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Sociology chapter 9 meritocracy
Social class and inequality
Education and social class inequality
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Recommended: Sociology chapter 9 meritocracy
An open class system is where people are ranked by the status they achieved and United States considers itself a meritocracy with an open class system. In an open class system some people’s social status goes down because of failure or illness while others move at a parallel by switching jobs at the same level of the social hierarchy. The positions in this system depend on achieved status, like education, and gender. Social mobility is the movement from one social class to another by individuals, families or groups. Social mobility can be classified as vertical mobility, horizontal mobility, intra-generational mobility, and inter-generational mobility. In horizontal mobility people move within the same status category like a doctor leaving …show more content…
Vertical mobility can occur in two different ways depending on the direction of the transition. Individuals can either improve their place in the social hierarchy by moving up in their place or they can fall down in the social hierarchy. The following factors affect mobility: structural factors, individual factors, and social class factors. Structural factors determine the proportion of high status positions that needs to be filled and the degree of industrialization of the economy raises the rate of mobility. Individual factors determine the proportion of well-paid positions in a society. Social class factors are associated with the number of children in a middle class or another social class filling positions in the same …show more content…
The structural factors that affect the American society’s vertical mobility includes all the above and disabilities as well. Occupational mobility is the easiness of movement of resources between jobs. Occupational mobility is most common among men and about 70 percent of men in the United States are employed in higher ranked jobs than their fathers. Statistically speaking, African Americans starting at the bottom percentile of 50% has only a 3% chance of reaching the top and college dropouts at the bottom percentile of 54% has only 1% chance of reaching the top. Even though there is a great impact of mobility in the United States it is very insignificant because the people who go above or below their parents usually advance or fall back in their jobs. The odds of someone reaching the highest position are very rare unless they began their job at a high position to start with. Education plays a very important in social mobility because it is one of the major variables that determine social inequality, income and quality of jobs. A person from a high social class is more likely to have a better education resulting in that person maintain a high class social position. However, the impact that education has on social mobility has weakened to some extent in the past few years. For instance, a Bachelors degree
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 (Conley ). In the United States, we use social classes as our social stratification system. Going back to the idea of equality of condition, starting in different social classes is not fair. The underclass doesn’t get a fair chance to move up in social class. An article written by Alana Semuels called Poor at 20, Poor for Life was published in the Atlantic. Semuels considered how social mobility has gone down in recent years. In her article, she states “It’s not an exaggeration: It really is getting harder to move up in America. Those who make very little money in their first jobs will probably still be making very little decades later, and those who start off making middle-class wages have similarly limited paths.” Proving the point that social mobility has become a pipe dream. Overall, social classes provide an invisible barrier that stop people from being able to move social
Social stratification as defined by Brinkerhoff et al. is “an institutionalized pattern of inequality in which social statuses are ranked on the basis of their access to scarce resources” (Brinkerhoff et al. 152). By scarce resources, many people have to deal with poverty and having a lack of money to buy the things they need in their lives. Social class is defined as “a category of people who share roughly the same class, status, and power and who have a sense of identification with each other” (Brinkerhoff et al. 155). Your social class has to do with your socioeconomic status along with the power and connections you have. Social mobility on the other hand is “the process of changing one’s social class” (Brinkerhoff et al. 153).
Society has categorized individuals depending on their financial status and their income; also known as social class. There are three original social classes in America, upper, middle, and lower class. The classes may sometimes be further divided into upper- upper, lower-upper, upper-middle and lower middle; with the working and lower classes at the bottom; working poor and underclass.
In conclusion, class, race, parental influence and education are all interrelated factors to economic mobility. Each of these contributes to an individual’s chance of achieving their American Dream.
