module 6

Question 1

what is social inequality?

Answer 1

sociological theories of class inequality.
	• Social inequality(sometimes referred to as class inequality) is the “unequal distribution of resources” in a given society
	• resources can include but are not limited to wealth, prestige, power, education, status, housing, land, employment opportunities, and economic stability.

Question 2

what is class inequality/stratification?

Answer 2

• Class inequality is inseparable fromsocial stratification, which entails “socially sanctioned patterns of social inequality that persist in society,” often based on systemic forms of marginalization and oppression
  
  • Apt examples of social stratification are the groups disproportionally vulnerable to poverty in Canada (including, but not limited to, Aboriginal and newcomers to Canada).

Question 3

what is class inequality based on?

Answer 3

Based on a number of inter-related forms of social inequality (lack of access to education, lack of access to economic opportunities, and ongoing effects of colonization)
• many Aboriginal and immigrants (i.e., first generation) Canadians find themselves structurally disadvantaged. Importantly, there is nothing innate or natural about stratification, but rather it comes to be produced in and through social systems. Poverty and wealth are therefore not about how hard someone works (or doesn’t), they are contingent upon where someone sits within socially stratified systems. And unfortunately, what we are seeing is that the rich get richer while the poor get poorer.

Question 4

what percent does the wealthiest fifth of canada take in?

Answer 4

highlight the growing discrepancy between rich and poor, the wealthiest fifth of the Canadian population takes in close to 45% of the total national income, as compared to the poorest fifth of the population takes in only 4.2%

Question 5

what are sociologists concerned with?

Answer 5

ociologists are not only concerned with the growing gap between rich and poor Canadians but also with questioning the structural means in and through which wealth (and poverty) are able to accumulate

Question 6

two factors to note about wealthiest families?

Answer 6

here are two factors worth noticing from the chart above. The first are the industries where individuals and companies earn profits. Publishing, pharmaceuticals, food, oil, and media are all contemporary resources that characterize the national and global system. Therefore, if a person or company controls these resources, they are in a favourable position for accumulating wealth.
• The second noteworthy observation has to do with inheritance. Take a look how many times the word “family” appears above. In these instances, individuals would have inherited their wealth based simply on the family they were born into. Given the racialized history of colonization and immigration in this country (which we will learn more about in Module 8), inherited wealth (at least to the degrees we are discussing here) is almost exclusively reserved for white Canadians. On top of inheritance and controlling the resources that characterize the current economic system, education and employment also play a major role in social and economic inequality, which will be discussed in the next section.

Question 7

how much of the population is the capitalist class?

Answer 7

• the capitalist class is less than 1% of the total population but has wealth that many of us will only ever dream of having. In 2007, the average income of the richest 1% was over 3.5 million annually (Yalnizyan, 2010)

Question 8

what does wealth provide?

Answer 8

• This type of wealth provides not just access to material goods but also to power and other resources. The capitalist class is said to “own society.” As leaders of big businesses and industry, their decisions affect the job status of millions of Canadians
	• As those who own major media networks, newspapers, magazines, and sports franchises, they shape much of what Canadians come to consume in day-to-day and week-to-week media.
	• And as political contributors, they influence and fund campaigns, usually to protect their own economic interests. 
many people in the selective 1% have inherited money or they operate as investors

Question 9

describe the upper middle class

Answer 9

The upper-middle class, which is typically about 14% of the population, is the class said to “run society.” Employment typical in the upper-middle class includes CEOs and other upper managers as well as upper-level professionals like accountants, professors, and lawyers who typically earn over $150,000/annually

Question 10

describe the middle class

Answer 10

The middle class comprises roughly 30% of the population and generally includes lower-level managers, teachers, police officers, health care professionals and some of the better-paid trades (Gilbert, 2011). Middle-class people tend to work hard and live relatively comfortable lives, which include nice meals out. The average salaries for the middle class are roughly $70,000 annually.
	

