pressing causes of poverty in Asia is simply the pressure that the size of the population puts on its resources. In fact, many believe that China’s success in recent times has much to do with its draconian population control rules. According to the U.S. State Department, China’s market-oriented reforms have contributed to its significant reduction of poverty and the speed at which it has experienced an increase in income levels (U.S. Department of State 2011b). However, every part of Asia is feeling the current global recession, from the poorest countries whose aid packages will be hit to the more industrialized ones whose own industries are slowing down. These factors make poverty on the ground unlikely to improve any time soon (World Poverty 2012b).

The Middle East and North Africa region (MENA) includes oil-rich countries in the Gulf, such as Iran, Iraq, and Kuwait, but also countries that are relatively resource-poor in relationship to their populations, such as Morocco and Yemen. These countries are predominately Islamic. For the last quarter-century, economic growth has been slower in MENA than in other developing economies, and almost a quarter of the 300 million people who make up the population live on less than $2.00 a day (World Bank 2013).

The International Labour Organization tracks the way income inequality influences social unrest. The two regions with the highest risk of social unrest are Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East and North Africa region (International Labour Organization 2012). Increasing unemployment and high socioeconomic inequality in MENA were major factors in the Arab Spring, which—beginning in 2010—toppled dictatorships throughout the Middle East in favor of democratically elected governments. Unemployment and income inequalities are still being blamed on immigrants, foreign nationals, and ethnic/religious minorities.

SOCIOLOGY IN THE REAL WORLD

Sweatshops and student protests: who’s making your team spirit.

Most of us don’t pay too much attention to where our favorite products are made. And certainly, when you’re shopping for a college sweatshirt or ball cap to wear to a school football game, you probably don’t turn over the label, check who produced the item, and then research whether or not the company has fair labor practices. But for the members of USAS––United Students Against Sweatshops––that’s exactly what they do. The organization, which was founded in 1997, has waged countless battles against both apparel makers and other multinational corporations that do not meet what USAS considers fair working conditions and wages (USAS 2009).

Sometimes their demonstrations take on a sensationalist tone, as in 2006 when twenty Penn State students protested while naked or nearly naked, in order to draw attention to the issue of sweatshop labor. The school is actually already a member of an independent monitoring organization called the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), which monitors working conditions and works to assist colleges and universities in maintaining compliance with their labor code. But the students were protesting in order to have the same code of conduct applied to the factories that provide materials for the goods, not just where the final product is assembled (Chronicle of Higher Education 2006).

The USAS organization has chapters on over 250 campuses in the United States and Canada and has waged countless campaigns against companies like Nike and Forever 21 apparel, Taco Bell restaurants, and Sodexo food service. In 2000, members of USAS helped to create the WRC. Schools that affiliate with the WRC pay annual fees that help offset the organization’s costs. Over 180 schools are affiliated with the organization. Yet, USAS still sees signs of inequality everywhere. And its members feel that, as current and future workers, they are responsible for ensuring that workers of the world are treated fairly. For them, at least, the global inequality we see everywhere should not be ignored for a team spirit sweatshirt.

Consequences of Poverty

Not surprisingly, the consequences of poverty are often also causes. The poor often experience inadequate healthcare, limited education, and the inaccessibility of birth control. But those born into these conditions are incredibly challenged in their efforts to break out since these consequences of poverty are also causes of poverty, perpetuating a cycle of disadvantage.

According to sociologists Neckerman and Torche (2007) in their analysis of global inequality studies, the consequences of poverty are many. Neckerman and Torche have divided them into three areas. The first, termed “the sedimentation of global inequality,” relates to the fact that once poverty becomes entrenched in an area, it is typically very difficult to reverse. As mentioned above, poverty exists in a cycle where the consequences and causes are intertwined. The second consequence of poverty is its effect on physical and mental health. Poor people face physical health challenges, including malnutrition and high infant mortality rates. Mental health is also detrimentally affected by the emotional stresses of poverty, with relative deprivation carrying the most robust effect. Again, as with the ongoing inequality, the effects of poverty on mental and physical health become more entrenched as time goes on. Neckerman and Torche’s third consequence of poverty is the prevalence of crime. Cross-nationally, crime rates are higher, particularly for violent crime, in countries with higher levels of income inequality (Fajnzylber, Lederman, and Loayza 2002).

