7A - Social Class Inequalities

Question 1

What is the Hope-Goldthorpe classification?

Answer 1

Used to research social mobility, 3 main classes were sub-divided into 7 occupational classes (service, intermediate, working).

Question 2

What is the National Statistics Socio-Economic Classifcation (NS-SEC)?

Answer 2

Classifies people by social class in official statistics. 
Higher managerial + professional
Lower managerial + professional
Intermediate 
Small employers + own accounts workers
Lower supervisory + craft
Semi-routine 
Routine 
Long term unemployed + never worked

Question 3

GORDON MARSHALL ET AL

Answer 3

People saw themselves as working class even though they were in on-manual/white-collar jobs.

Question 4

MIKE SAVAGE ET AL

Answer 4

People were reluctant to identify themselves with a social class, so class identity was ‘relatively’ muted’.

Question 5

What are the 7 social classes in the Great British Class Survey?

Answer 5

1) Elite
2) Established middle class
3) Technical middle class
4) New Affluent workers
5) Traditional working class
6) Emergent service workers
7) Precariat

Question 6

WEBER - Life Chances

Answer 6

The better opportunities that others had to achieve things in life that people see as desirable. It is closely linked to social class.

Question 7

What is income?

Answer 7

The flow of money to a person or household over a time period.

Question 8

Sources that provide statistics on income

Answer 8

Family Resources Survery - government sponsored and provides information on the living conditions and resources of households.

Annual Survey of Hours & Earnings - information on levels, distribution and make up of earnings and hours worked by employees. Based on a 1% sample.

British Household Panel asurvey - longitudinal and began in 1991, follows the same individuals and interviewed every adult member of the sampled households.

Question 9

What is wealth?

Answer 9

The economic resources and possessions of a person at a fixed time, it is a ‘stock’ concept.

Question 10

What forms does wealth come in?

Answer 10

PROPERTY - 81% of total net worth in the U.K.

PHYSICAL - cars, jewellery, antiques, etc

FINANCIAL - money

PRIVATE PENSION - cash value an individual has accumulated in their pension fund

Question 11

PROBLEMS with measuring wealth

Answer 11

• defining what should be counted as wealth
• calculating the value of assets is difficult
• obtaining data is difficult, E.G. wealthy people conceal their wealth to avoid taxation
• distinguishing wealth from income is difficult, E.G. ‘capital gains’ person receives money/property from someone else, it is taxed as income but becomes wealth if they hold onto it

Question 12

ROWLINGSON & MULLINEUX - Birmingham Commission Report

Answer 12

• wealth inequalities occur in different ways
• wealth affects physical and mental wellbeing, as well as education and employment opportunities
• those in the middle of wealth distribution tend to have some housing and pension wealth BUT, E.G. young people struggle to get onto the housing ladder
• those at the top of the income distribution have had huge increases in their income

SO, the government should redistribute wealth.

Question 13

Are wealth inequalities based on age or class?

Answer 13

People tend to accumulate wealth as they get older. people aged 55-64 have the highest levels of wealth, but have the most inequality. The top tenth in this group have more than £1.3m but the poorest tenth have less than £28,000

Question 14

Are wealth inequalities based on meritocracy?

Answer 14

Inequalities may represent a meritocracy as it shows those with talent can do well, E.G. Lord Alan Sugar

However…

TONY ATKINSON - increasing proportion of income comes from in inherited wealth. In 2006, transmitted wealth represented 8.2% of income, compared to 4.8% in 1977.

Question 15

Rewards at work

Answer 15

FINANCIAL - routine workers earn less and do not enjoy perks such a pensions or longer paid holidays
STATUS - differences of status reflect differences of income
POWER&CONTROL - senior staff have more autonomy at work, E.G. may set their own hours. Routine workers are closely supervised and follow instructions
ADVANCEMENT - in senior jobs, there is a career ladder so employees receive training and move up to higher pay and responsibility.
JOB SATISFACTION - skilled workers have higher levels of job satisfaction and make decisions in their job.
JOB SECURITY - manual workers more likely to face job losses and unemployment

Question 16

How many children are living in poverty?