Question 11

describe the working class

Answer 11

The working class also comprises about 30% of the population and includes much of the pink (service, retail sales, and child care) and blue (construction and trades) collar employment sectors, as well as some social services and clerical work (Gilbert, 2011). Average salaries for the working class are roughly $40,000 annually

Question 12

describe the working poor

Answer 12

The working poor—the category itself is an oxymoron (since people both work and are poor)—comprise about 13% of the total population. These workers tend to work in minimum-wage, part-time, seasonal, and/or unskilled jobs such fast-food attendants, janitorial staff, and taxi drivers (Gilbert, 2011). Average salaries for the working poor are $25,000 annually, far from being enough to make ends meet.

Question 13

describe the underclass

Answer 13

The underclass comprises those working very precarious, sporadic employment and those who don’t work at all or are without permanent shelter (about 10% of the population). Average “salaries” are about $15, 000 annually. Many of the basic needs for those in the underclass are covered by social services like food banks and housing shelters (Gilbert, 2011).

Question 14

what is canada’s class structure useful for?

Answer 14

• Canada’s class structure is useful for breaking down the distribution of wealth and the types of professions associated with each. This class breakdown is also a useful opportunity to examine education as a major structural barrier for employment security

Question 15

describe education

Answer 15

requires education? The answer is increasingly more and more. A few generations ago it was possible to get a middle-class job without post-secondary education. In today’s job market, working class jobs are increasingly asking for post-secondary education requirements. Consider many of the college programs that cater to administrative, service, and trade-related industries. College and university degrees are close to mandatory in the middle classes, and post-graduate education is most often needed in the upper-middle classes and above (of course, there are always exceptions as a result of who you might know or the family you’re born into). As a university student, it’s likely you’ve thought a great deal about the role your education will play in helping you secure employment after graduation. And sadly, having a university degree is no longer a guarantee for employment (but it certainly helps).

Question 16

is the answer for mobility simple?

Answer 16

• If movement between class brackets is as simple as obtaining education, then the answer for upward social mobility is also simple: get more education. Unfortunately, the answer is not so clear cut for two major reasons: education itself is not equally accessible to all and we do not live in a meritocracy.
  
  • 1990s in Canada, tuition rates have been on the steady incline. On average, Canadian undergraduate students in 2015/2016 paid $6,191 in tuition fees, compared with $5,998 the year prior (Statistics Canada, 2015 ). Ontario students pay the highest undergraduate tuition fees (on average $7868 a year), compared to Quebec students who pay $2799 a year (Statistics Canada, 2015).

Question 17

what does the cost of education do?

Answer 17

The cost of post-secondary education blocks many Canadians from upward social mobility. When examining social mobility in Canada, there are four types of mobility to consider: vertical, horizontal, intergenerational, and intragenerational mobility.

Question 18

what is vertical mobility?

Answer 18

• Vertical mobilityis the ability to move up (or down) the social stratification system. Vertical or upward social mobility in Canada is not very common, despite the prevalent ideology of meritocracy—a hierarchy in which all positions are rewarded based in people’s ability and credentials
	Unfortunately, capitalist systems such as ours seldom operate on a level playing field; they are invariably stratified into winners, losers, and those somewhere in between.
	In returning to the image included above, we often think that in class stratification all people start on the same line. In reality, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Many born into wealth, like our examples of the Rogers family mentioned earlier, already possess an enormous advantage over others. And, as discussed, those with access to increasingly expensive education also carry an advantage.

Question 19

what is horizontal mobility?

Answer 19

• horizontal mobilityis quite common. Many Canadians in their careers will move laterally within class stratification system, moving from one middle class job to another.

Question 20

what is INTRAgenerational mobility?

Answer 20

I • Also very common, isintragenerational mobilityin Canada—changes in social class that occur within a person’s lifetime (Symbaluk & Bereska, 2016, p. 97). During the course of our own lives, it is common to move two or three class stratification systems.

Question 21

what is INTERgenerational mobility?