While most of us are accustomed to thinking of slavery in terms of the antebellum South, modern-day slavery goes hand-in-hand with global inequality. In short, slavery refers to any situation in which people are sold, treated as property, or forced to work for little or no pay. Just as in the pre–Civil War United States, these humans are at the mercy of their employers. Chattel slavery , the form of slavery once practiced in the American South, occurs when one person owns another as property. Child slavery, which may include child prostitution, is a form of chattel slavery. In  debt bondage  or bonded labor, the poor pledge themselves as servants in exchange for the cost of basic necessities like transportation, room, and board. In this scenario, people are paid less than they are charged for room and board. When travel is required, they can arrive in debt for their travel expenses and be unable to work their way free, since their wages do not allow them to ever get ahead.

The global watchdog group Anti-Slavery International recognizes other forms of slavery: human trafficking (in which people are moved away from their communities and forced to work against their will), child domestic work and child labor, and certain forms of servile marriage, in which women are little more than chattel slaves (Anti-Slavery International 2012).

• Describe the modernization and dependency theory perspectives on global stratification

As with any social issue, global or otherwise, scholars have developed a variety of theories to study global stratification. The two most widely applied perspectives are modernization theory and dependency theory.

Modernization Theory

According to  modernization theory , low-income countries are affected by their lack of industrialization and can improve their global economic standing by the following (Armer and Katsillis 2010):

• an adjustment of cultural values and attitudes to work
• industrialization and other forms of economic growth

Critics point out the inherent ethnocentric bias of this theory. It supposes all countries have the same resources and are capable of following the same path. In addition, it assumes that the goal of all countries is to be as “developed” as possible. There is no room within this theory for the possibility that industrialization and technology are not the best goals.

There is, of course, some basis for this assumption. Data show that core nations tend to have lower maternal and child mortality rates, longer life spans, and less absolute poverty. It is also true that in the poorest countries, millions of people die from the lack of clean drinking water and sanitation facilities, which are benefits most of us take for granted. At the same time, the issue is more complex than the numbers might suggest. Cultural equality, history, community, and local traditions are all at risk as modernization pushes into peripheral countries. The challenge, then, is to allow the benefits of modernization while maintaining a cultural sensitivity to what already exists.

Dependency Theory

Dependency theory was created in part as a response to the Western-centric mindset of modernization theory. It states that global inequality is primarily caused by core nations (or high-income nations) exploiting semi-peripheral and peripheral nations (or middle-income and low-income nations), which creates a cycle of dependence (Hendricks 2010). As long as peripheral nations are dependent on core nations for economic stimulus and access to a larger piece of the global economy, they will never achieve stable and consistent economic growth. Further, the theory states that since core nations, as well as the World Bank, choose which countries to make loans to and for what they will loan funds, they are creating highly segmented labor markets that are built to benefit the dominant market countries.

At first glance, it seems this theory ignores the formerly low-income nations that are now considered middle-income nations and are on their way to becoming high-income nations and major players in the global economy, such as China. But some dependency theorists would state that it is in the best interests of core nations to ensure the long-term use of their peripheral and semi-peripheral partners. Following that theory, sociologists have found that entities are more likely to outsource a significant portion of a company’s work if they are the dominant player in the equation; in other words, companies want to see their partner countries healthy enough to provide work, but not so healthy as to establish a threat (Caniels and Roeleveld 2009).

Factory Girls

We’ve examined functionalist and conflict theorist perspectives on global inequality, as well as modernization and dependency theories. How might a symbolic interactionist approach this topic?

The book  Factory Girls: From Village to City in Changing China , by Leslie T. Chang, provides this opportunity. Chang follows two young women (Min and Chunming) employed at a handbag plant. They help manufacture coveted purses and bags for the global market. As part of the growing population of young people who are leaving behind the homesteads and farms of rural China, these female factory workers are ready to enter the urban fray and pursue an ambitious income.

Although Chang’s study is based in a town many have never heard of (Dongguan), this city produces one-third of all shoes on the planet (Nike and Reebok are major manufacturers here) and 30 percent of the world’s computer disk drives, in addition to an abundance of apparel (Chang 2008).

