1. Bell Ringer!!!
Which perspective on social stratification do you agree with most (functionalist, conflict or interactionist)?
Describe this perspective on stratification and explain why you agree with it most.

3. Socioeconomic Status
Socioeconomic Status (SES): Combined measure of income, education level, work experience, and the prestige or status of your job
One’s social position in relation to others
The effects of class are not always obvious because you don’t necessarily see what’s happening to others
While wealth and prestige often go hand in hand, they don’t necessarily have to. Drug dealers, for example, may be multimillionaires, but they aren’t well respected and therefore aren’t ranked high in the stratification system. On the flip side, professors may earn a modest salary, but they command a fair amount of respect.

4. SES: Education & Health
Low SES means:
-lack of stimulation in early development
-lower literacy
-chronic stress
Advantages of wealthier families:
Financial capital: Money buys books, summer camp, tutors, etc.
Human capital: Education and experience passed on in overt or subtle ways by parents
Social capital: Who you know/connections (summer internship; scholarships; college acceptance)
What is the best predictor of SAT score? – your family’ss income….
2007 SAT scores for kids whose families earned less than $10,000/yr = 1301; for kids whose families earned more than $100,000/yr = 1637.
Sofas on front porches; laundry on outdoor clothes lines – prohibited in some communities as “low class” yet needed for some who have few resources

5. Social Class
Social Class: Group of people who share a similar economic position in society, based on wealth and income
The upper class (the highest earning 5% of the U.S. population) is usually thought to include owners of vast amounts of property and other forms of wealth, major shareholders and owners of large corporations, top financiers, rich celebrities and politicians, and members of prestigious families. The middle class (roughly 45% of the population) is likely to include college-educated managers, supervisors, executives, small business owners, and professionals (for example, lawyers, doctors, teachers, and engineers). The working class (about 35% of the population) typically includes industrial and factory workers, office workers, clerks, and farm and manual laborers. Most working class people don’t own their own homes and don’t attend college. Finally, the “poor” (about 15% of the population) consist of people who work for minimum wages or are chronically unemployed. They are sometimes referred to as the lower class or underclass. These are the people who do society’s dirty work, often for very low wages (Walton, 1990; E. O. Wright, Costello, Hachen, & Sprague, 1982).

7. Upper Class
High-level executives, lawyers, doctors, scientists, celebrities, etc.
Education system and media both play important roles in perpetuating and reproducing the United States class structure
Upper class people worry about:
Maintaining income/lifestyle
Prestigious schools for children
Securing wealth for children
Government policies/taxes
In public schools, working-class and poor kids are subtly taught their place through authority relationships with teachers and principals so that they will be prepared for the subordinate work positions they will probably occupy in the future (Bowles & Gintis, 1976).
Members of the highest reaches of the upper class, in contrast, often spend their childhoods in private schools, their adolescence in boarding schools, and their college years in heavily endowed private universities (Domhoff)

8. Middle Class
In 1980, the median household income (in current dollars) across all ethnoracial groups in the United States was $44,059. By 2009, it had only increased to $49,777 (DeNavas-Walt, Proctor, & Smith, 2010). Between 1980 and 1990, median household income grew by about 8%. But between 2000 and 2007, median income actually shrank by about 1%; between 2008 and 2009, it shrank by an additional 2.9% (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2010).
Hourly earnings, weekly earnings, and employer-provided benefits like pensions and retirement accounts have all fallen since 2007 (Mishel, Bernstein, & Shierholz, 2009). The number of workers who earn at least $20 an hour (a wage that once symbolized “middle-class”) has dropped nearly 60% over the past three decades (cited in Uchitelle, 2008). Indeed, after adjusting for inflation, the median hourly wage today is only $16.27 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2010b).

9. Middle Class
Important in defining United States culture as they are 40-50% of the population!
Other classes are measured against the values and norms of the middle class
Middle class people worry about
Job Security
Taxes
Unemployment
Cost of Living
Health Care
In 1980, the median household income (in current dollars) across all ethnoracial groups in the United States was $44,059. By 2009, it had only increased to $49,777 (DeNavas-Walt, Proctor, & Smith, 2010). Between 1980 and 1990, median household income grew by about 8%. But between 2000 and 2007, median income actually shrank by about 1%; between 2008 and 2009, it shrank by an additional 2.9% (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2010).
Hourly earnings, weekly earnings, and employer-provided benefits like pensions and retirement accounts have all fallen since 2007 (Mishel, Bernstein, & Shierholz, 2009). The number of workers who earn at least $20 an hour (a wage that once symbolized “middle-class”) has dropped nearly 60% over the past three decades (cited in Uchitelle, 2008). Indeed, after adjusting for inflation, the median hourly wage today is only $16.27 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2010b).