Answer 21

• less common, however, isintergenerational mobility—changes in the social class of children relative to their parents (Symbaluk & Bereska, 2016, p. 97). We tend to reproduce our parent’s class status. If we are born into a middle-class family, it is likely that as adults we too will occupy the middle-class bracket. This trend occurs because of the class privileges (and detriments) outlined in the video above.

Question 22

does canada have a way to measure poverty?

Answer 22

• It may surprise you to know that Canada has no official method of measuring poverty. This is because different measurements yield different results, and because poverty is relative to the society a person lives within
  
  • In order to look critically at poverty rates in Canada, we need to understand and examine the four common methods of measuring poverty: absolute, relative, low-income cut-offs (LICO), and market basket measure (MBM).

Question 23

what is absolute poverty?

Answer 23

• Absolute povertyoccurs when people are unable to secure even the most basic necessities of life (food, clothing, and shelter). Typically these necessities are provided by social services like local food banks and housing shelters. Absolute poverty is a life-threatening situation that exists both in Canada and in many parts of the developing world.

Question 24

what is relative poverty?

Answer 24

• Relative povertyexists when people are able to afford the basic necessities of life but unable to maintain the standard of living enjoyed by the majority.
financial stability is much more than simply being able to afford food, clothing, and shelter. As advanced capitalist societies like Canada become more complex, so does the need for more accurate measurements of poverty.

Question 25

examples of relative poverty

Answer 25

• Access to technology
  
  • Transportation
  • Extended health care (e.g., eye care, dentist, physiotherapy, etc.)
  • Money for education
  • Money for recreation (e.g., movie passes, going out for dinner)
  • Money for travel (visiting family, vacation)
  • Retirement and contingency savings
  • Money for utilities and other household needs
  • Other

Question 26

what is the LICO method?

Answer 26

• The low-income cut-off(LICO) is the unofficial method of measuring poverty in Canada because it the method used by Statistics Canada, despite not necessarily being the most accurate method. The LICO is a method of measuring poverty that refers to an annual family income value in dollars below which a family is considered worse off than the average family due to the high proportion of income allocated to food, clothing, and shelter (Symbaluk & Bereska, 2016, p. 103). The LICO is based on the 70 percent standard. If a person or family spends more than 70 percent of their month income on food, clothing, and shelter, they subsequently have very little (30 percent or less) left to put towards any of the other items identified above for a relative standard of living and are therefore under the poverty line.
  
  • In short, the less you spend on the three necessities (while still being able to afford them), the more you can put towards other items needed for a relative standard of living. The reason LICOs are not necessarily the most accurate measurement is because it only accounts for the three basic necessities (food, clothing, and shelter) and doesn’t account for other necessities in a contemporary environment, namely the need for transportation, utilities, and other household items.

Question 27

what is the MBM method?

Answer 27

• The market basket measure(MBM) uses the same method of measurement as the LICO, but rather than only include the three basic necessities in the 70 percent standard, it includes five necessities: food, clothing, shelter, transportation, and household needs (including utilities).
• This method of measuring poverty is used by many social services as it is considered to be the most accurate measurement because it expands the basic necessities of living. Consider how difficult it would be to navigate in many Canadian cities without access to some form of transportation, or how hard it would be to not be able to heat your home? The MBM takes an important step to expanding definitions of poverty beyond what official statistics will show.
slavery, segregation, inheritance, wealth disparities, discrimination, poor schooling, underemployment, standardized tests, school-to-prison pipeline, racial profiling, shortened lifespan, privilege, personal connections, wealth, old boy’s network

Question 28

how do sociologists word poverty?

Answer 28

• in Canada, and in many other developed nations, not everyone is equally vulnerable to poverty. Because of systemic and structural reasons, certain groups in Canada find themselves more at risk than others. The language is important here. Rather than saying certain groups are poor (implying that this is intrinsic or static), sociologists tend to speak about vulnerabilities and risks of poverty (indicating that these trends are more systemic and structural than intrinsic or static). If poverty is structural, then the hope is that it can also be eradicated.