But Chang’s focus is centered less on this global phenomenon on a large scale than on how it affects these two women. As a symbolic interactionist would do, Chang examines the daily lives and interactions of Min and Chunming—their workplace friendships, family relationships, gadgets, and goods—in this evolving global space where young women can leave tradition behind and fashion their own futures. Their story is one that all people, not just scholars, can learn from as we contemplate sociological issues like global economies, cultural traditions and innovations, and opportunities for women in the workforce.

Section Quiz

6.1   what is social stratification.

1 . What factor makes caste systems closed?

• They are run by secretive governments.
• People cannot change their social standings.
• Most have been outlawed.
• They exist only in rural areas.

2 . What factor makes class systems open?

• They allow for movement between the classes.
• People are more open-minded.
• People are encouraged to socialize within their class.
• They do not have clearly defined layers.

3 . Which of these systems allows for the most social mobility?

4 . Which person best illustrates opportunities for upward social mobility in the United States?

• First-shift factory worker
• First-generation college student
• The firstborn son who inherits the family business
• A first-time interviewee who is hired for a job

5 . Which statement illustrates low-status consistency?

• A suburban family lives in a modest ranch home and enjoys a nice vacation each summer.
• A single mother receives food stamps and struggles to find adequate employment.
• A college dropout launches an online company that earns millions in its first year.
• A celebrity actress owns homes in three countries.

6 . Based on meritocracy, a physician’s assistant would:

• receive the same pay as all the other physician’s assistants
• be encouraged to earn a higher degree to seek a better position
• most likely marry a professional at the same level
• earn a pay raise for doing excellent work

6.2   Social Stratification and Mobility in the United States

7 . In the United States, most people define themselves as:

• middle class
• upper class
• lower class
• no specific class

8 . Structural mobility occurs when:

• an individual moves up the class ladder
• an individual moves down the class ladder
• a large group moves up or down the class ladder due to societal changes
• a member of a family belongs to a different class than his or her siblings

9 . The behaviors, customs, and norms associated with a class are known as:

• class traits

10 . Which of the following scenarios is an example of intragenerational mobility?

• A janitor belongs to the same social class as his grandmother did.
• An executive belongs to a different class than her parents.
• An editor shares the same social class as his cousin.
• A lawyer belongs to a different class than her sister.

11 . Occupational prestige means that jobs are:

• all equal in status
• not equally valued
• assigned to a person for life
• not part of a person’s self-identity

6.3   Global Stratification and Inequality

12 . Social stratification is a system that:

• ranks society members into categories
• destroys competition between society members
• allows society members to choose their social standing
• reflects personal choices of society members

13 . Which graphic concept best illustrates the concept of social stratification?

• Planetary movement

14 . The GNI PPP figure represents:

• a country’s total accumulated wealth
• annual government spending
• the average annual income of a country’s citizens
• a country’s debt

6.4   Theoretical Perspectives on Social Stratification

15 . The basic premise of the Davis-Moore thesis is that the unequal distribution of rewards in social stratification:

• is an outdated mode of societal organization
• is an artificial reflection of society
• serves a purpose in society
• cannot be justified

16 . Unlike Davis and Moore, Melvin Tumin believed that, because of social stratification, some qualified people were _______ higher-level job positions.

• denied the opportunity to obtain
• encouraged to train for
• often fired from
• forced into

17 . Which statement represents stratification from the perspective of symbolic interactionism?

• Men often earn more than women, even working the same job.
• After work, Pat, a janitor, feels more comfortable eating in a truck stop than a French restaurant.
• Doctors earn more money because their job is more highly valued.
• Teachers continue to struggle to keep benefits such as health insurance.

18 .  When Karl Marx said workers experience alienation, he meant that workers:

• must labor alone, without companionship
• do not feel connected to their work
• move from one geographical location to another
• have to put forth self-effort to get ahead

19 . Conflict theorists view capitalists as those who:

• are ambitious
• fund social services
• spend money wisely
• get rich while workers stay poor

6.5   Global Stratification and Classification

20 . A sociologist who focuses on the way that multinational corporations headquartered in core nations exploit the local workers in their peripheral nation factories is using a _________ perspective to understand the global economy.

• conflict theory
• symbolic interactionist

21. . A ____________ perspective theorist might find it particularly noteworthy that wealthy corporations improve the quality of life in peripheral nations by providing workers with jobs, pumping money into the local economy, and improving transportation infrastructure.