Answer 16

3.5m children, OR 1 in 4 children

Question 17

ABSOLUTE POVERTY

Answer 17

Lack of basic essentials needed to survive physically, E.G food. Only takes into account a person’s physical needs, not what is needed to fully participate in society.

Question 18

RELATIVE POVERTY

Answer 18

When a person’s income is so far below that expected by most people that they are excluded from normal lifestyle. It may always exist as some people will always be worse off than others.

Question 19

Households Below Average Income (HBAI)

Answer 19

Low incomes are below 60% of the median.

• why not use 50% of the median income?
• those below 60% may not be so badly off that they are ‘poor’.

Question 20

MACK & LANSLEY - measuring poverty

Answer 20

Asked a series of representative focus groups which items they thought were necessities. Those rated as necessities by 50% or more were included in a list. They then surveyed a sample of the general population and asked how many necessities they’d had to go without.
Those that lacked 3 or more were seen as poor (14%), those that lacked 5 or more were in severe poverty.

Question 21

What is social mobility?

Answer 21

The movement of individuals up or down the social scale.

Question 22

What are the 2 ways sociologists measure social mobility?

Answer 22

INTERGENERATIONAL MOBILITY - mobility between generations, E.G. parent and child

INTRAGENERATIONAL MOBILITY - movement between classes by an individual in their working life.

Question 23

What are open and closed societies?

Answer 23

OPEN - there are not barriers to those with talent rising out of their social class.
CLOSED - little or no social mobility. E.G. The Feudal system

Question 24

PROBLEMS with measuring wealth

Answer 24

• it is difficult to classify occupations
• older studies focused on male social mobility (Oxford Mobility Study)
• wealthiest people are not clearly identified because their wealth may be acquired through inheritance, not work
• cannot conclude how mobile people are until they are well established in their careers, this is when they are in their 40s or 50s. Therefore, they are studying the impact of government policies from more than 30 years ago.

Question 25

GOLDTHORPE - Oxford Mobility Study

Answer 25

After WW2 there was lots of upward social mobility and less downward mobility (2/3 of the sc started off in the wc or sc, perhaps due to the introduction of free secondary education). There were fewer manual jobs and an increase in intermediate jobs, so overall there was an increase in absolute social mobility.

Question 26

EVALUATION OF OMS

Answer 26

+ British Election Survey confirmed Goldthorpe’s findings that the sc was expanding which increased AM but RM stayed the same.
+ Essex University Mobility Study found that someone starting off in the sc is 7 times more likely to end up in the sc than someone of wc.

• Saunders criticises for focusing on relative mobility rates, people who leave the wc for the sc should h celebrated. Goldthorpe is also too left wing and doesn’t highlight meritocracy. Intelligence also isn’t evenly distributed.
• Feminists say it focuses exclusively on men and ignores the importance of women as wage earners and the fact that their experience of mobility is different to men’s.
• Marxists say he focuses on the sc who mainly achieved their positions through inherited wealth, or private education.

Question 27

SAVAGE & EGERTON - NCDS Study

Answer 27

Longitudinal study of people born in 1958 and was based on the class they had reached by 1991.

• wc got smaller, sc got bigger so opportunities for upward mobility for wc.
• chances of escaping the wc did not increase, 55% of men remained in the wc
• chances of men rising to the sc was 26%
• sc sons twice as likely to get sc jobs
• more upward mobility than downward, 40% of wc from wc but 3/4 of wc came from wc
• wc women more likely to move up to intermediate, sc women more likely than sc men to move down to intermediate

Question 28

What is the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission (2010)?

Answer 28

Set up to destroy barriers to social mobility. Had ‘London effect’ where attempts to improve education for poorest children in London means they now outperform average children in the rest of the country.