Question 29

how are seniors more vulnerable?

Answer 29

• Seniors are one of the groups vulnerable to poverty in Canada. Despite a decrease in poverty in this group, many seniors still remain vulnerable.
  
  • While only 7 percent of Canadian seniors fall below the LICO, another 19 percent fall just above, rendering more than a quarter of all seniors vulnerable to the effects of poverty
  • The longevity revolution (people are living longer than they used and therefore have to support themselves financially for longer)
  • Ageism and discrimination towards seniors and hiring practices
  • Cuts to social assistance programs like the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) and Old Age Security (OAS)
  • Expenses of private senior care facilities
  • Women tend to outlive men, and women are also a group vulnerable to poverty in Canada

Question 30

how are women vulnerable?

Answer 30

• Women make up a second group vulnerable to poverty in Canada. The feminization of poverty refers to the “trend in which women are disproportionally represented among individuals living in poverty”
  
  • Given the fact that women are not a homogenous group, in order to understand which women are more vulnerable to poverty, we need to examine intersecting factors of inequality such as ability, race and ethnicity, immigrant and Aboriginal status (which will be discussed below)
  • Wage disparity (Canadian women on average earn $0.75 to every dollar of their male counterpart)
  • Employment disparity (women tend to occupy the poorer paid positions in society)
  • Unpaid labour (women still tend to do the vast majority of unpaid labour, leaving less time for paid labour)

Question 31

how are immigrants vulnerable?

Answer 31

• immigrants are another fast-growing group vulnerable to poverty in Canada, especially within the first 15 years of coming to Canada. Despite often being wealthy in their country of origin, hundreds of thousands of Canadian immigrants find themselves in the working poor, working many long hours for poor pay.
  
  • ducation credits are often not transferred from country to country, so many immigrants are forced to find work without university and post-graduate experience.
  • Despite passing language requirements to get into Canada, many industries claim their language skills aren’t good enough (here we see an important disjuncture between government and industry standards, which sends mixed messages to immigrants).
  • Many immigrants also speak about workplace discrimination, where they are discriminated against based on their ethnic, racial, and/or religious heritage, making it difficult to find work.
  • Immigration itself is an expensive process and many immigrants pay upwards of $50, 000 just to be able to immigrate to Canada.

Question 32

how are aboriginal peoples vulnerable?

Answer 32

• First Nations, Inuit, and Aboriginal Canadians are also vulnerable to poverty for reasons outside of their own control. As a Canadian, you’ve likely wondered why Aboriginal Canadians are more vulnerable to poverty than non-Aboriginal Canadians.
  
  • Ongoing effects of residential schools (poor levels of education, mistrust of the government, and in some cases, systemic mental health and addiction issues)
  • Ongoing effects of colonization (many Aboriginal groups lost access to land and other economic opportunities) through the creation of the Indian Act, the treaty system, and the creation of reserves)
  • Hiring and workplace discrimination
  • Lack of access to education (many schools on reserves are not in functioning order, and many young Aboriginal people are forced to travel to cities to pursue education)

Question 33

how are persons with disabilities vulnerable?

Answer 33

• Many persons with disabilities in Canada also find themselves consistently below the LICO line. Without reiterating arguments of inability (given that persons with disabilities have a wide range of ability levels),
  
  • ssured income for the severely handicapped (AISH) funding provides disincentives to workers who earn outside money. In other words, if you earn $400 a month doing part-time work and receive AISH finding, the money you earn will be subtracted from your funding amount (essentially keeping people with disabilities in poverty)
  • Hiring and workplace discrimination
  • Lack of access to education and employment opportunities (many institutions are simply not accessible for persons with disabilities)
  • Lack of access to reliable transportation. Disabled adult transit service (DATS) buses cannot guarantee a pick or drop-off time, making it difficult to arrive on time to work or school if other transportation is not feasible

Question 34

how are children vulnerable?