22.   A sociologist working from a symbolic interaction perspective would:

• study how inequality is created and reproduced
• study how corporations can improve the lives of their low-income workers
• try to understand how companies provide an advantage to high-income nations compared to low-income nations
• want to interview women working in factories to understand how they manage the expectations of their supervisors, make ends meet, and support their households on a day-to-day basis

23.   France might be classified as which kind of nation?

• Semi-peripheral

24.   In the past, the United States manufactured clothes. Many clothing corporations have shut down their U.S. factories and relocated to China. This is an example of:

• global inequality
• capital flight

6.6   Global Wealth and Poverty

25.   Slavery in the pre-Civil War U.S. South most closely resembled

• chattel slavery
• debt bondage
• relative poverty

26. Maya is a twelve-year-old girl living in Thailand. She is homeless and often does not know where she will sleep or when she will eat. We might say that Maya lives in _________ poverty.

27. Mike, a college student, rents a studio apartment. He cannot afford television and lives on cheap groceries like dried beans and ramen noodles. Since he does not have a regular job, he does not own a car. Mike is living in:

• global poverty
• absolute poverty
• subjective poverty

28 . Faith has a full-time job and two children. She has enough money for the basics and can pay her rent each month, but she feels that, with her education and experience, her income should be enough for her family to live much better than they do. Faith is experiencing:

29 . In a U.S. town, a mining company owns all the stores and most of the houses. It sells goods to the workers at inflated prices, offers house rentals for twice what a mortgage would be, and makes sure to always pay the workers less than needed to cover food and rent. Once the workers are in debt, they have no choice but to continue working for the company, since their skills will not transfer to a new position. This situation most closely resembles:

• child slavery
• debt slavery
• servile marriage

6.7   Theoretical Perspectives on Global Stratification

30 . One flaw in dependency theory is the unwillingness to recognize _______.

• that previously low-income nations such as China have successfully developed their economies and can no longer be classified as dependent on core nations
• that previously high-income nations such as China have been economically overpowered by low-income nations entering the global marketplace
• that countries such as China are growing more dependent on core nations
• that countries such as China do not necessarily want to be more like core nations

31 . One flaw in modernization theory is the unwillingness to recognize _________.

• that semi-peripheral nations are incapable of industrializing
• that peripheral nations prevent semi-peripheral nations from entering the global market
• its inherent ethnocentric bias
• the importance of semi-peripheral nations industrializing

32 . If a sociologist says that nations evolve toward more advanced technology and more complex industry as their citizens learn cultural values that celebrate hard work and success, she is using _______ theory to study the global economy.

• modernization theory
• dependency theory
• modern dependency theory
• evolutionary dependency theory

33 . If a sociologist points out that core nations dominate the global economy, in part by creating global interest rates and international tariffs that will inevitably favor high-income nations over low-income nations, he is a:

• functionalist
• dependency theorist
• modernization theorist

34 . Dependency theorists explain global inequality and global stratification by focusing on the way that:

• core nations and peripheral nations exploit semi-peripheral nations
• semi-peripheral nations exploit core nations
• peripheral nations exploit core nations
• core nations exploit peripheral nations

Short Answer

The  New York Times  investigated social stratification in their series of articles called “Class Matters.” The online accompaniment to the series includes an interactive graphic called “How Class Works,” which tallies four factors—occupation, education, income, and wealth—and places an individual within a certain class and percentile. What class describes you? Test your class rank on the interactive site:  http://openstax.org/l/NY_Times_how_class_works

PBS made a documentary about social class called “People Like Us: Social Class in America.” The filmmakers interviewed people who lived in Park Avenue penthouses and Appalachian trailer parks. The accompanying website is full of information, interactive games, and life stories from those who participated. Read about it at http://openstax.org/l/social_class_in_America

Nations Online refer to itself as “among other things, a more or less objective guide to the world, a statement for the peaceful, nonviolent coexistence of nations.” The website provides a variety of cultural, financial, historical, and ethnic information on countries and peoples throughout the world: http://openstax.org/l/Nations_Online .