10. Working Class Lower levels of education Hourly wage jobs
More susceptible to downturns in economy
Job loss through downsizing
Working class people worry about:
Job security
Healthcare benefits
Illness
Retirement
College savings
In 2009, during the height of the recession, American employers initiated close to 12,000 “mass layoff events” (when at least 50 employees from a single employer file for unemployment insurance benefits), resulting in the loss of 2.1 million jobs, mostly in manufacturing and retail (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2011b).

11. Underclass Lowest social class; living in poverty
Most visible consequence of poverty is homelessness
million people experience some type of homelessness over the course of a year (2014)
Underclass people worry about:
Personal safety
Shelter
Food
Clothing
Hygiene
Employment
Healthcare
The National Alliance to End Homelessness (2011) estimates that there are over 656,000 homeless people, 38% of whom are completely unsheltered. But because people move in and out of homelessness or are homeless for a short period of time, it’s estimated that somewhere between 2.3 and 3.5 million people experience some type of homelessness over the course of a year.
In 2011, the nationwide median housing wage—the minimum amount of money a person would have to make to afford 2-bedroom rental housing—was $18.46 an hour (or an annual income of $38,400, assuming full-time, year-round employment). That’s more than double the federal minimum wage. Nowhere in the United States does a full-time, minimum-wage job provide enough income to afford adequate housing, and in some states—New York, Connecticut, Maryland, and Massachusetts to name a few—a household would need at least three minimum-wage jobs. In Hawaii, four minimum wage jobs wouldn’t be enough (National Low Income Housing Coalition, 2011). With foreclosure rates rising steadily (National Alliance to End Homelessness, 2011), the housing future looks even bleaker.

12. Poverty
Absolute Poverty: Lacking the minimal requirements a human being needs to survive
Relative Poverty: A lesser economic position compared to the living standards of the majority of a given society
Feminization of Poverty: When women and children make up a disproportionate number of the poor
Near poor, or working poor – above the Federal poverty line, but not enough to get ahead or even really make it if there is an emergency

13. Poverty Poverty Line (government calculation):
Amount of yearly income a family needs to meet its basic needs
Developed in 1960s, and based on amount needed for food times three
Poverty Rate: Percentage of residents in the US whose income falls below the poverty line (estimated at around 16%)
2015 Poverty Guidelines for the 48 Contiguous States and the District of Columbia
Persons in household
Poverty guideline 1
$11,770 2
$15,930 3
$20,090 4
$24,250 5
$28,410 6
$32,570 7
$36,730 8
$40,890
*For families/households with more than 8 persons, add $4,160 for each additional person.
Expenses such as health care, child care, transportation etc.
That dollar amount is established by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and for decades has been computed from something called the Thrifty Food Plan. This plan, developed in the early 1960s, is used to calculate the cost of a subsistence diet, which is the bare minimum a family needs to survive. This cost is then multiplied by 3 because research at the time showed that the average family spent one third of its income on food each year. The resulting amount was adopted in 1969 as the government’s official poverty line. Even though the plan is modified periodically to account for changes in dietary recommendations, the formula itself and the basic definition of poverty have remained the same for about four decades.
When used to describe national trends in poverty, the overall poverty rate can obscure important differences among subgroups of the population. For example, in 2009, 9.4% of people who identify themselves as non-Hispanic Whites and 12.5% of Asian Americans fell below the poverty line. That same year, 25.8% of Blacks and 25.3% of Latino/as (who could be of any race) were considered poor. The poverty rate in the South (15.7%) and West (14.8%) is higher than the rate in the Midwest (13.3%) and Northeast (12.2%). Finally, poverty is higher in rural areas (16.6%) than in metropolitan areas (13.9%), although it’s highest in inner cities (18.7%) (DeNavas-Walt, et al., 2010).

14. Growing Income Inequality
The United States has greatest income inequality of any industrialized nations
Between 1979 and 2009, the incomes of the richest fifth of U.S. families grew by 49%. During that same period, the incomes of the poorest fifth fell by 7.4%. Let’s look at this another way. In 1973, the bottom 99.5% of the population (in other words, all but the richest 0.5%) received 93.7% of all the national income. By 2008, that share had fallen to 83.1% (Economic Policy Institute, 2011).
The average American chief executive makes over $11 million a year. In 2010, the average annual compensation for the 10 highest-paid U.S. executives was over $62.4 million (AFL-CIO, 2011). In 1965, chief executives earned $24 for every $1 earned by the average production worker; by 2009, that figure had increased to $185 (Economic Policy Institute, 2011). We may want to believe that personal effort and hard work solely determine our success, but it’s hard to imagine that a CEO of, say, an electronics company works 185 times harder than a person who actually assembles the TVs and cell phones.

15. Movement of people between classes
Social Mobility
Movement of people between classes
Horizontal Mobility
Changing jobs within the same class
Vertical Mobility
Occupation moves up or down

16. Sociological Issues Project
What did you like about this project?
What could change for the better?
Was it worthwhile—worth class time?
What would be ideal group size?