Answer 34

• We typically don’t consider children vulnerable to poverty, especially in Canada. Roughly one in five Canadian children are vulnerable to poverty, and more than half of these children live in two-parent families. And while not all children in Canada are equally vulnerable to poverty, children of many of the groups listed here are more at risk given the structural factors already outlined.
• Children are poor because their parents are poor
• High rates of unemployment
• Lack of good jobs
• Government cost-cutting to childcare services like the Canada Child Tax Benefit, which suffered its largest cut in Canadian history in 2006. Since then, many families struggle to pay the increases costs of child-care.
while these are typically the groups vulnerable to poverty in Canada, they are, unfortunately, not the only ones. Refugees and domestic workers are also highly vulnerable to poverty. A person’s risk of poverty moreover increases when these categories intersect and overlap as in the case of elderly Aboriginal women or immigrants with a disability. Finally, as neoliberal governing strategies continue to erode minimum wages, unions, worker rights, and fair employment, middle-class Canadians are also increasingly at risk for job loss and poverty. In other words, poverty is an issue affecting all Canadians.

Question 35

why is it important to understand the consequences of economic inequality?

Answer 35

• Since economic security is intricately tied to social stability, it is important to understand the social consequences of income inequality. Wealth indicates much more than simply having money in the bank.
In an advanced capitalist society, wealth offers a proxy of life chances ranging from better nutrition, better access to health care, better resources when dealing with the criminal justice system, greater personal safety, and often, a longer life (to name merely a few). This does not mean that if you’re poor you will be malnourished and live a shorter life, but rather your risks for these factors increase

Question 36

how are health and wealth connected?

Answer 36

Health and wealth are directly correlated. Food is increasingly expensive, especially for remote and northern communities, and many working poor and working class families have little money left over for healthy foods, which tend to be more expensive than processed and packaged foods. It might surprise you to know just how expensive some food items are in Nunavut.

* Now, imagine trying to buy healthier fresh foods for a family (more mouths to feed) with a much smaller monthly budget. This task is difficult and impossible for many low-income families across the country and the reason why twice as many Canadians are seeking out the help of food banks than they did 20 years ago
* Poor nutrition can lead to a range of chronic and acute health conditions including: low birth weight that itself leads to higher rates of infant mortality, higher rates of diabetes, higher rates of stress, anxiety, and depression about security, and long-term risks of heart disease and some types of cancers.

Question 37

how are education and wealth connected?

Answer 37

• Getting an education is one of the most consistent paths to upward social mobility, but it is important to understand its relation to other facets of social inequality. Aside from the obvious barriers of tuition costs, the quality of one’s education is often directly linked with wealth.
  
  • ivy League schools in the United States, for instance, reserve one third of their enrolment to children of alumni members (intergenerational acceptance), ensuring that the so-called “ivy league” schools are able to maintain their position among the upper- and upper-middle-class strata. While we don’t have Ivy Leagues schools in Canada, we do see education barriers of other kinds.
  • Many schools on Canada’s reserves are in substandard or non-existent conditions. They’ve either closed due to lack of government funding or operate in poor conditions where students are expected to sit in unheated portables in -30 degree weather. Consider how well you would “learn” under such conditions.
  • Moreover, the fact that many post-secondary institutions are in cities adds another financial barrier for rural Canadians accessing higher education (consider the costs of moving to the city and the extra transition of learning urban life).

Question 38

how are wealth and crime related?

Answer 38

• It is important to note at the outset that many low-income neighbourhoods are vibrant and safe communities where families come together in parks and on sidewalks to play, chit-chat, and get to know each other.
  