To learn more about the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, look here:  http://openstax.org/l/UN_development_goals

To learn more about the existence and impact of global poverty, peruse the data here:  http://openstax.org/l/poverty_data

Students often think that the United States is immune to the atrocity of human trafficking. Check out the following link to learn more about trafficking in the United States:  http://openstax.org/l/human_trafficking_in_US

For more information about the ongoing practices of slavery in the modern world click here:  http://openstax.org/l/anti-slavery

For more information about economic modernization, check out the Hudson Institute at  http://openstax.org/l/Hudson_Institute

Learn more about economic dependency at the University of Texas Inequality Project:  http://openstax.org/l/Texas_inequality_project

Section Summary

6.1 what is social stratification.

Stratification systems are either closed, meaning they allow little change in social position, or open, meaning they allow movement and interaction between the layers. A caste system is one in which social standing is based on ascribed status or birth. Class systems are open, with achievement playing a role in social position. People fall into classes based on factors like wealth, income, education, and occupation. A meritocracy is a system of social stratification that confers standing based on personal worth, and rewarding effort.

There are three main classes in the United States: upper, middle, and lower class. Social mobility describes a shift from one social class to another. Class traits, also called class markers, are the typical behaviors, customs, and norms that define each class.

Global stratification compares the wealth, economic stability, status, and power of countries as a whole. By comparing income and productivity between nations, researchers can better identify global inequalities.

Social stratification can be examined from different sociological perspectives—functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism. The functionalist perspective states that systems exist in society for good reasons. Conflict theorists observe that stratification promotes inequality, such as between rich business owners and poor workers. Symbolic interactionists examine stratification from a micro-level perspective. They observe how social standing affects people’s everyday interactions and how the concept of “social class” is constructed and maintained through everyday interactions.

Stratification refers to the gaps in resources both between nations and within nations. While economic equality is of great concern, so is social equality, like the discrimination stemming from race, ethnicity, gender, religion, and/or sexual orientation. While global inequality is nothing new, several factors make it more relevant than ever, like the global marketplace and the pace of information sharing. Researchers try to understand global inequality by classifying it according to factors such as how industrialized a nation is, whether a country serves as a means of production or as an owner, and what income a nation produces.

When looking at the world’s poor, we first have to define the difference between relative poverty, absolute poverty, and subjective poverty. While those in relative poverty might not have enough to live at their country’s standard of living, those in absolute poverty do not have, or barely have, basic necessities such as food. Subjective poverty has more to do with one’s perception of one’s situation. North America and Europe are home to fewer of the world’s poor than Africa, which has the poorest countries, or Asia, which has the most people living in poverty. Poverty has numerous negative consequences, from increased crime rates to a detrimental impact on physical and mental health.

Modernization theory and dependency theory are two of the most common lenses sociologists use when looking at the issues of global inequality. Modernization theory posits that countries go through evolutionary stages and that industrialization and improved technology are the keys to forward movement. Dependency theory, on the other hand, sees modernization theory as Eurocentric and patronizing. With this theory, global inequality is the result of core nations creating a cycle of dependence by exploiting resources and labor in peripheral and semi-peripheral countries.

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Davis and Moore on Education

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Davis and Moore further developed the idea of the education system facilitating meritocracy.

They argued that for society to function there had to be a system of unequal rewards. It is the ability to access a higher reward that encourages individuals to put in extra effort. In other words, social stratification (what others might term inequality) is essential. It is social stratification – a system of unequal rewards – that facilitates meritocracy.

Meritocracy works because of competition. The most important jobs, that need the most able and determined people to carry them out, bring the most rewards (highest pay). Through intense competition, the best get to the top. In this way, the education system sifts and sorts people into their appropriate roles.

Evaluating Davis and Moore

• A Marxist criticism of this is that social stratification – or inequality – is precisely what means the education system manifestly fails to grade people by their ability or effort. Instead, the wealthy and powerful have all manner of advantages which the education system reinforces. Overwhelmingly the children of those with high-paid jobs leave the education system with the better qualifications and go on to get high-paid jobs themselves. This is not meritocracy, but instead the reproduction of inequality. The myth of meritocracy is what allows the rich to get away with entrenching their privilege and serves to convince everyone else that the process is fair.
• It is also not clearly the case that those who get the best qualifications do necessarily go on to get the highest incomes. Factors such as social class also come into play here. Some people are able to access high salaries without good qualifications, thanks to family connections, while at the same time there are high levels of graduate unemployment and underemployment.

