Memo 2: Social Stratification And Inequality

Poverty - A child may be living in a household with a very low income and their family may not be able to afford to provide for their children as they ad hoped. They may struggle to buy enough food, especially health food, to eat, buy clothes to wear or even to provide heating and electric. This can affect their physical and mental health due to poor hygiene and diet. Some children may suffer with low self-esteem and low self-respect because of the stigma attached to poverty, this can affect them in later life also.

As mentioned by Ruane and Cerulo in Second Thoughts, harsh realities of poverty affect children’s lives in profound ways. Children lack any power in improving their circumstances and depend on adults to gain access to basic necessities. Access to proper healthcare, education, and basic nutrition continues to be an obstacle for children. Poverty impedes children’s aptitude to learn and contributes to poor overall health and mental health. Perhaps most important, poverty becomes a cyclical nature that is difficult to overcome. Children who experience poverty when they are young tend to experience persistent poverty over the course of their entire lives. According to the Child Welfare League of America, the national poverty rate for children

Individuals within a society are grouped into certain rankings that is based on their wealth, income, race and education known as the social stratification. Sociologist use this to determine the social standings of individuals within a society. Social stratification can also appear in much smaller groups. These groups such as the work place, schools, and businesses can “take the form of a distribution of power and authority down the ranks”. (Cole, 2017) The Caste system is also another form of stratification that one does not get a choice in. They are born into it and regardless of their talents will hold positions that are given to them their whole life. Social mobility is the ability for individuals to move about their social standings.

A key factor to understanding how poverty exists is to understand what it does to the victim’s brain. The conditions that come with living in poverty such as overcrowding and exposure to violence can affect a developing brain negatively in the same way drugs or alcohol does. The stress that comes with living in poverty during childhood has over time led people into depression and certain forms of addiction in their adulthood. According to Ostrander, “poverty perpetuates poverty, generation after generation, by acting on the brain.” The maternal stress response system is a very crucial thing to the development of a child’s brain and may crumble under pressure, releasing certain hormones that affect its development. While some children are able to

| There are also important class inequalities between children, for example, poor mothers are more likely to have low birth-weight babies, which is linked to delayed physical and intellectual development. Also, children born into poor families are more likely to die in infancy or childhood, suffer longstanding illnesses, fall behind in school, or to be placed on the child protection register

The axis of inequality that will be focused throughout this paper is the social class. Social class is defined as a group of individuals who are categorized according to class (i.e. poor, middle, and upper) due to their income, wealth, power, and occupation. Social class is socially constructed by the way we view how much income and wealth a person possess (Ore, 20011a, 10). In reality it is much more than that. According to the text, poverty is not only the shortage of income, but it is the rejection of opportunities and choices that leads a person to a standard way of living (Ore, 2011a, 10). Stereotyping also contributes to it being socially constructed. These stereotypes influence us by defining who is who based on their principles in each class category. This can cause some to feel worthless.

Inequality, it is all around us, in our jobs, at our children schools, in our neighborhoods, and no matter how hard we might try to escape it, there if no escape. We used to think that inequality was a thing of the past, but it is still very prevalent in today’s society. Many think “well inequality does not affect me personally, so why should I care?” While it may not affect you personally, it probably affects someone close to you. Throughout his book Toxic Inequality, Thomas Shapiro demonstrates just how surrounded the population is by inequalities with stories about families who are not only financially divided, but racially. These inequalities are rooted so deeply in our society that it can be easy to overlook the problem and ignore it, but as Shapiro demonstrates we can no longer overlook the problem, we need to face it head on it we have any hope of trying to fix it for future generations.

Economic stratification is the different rankings in social class are separated in different economic ways. These differences can vary from clothing, cars, perfumes, cigarette brands, etc. There are many ways you can tell what a person stratification is just by the way they look or the things they have. Usually these ranking go from lower class to middle class then the upper class. Each of these classes have very different ways of living and what they do to maintain a certain status.