  • However, we also know that where there is poverty there is also greater likelihood of crime. This is not because people who are vulnerable to poverty are inherently deceitful or “bad,” but rather because many people vulnerable to poverty are forced into crime as a way to make ends meet.
  • Consider the difficulty of getting a well-paying job without high school or post-secondary education. Many forms of crime (theft, drug dealing, and sex work) pay better (at least in the short term) than jobs found in the underclass and working poor. Therefore, a big part of eradicating poverty is about raising minimum wage standards and decreasing overall unemployment rates.
  • For many years, Alberta had one of the lowest minimum wages in the country. However, in October 2015, the province increased its minimum wage to $11.20 an hour for most employees, making it one of the highest minimum wages in Canada (Government of Alberta, 2015). While this is certainly good news, many individuals and families living off minimum wage salaries are still vulnerable to poverty. If we assume that the average worker works eight hours a day at $10.00 an hour, that’s $80.00 a day, $400 a week, and $1,600 a month, not including taxes and transportation costs, which is not very much when having to pay for food, clothing, and shelter, let alone any of the other necessities needed for a relative standard of living).

Question 39

karl marx’s views

Answer 39

He saw capitalist society as comprised of two monolithic, antagonistic groups: the capitalist (bourgeoisie) class, which owns the means of production and the working (proletariat) class, which, lacking wealth, is forced to sell its labour power
	• Marx was deeply skeptical of the capitalist system, which he felt created worker alienation, a term used to describe the feelings of powerlessness and estrangement that workers experience both in relation to their work and their communities. Marx proposed that the root cause of worker alienation was the exploitation inherent in the capitalist system—that one person’s wealth is almost always earned off another person’s labour.
	• while the bourgeoisie are busy accumulating wealth, the proletariats are preoccupied with surviving on poor wages and long hours. The best contemporary example of this relationship is the use of sweatshop labour by many wealthy companies (like the Joe Fresh® factories in Bangladesh owned by billionaire Galen Weston) who pay workers a pittance for their labour.
	• According to Marx, the capitalist class maintains its dominant position by controlling society’s key institutions (like companies, the government, and the media), which are used to perpetuate the system of extreme wealth inequality and exploitation.

Question 40

max weber

Answer 40

• built on, and extended, many of Marx’s class foundations. Born 48 years after Marx, Weber was in a better position to see how capitalism had evolved, especially between Marx’s death in 1883 and his own in 1920. He agreed that a person’s relationship to the means of production is a key factor in the dynamics of capitalist societies
  
  • However, he believed that Marx’s class division was too simplistic. Weber noted that one’s location in the class structure is also a function of prestige, “the respect with which a person or status position is regarded by others” (Murray et al., 2013, p. 212), and power, “the ability of people or groups to achieve their goals despite opposition from others”
  • Based on these ideas, Weber developed what he called an “ideal type” concept of class that would only exist in a perfect world but which, nevertheless, can be used to compare and contrast other social systems. The Gilbert and Kahl (2011) class structure model was developed on the Weberian model of class structure, taking into account the interconnections between wealth, power, and prestige
  • Rather than simply measuring wealth, the model includes three criteria: education, occupation of the family head, and family income, enabling a more dynamic measure of class inequality

Question 41

pierre Bourdieu

Answer 41

• Pierre Bourdieuextends Weber’s focus on power and prestige to other symbolic forms of cultural capital. Bourdieu (1979) defines “cultural capital” as the material and symbolic items that are deemed worthy or worthwhile and thus sought after in particular class formations
  
  • Departing even further from Marx’s sole focus on material class conditions, Bourdieu’s work importantly takes up the overt and covert dynamics of economic power in a society and the ways in which social power and social capital are maintained between class groupings. If we look at the examples in the list above, we can see that these function both as objective markers of class status (e.g., either you can or cannot afford to buy a house or a car or Oilers tickets) as well as symbolic markers of class distinction (e.g., when taking into account the size of the house in question and its location in the city (e.g., wealthy or working class neighbourhood), the type or brand name of vehicle purchased, and the location of seats (e.g., front row or “nose bleed” section). In short, in contemporary capitalist societies, everything from the house we live in to the type of coffee we drink occupies a classed position.