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The Davis–Moore theory of stratification: The life course of a socially constructed classic

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• Volume 34 , pages 5–24, ( 2003 )

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In 1945 Davis and Moore, following an earlier formulation by Davis, proposed a functional theory of stratification that was intended to account for what they contended was the “universal necessity” for social inequality in any social order. Beginning with an article by Tumin in 1953, the Davis-Moore theory elicited regular analysis, commentary, criticism, and debate through the 1970s. Although professional work on the theory has largely ceased since the late 1980s, the Davis-Moore theory remains perhaps the single most widely cited paper in American introductory sociology and stratification textbooks and constitutes “required reading” in hundreds, if not thousands, of undergraduate and graduate courses throughout the United States. The present paper traces the history of the debate and attempts to explain the theory’s longevity and vitality in the face of what has amounted to largely negative assessments by other sociologists over the preceding fifty years.

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The Davis–Moore theory of stratification: The life course of a socially constructed classic

2003, The American Sociologist

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Abstract Th is paper attempts to present a theoretically justified methodological concept of occupational prestige as one of the common indexes of social stratification. In order to do that, we first critically review Davis and Moor’s theory of social stratification and argue that social stratification, defined as “systematically unequal distribution of symbolic and material rewards among social positions”, is conceptually distinct from Marx’s conception of social class. Davis and Moor’s concept of social stratification has a functional necessity in any complex society, in the sense that no position is expected to remain vacant, and that qualified people are conditioned into positions. The determinants for ranking positions in such a context are the degree of speciality required to perform duties related to positions, or the level of the authority related to each position. Secondly, we claim that the prestige structure of the social positions, which is the stable symbolic dimension of stratification and is correlated closely with its material dimension, is indeed the representative of the whole social stratification and that the structure of occupational prestige is the index of the former. In conclusion, we verify our claims by providing empirical evidence that has resulted from our own research in Iran or that comes from similar research carried out by other scholars across the world.

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9.9: Short Answer

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9.1 What Is Social Stratification?

Track the social stratification of your family tree. Did the social standing of your parents differ from the social standing of your grandparents and great-grandparents? Are there any exogamous marriages in your history? Does your family exhibit status consistencies or inconsistencies?

Review the concept of stratification. Does your family have wealth? What is the overall family income? What kind of employment do your caregivers/parents/guardians have? Where would you guess you fall within the social classes (low, middle, or high)?

Where did your family grow up? What is their understanding of the American Dream and how you can achieve it? Does your family share the same understanding of stratification?

9.2 Social Stratification and Mobility in the United States

Which social class do you and your family belong to? Are you in a different or same social class than your grandparents and great-grandparents? Why are you in the class you are? What changed? What stayed the same? Marriages? Acquisition of property? Education? Career changes? Reflect on your family’s journey within the classes.

What class traits define your peer group? For example, what speech patterns or clothing trends do you and your friends share? What cultural elements, such as taste in music or hobbies, define your peer group? How do you see this set of class traits as different from other classes either above or below yours?

Write a list of ten to twenty class traits that describe the environment of your upbringing. Which of these seem like true class traits, and which seem like stereotypes? What items might fall into both categories? How do you imagine a sociologist might address the conflation of class traits and stereotypes?

9.3 Global Stratification and Inequality

7. What does it mean for a country to be seen as “underdeveloped”? What about “developed”? How does this shape our perception of the citizens within those countries?

Why is it important to understand and be aware of global stratification? Make a list of specific issues that are related to global stratification. For inspiration, turn on a news channel or read the newspaper. Next, choose a topic from your list, and look at it more closely. Who is affected by this issue? How is the issue specifically related to global stratification?

9.4 Theoretical Perspectives on Social Stratification

Analyze the Davis-Moore thesis. Do you agree with Davis and Moore? Does social stratification have an important function in society? What examples can you think of that support the thesis? What examples can you think of that refute the thesis?

Consider social stratification from the symbolic interactionist perspective. How does social stratification influence the daily interactions of individuals? How do systems of class, based on factors such as prestige, power, income, and wealth, influence your own daily routines, as well as your beliefs and attitudes? Illustrate your ideas with specific examples and anecdotes from your own life and the lives of people in your community.