Stratification systems, categorized people by class, gender, ethnicity, wealth/income. When people are categorized, start looking at different systems within the social system or social mobility. “The four main systems of stratification have been slavery, caste, estate, and class. Each of these systems allows greater or less flexibility in terms of social mobility. Social mobility is the ability to move up or down within a social stratification hierarchy” (Larkin, 2015). Slavery is a social status began with social norms allowing people to own others. The slaves had no wealth or power while under this social status. Caste systems are all aspects of social status are assigned at births and held forever,
Despite the typically imaged definition of socioeconomic class being based entirely on the wealth of the individual, there are many complex social factors at play as well. Not only does it stem from Max Weber’s concept of Socioeconomic class (wealth, status, and power), there is a mobility to it as well. Anyone can permanently or temporarily
Does social mobility in our contemporary American society really exist? Is it possible for someone from the deepest depths of poverty to become successful, and ascend into the upper echelons of society? Could the American Dream still be attained in these times where we see the stratification of contemporary American society based on their wealth and social class so vehemently pointed out and perhaps emphasized to a certain degree? Or perhaps, could Charles Sackrey, Geoffrey Schneider, and Janet Knoedler (authors of Introduction to Political Economy) be right about the American Dream being a "particularly deceitful myth?" This is a topic which has been debated over a long period of time between different scholars, analysts, and people just like us - in American society today, it could be broken into many parts: some observe the rich, the middle class, and the poor, and others lean towards the 99% versus the 1%, in regards to debates stemming from wealth distribution. The American Dream, a long-standing national ethos which definitively puts forward the idea that our freedom allows us the opportunity for great prosperity and success, as well as upward social mobility through the application of hard work, is perhaps central to this idea of whether social mobility, as scholars continue to debate that it is less attainable in this day and age compared to previous generations, and that it is much less prevalent in the U.S. than in other western countries. As for social mobility, it's also argued that while it exists to a greater extent in other western countries, it is no less attainable in the United States today than it was in the past. The purpose of this essay is to really get a good look at both sides of the coin in terms of this i...
According to Henslin social, mobility is the movement of individuals, families and groups from one social position to another (Henslin, 2015, p 237-239). It can be viewed in terms of distribution of resources and power among the different social stratification and its effect on the people involved. Stratification is a ranking system for groups of people that continue unequal rewards and life chances in society. Through stratification, society categorizes people and distributes valued resources based upon these categories (Henslin, 2015,p190). The social status of a person is determined by his or her work how much money they have earned and how they move their way up the social class. Social mobility occurs whenever people move across social class boundaries, from one level to another. Mobility can be up or down on the social class ladder but the American Dream is only upward mobility on the social class ladder. The people in the United States are broken down into classes the rich people on top the poor people in the bottom and the middle class in the
Foroohar, Rana. "WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO UPWARD MOBILITY? (Cover Story)." Time 178.19 (2011): 26-34. Academic Search Premier. Web. 24 Apr. 2014.
The class system places the individual in the social system based on his achieved status. This status is earned or chosen. This includes educational level, careers, and spouses.
One interesting sentence from the reading: “Social stratification of society, not simply a reflection of individual differences, is that social stratification is universal but variable” (Macionis, JJ & Plummer, K 2012, p.190). Link to previous reading: Connected with chapter 4, Marx theory of capitalism which divided the society into rich and poor/upper and lower class. Private ownership of productive property was the basis of social class. Question: Technology and industrial revolution have a hand in the class and division of society?
What this suggest is that the differences in educational institutions will determine an individual or a groups level of education in society, but one must bear in mind the fact that just because certain individuals and groups who belong to a particular socioeconomic status doesn’t guarantee them a successful career.
The act of education in promoting social mobility source are coming from many sociological, Economical and political discussion. Refer to this modern era where the education has turn out to be very significant in today societies. Furthermore education is the career fortune teller for many people in society. Because education is the thing that can tell other people in society of who you are, where you from and how smart you are. According to the research pa...
One of the hardest things a pre-nursing student may encounter is a hybrid class. Generally speaking, the classes with more credit hours meet either two days a week or three days a week. The hybrid class meets one day a week for the same amount of time as someone that goes two days a week and gets double the material to study for. Trying to get into nursing school is stressful already and putting a more fast-paced class that meets only one day a week does not make matters any better. Therefore, hybrid classes should be chosen by the student so that everyone can obtain information at the speed and level that they so choose.