social inequalities- social class

Question 1

What elements should be considered?

Answer 1

• Employment
• Education
• Poverty
• Health
• Wealth

Question 2

Employment:

What should be considered?

Answer 2

• Power and control
• job satisfaction
• status of job

Question 3

Types of employment?

Answer 3

• Manual jobs- closely supervised, no career progression, less status
• Managerial/professional jobs- autonomy, skill development, promotion opportunities and higher satisfaction.

Question 4

Education?

Answer 4

• At all stages WC kids achieve less than MC.
• Studies found- less likely to attend nursery and start school unable to read.
• Continues through GCSE, national stats shows WC kids always attain less.

Question 5

Types of poverty?

Answer 5

Absolute and relative.

Question 6

Poverty?

Answer 6

Wakeman-

• long-term food bank users increase risk of nutritional deficiencies.
• In London, there is a 25 year life expectancy gap between the richest and poorest 10%.

Question 7

What is wealth?

Answer 7

The total ownership of all assets.

Question 8

The office of national statistics (2014)?

Answer 8

• Richest 1% owned as much as the poorest 55% all together.

- Inequality increased 1979-1997

Question 9

Why is it hard to measure wealth?

Answer 9

• Concealment
• Wealth changes in value overtime (E.G. land)
• Sometimes wealth is held by institutions not people.

Question 10

Functionalist perspective?

Answer 10

Unequal rewards beneficial to society.

- Some deserve more/less.

Question 11

Marxist perspective?

Answer 11

• High paid individuals have the power to create a culture of huge rewards, ordinary workers have to bargain for rewards.

Question 12

Social mobility?

Answer 12

• UK holds strong correlation between parent and child status.
• Intergenerational and intragenerational.
• Factors- education, cultural capital, marriage, inheritance, economy.

Question 13

What is an open society?

Answer 13

Achieved status (few barriers)

Question 14

What is a closed society?

Answer 14

Ascribed status

Question 15

What is a meritocracy?

Answer 15

A society where everyone has equal opportunities and status depends on ability (functionalist)

Question 16

Why is it hard to measure social mobility?

Answer 16

• Classifying occupations (important/not)
• Hard to measure wealth (concealment)
• Mobility of women ignored in many studies.
• Contrast of very rich and rich, and very poor and poor.
• Cannot draw conclusions of mobility until established in life (requires longitudinal study)

Question 17

Who researched social mobility and what did they say?

Answer 17

Goldthorpe (1980):

• developed the hope-Goldthorpe scale to study.
• Distinguished three main classes, further sub-divided into seven occupational classes.
• Service class:
• 1,. higher professionals, managers of large companies.
• 2. Lower professionals, small business managers
• Intermediate class
• 3, Routine non-manual workers.
• 4, small proprietors, self-employed (craftsperson)
• 5, lower grade technicians, supervisors of manual workers.
• Working class
• 6, Skilled manual workers
• 7, Semi-skilled/unskilled manual workers.

Question 18

New right?

Answer 18

• Murray (1989)
• Underclass
• Poorest members of society
• E.G. unemployed, lone-parent and the chronically sick
• Depended on welfare system
• Dependency culture

Question 19

Life chances

Answer 19

Weber defined- how some members of society had much better opportunities than others to achieve the things in life that most see as desirable.

• E.G. healthy/long life, good education, well-paid job, own home, ECT.
• Life chances= linked to social class.
• E.G. women traditionally had worse life chances in terms of achieving high-paid and high-status jobs.

Question 20

Income inequalities

Answer 20

• Income= the flow of money to a person or household over a time period- E.G. monthly or annually.
• Income affects ability to obtain desirable things.
• E.G. food they eat, value, quality, location of housing, ability to afford customer goods.
• Examples of income= salary, benefits, pension, investments/savings.

Question 21

Income statistics/trends

Answer 21

• Britain one of the most unequal societies.
• More unequal over the past 30 years.
• 1950’s-70’s, slight narrowing of income inequality, then increased in 1980’s (during Thatcher as prime minister, gov cut income tax of very rich and cut link of earnings and benefits.
• Direct tax falls most heavily on the rich and indirect taxes fall most heavily on the poor. So, a poor person paying for petrol will pay the same as a rich despite it representing much larger proportion of their income.
• High pay centre (2012) reported total pay of chief executives of 100 largest companies on London stock exchange, rose by 49% over the last year compared to only 3% of employees. So, had average pay of £4.2M, 145X average pay of workers and 162X of British average.