Social stratification can be simply defined by stating that it is a system in which a society ranks categories of people in a hierarchy (Macionis, page 224). The concept of social stratification is based on four central principles, which are social stratification is a trait of society, not simply a reflection of individual differences, it carries over from one generation to the next, while it is universal, it is also variable, and social stratification involves not only inequality but beliefs as well (Macionis, pages 224-225). The first principle, that social stratification is a trait of society, not simply a reflection of individual differences, basically says that children born into wealthy families are more likely to be of good health, do well in school, succeed in a career, and live a long life (Macionis, pages 224-225). An example of this first principle can be seen in the what happened to the Titanic. The first-class passengers survived not because they were better swimmers than the second- and third-class passengers, but because of their privileged position (Macionis, page 224-225). The second principle states that the concept of social stratification is one that carries over from one generation to the next (Macionis, page 225). This concept is essentially stating that the social standing of a person is partially determined by their parents. Most people’s social standing remains constant throughout their lives (Macionis, page 225). While social stratification is

Stratification is universal. It is everywhere in the world. It takes different forms of different societies. In society we differ from each other based on our age, gender, race, and personal characteristics. Stratification is seeing and ranking an individual or a group of people who is higher than one another, who are high class, middle class, and lower class, based on their hierarchy of status levels like their status, the jobs they do like white collar or blue collar, the power they have, controlling people and telling what to do, and wealth, how much you get paid and if you are rich, gender, men might get more power, money, and privilege than women or vice versa, and ethnicity, African Americans as athlete, drug addict, and committing crimes. There Stratification is carried over generation to generation. If your parents are rich and you are born in that family, most likely your parents will pass down their business and reputation to you. Most likely, if you are born in a rich family, you are most likely to live happily, enjoy life, do well in school, succeed in a career, and live a long life than a poor family.

Social stratification is a system of inequality in which one’s wealth, power, and rank in society are looked at to create social hierarchy (Larkin, 2015). A better way to understand this system is by looking at “The Larkin Stratification Diagram”. This shows the structure of stratification where it starts with the social differentiation, then social inequality, social order, social stratification, organizing principles of stratification, social structure, social institutions, and the life options which become embedded in social positions (Larkin, 2015). The start of this system is the social differentiation of a society or the human diversity of the world, which basically means that not everyone starts off with equal benefits/standings. The social inequality is the true differences of individuals in society, and these differences are what then create the make-up and social order of the society. All of these things are what then create the stratification system where the individuals are placed into different roles to complete the needed tasks of society. Then come the organizing principles of gender, race, and class, which make up the systems criteria. The social force of sociohistorical and political action create these criteria, which aid in determining who should fill certain positions in society (Larkin, 2015). The organizing principles also aid in creating social structure where each individual is assigned a role based upon their status, role and group. Although these

In our society today we have system of social stratification. Social stratification is a system in which groups of people are divided into layers according to their relative property, power, and prestige. Sometimes as humans we find it challenging to keep up with the person next to us who has nicer materialistic items; being a young woman who lives in a prestigious college town I notice everyone seems to have a ridiculous amount of money and/or nice cars and at times, this makes me feel out of place. This would be an example of social stratification, by showing how some groups within the college student community have power and prestige. Some of their parents work for the school, or work for a large corporate businesses and have the money to give to their children. Social stratification links society together in many aspects. When it comes to treating people within a society differently from others shows social inequality; which is unequal sharing of societal resources, education, power, health, etc. Other types of social stratification that influences me directly are social stratification of wealth, social class, and sex.

History has seen multiple forms of social stratification whether it may be social class, caste, slavery, race or even gender. Social stratification places groups of people in a hierarchy depending on their social status which is respective to their economic income. This in turn determines their social position in society. With social stratification comes social mobility. These two terms are commonly found together when describing social stratification. Social mobility is simply “the change of social status within society, whether it may be a positive or negative movement of status” (Clark 10). For example, by obtaining a college degree such as a PhD or a Masters, this person moves forward in social mobility. The reason is because higher levels of education and knowledge separates this person from the others that do not have a college degree. With so many varieties of social mobility in history, there are many limitations and differences regarding gender. In terms of life chances and equality, there are multiple differences in equality between men and women. This research report will analyze the life chances and social mobility between gender and conclude if there is a significant relationship between them. The research report will follow social mobility in different countries, different periods of time in history and different social institutions where being masculine is generally more mobile than femininity.

I am a quantitative sociologist broadly interested in three areas: 1) stratification and inequality; 2) immigration and globalization, 3) work and labor markets. Specifically, I focus on examining how class structure and migration patterns contribute to social inequalities and labor market outcomes. Also, I work on the themes of immigration, work and occupations in the United States. I am particularly interested in examining these processes in the urban context.

Hindus in Bangladesh in the late 1980s were almost evenly distributed in all regions, with concentrations in Khulna, Jessore, Dinajpur, Faridpur and Barisal. Hindus generally accept the caste system as the structure of society. For Virtually all Hindus, even those in revolt against some aspects of the system, caste is taken for granted as the way of life. To be considered Hindu, a group must identify itself in some way as a unit in the caste hierarchy. One cannot join a caste; one is born into it and lives, marries, and dies in it.