Social inequality

Social inequality describes an imbalance in the distribution of society’s resources, opportunities, and burdens. People categorize types of social inequality based on the attributes of society and the groups of people affected. For example, economic inequality, gender inequality, and racial inequality are specific types of social inequality. Individuals can experience one or many types of social inequality. People try to change social inequality through government policy and social change. Some social scientists posit that social inequality is difficult to change because people who do not experience inequality are unlikely to try to change the systems responsible for inequality. Furthermore, ideas about inequality are shaped in important ways by one’s identity and experiences. Individuals often do not agree about the amount of social inequality that exists in society or the appropriate methods for addressing social inequality.

Overview

Social inequality exists in many forms. Some forms of social inequality, such as gender and racial inequality, affect groups based on immutable traits, such as gender or race. Other forms of social inequality, such as wage or income inequality, can affect anyone. These types of inequality are often disproportionally experienced by people who also experience other forms of social inequality. Individuals may experience various forms of inequality or only one.

Economic Inequality

Economic inequality is a type of social inequality that refers to the unequal distribution of wealth, capital, and income in a society. Economic inequality is largely affected by people’s social class, income, and wealth. A person’s position in an economy often changes if his or her wealth, income, or social class changes.

Though people’s economic status can change (e.g., a person born in poverty becomes wealthy), the ability to change one’s economic status is made easier or inhibited by the nature of society. A society’s form of social stratification plays an important role in determining whether people can change their economic position. Societies can have open or closed systems. Open systems are based on achievement and allow people to easily move between social classes based on their work and ability. Closed systems mostly keep people in the social classes they are born into. These systems “assign” individuals their positions in society instead of allowing people to use their work and ability to determine their place in society. Most people agree that economic inequality is more dramatic in closed systems because those systems do not allow people to move to other economic and social classes. However, people often disagree about whether certain societies are open or closed.

Another topic of disagreement is class structure in a society. People often clearly understand what it means to be in the highest and lowest economic and social classes. Central classes are more difficult to broadly describe, as people in those classes can have large differences in their economic and social standings. In the United States, researchers have used different class systems, though all researchers use wealth and income to determine people’s positions in these classes. Some sociologists have identified the United States' class structure as upper, middle, lower, and working classes, with the upper class being the smallest and the working class being the largest. Other class structures in the United States include more classes, partly to illustrate the unequal distribution of wealth. A more extensive class structure might include a capitalist class, an upper-middle class, a middle class, a working class, working poor, and an underclass (Hurst et al., 2016). Although some researchers use specific metrics (e.g., people in the top 1 percent of an economy make up the capitalist class) to classify individuals into social classes, social class systems are subjective and vary widely.

Economic inequality is affected by income and wealth in addition to social stratification and class. Income refers to money people receive from various sources, including wages (or salaries) earned for work, social safety net benefits (e.g., Social Security payments), and pensions. People’s income often changes throughout their lives and is affected by many factorseducation, disability status, and geographic location. Although income is an important factor contributing to a person’s position in an economy, wealth is even more important. Wealth is the value of a person’s assets minus debts. Therefore, wealth includes the value of a person’s real estate, vehicles, businesses, and investments. In addition to contributing to a person’s economic status, wealth also gives people other types of economic power that are difficult to measure. For example, a person who owns numerous apartment buildings can influence the price of rent. A person who owns large amounts of stock in a single company can help influence the company’s decisions. In that way, wealth inequality—or the unequal distribution of wealth in a society—affects more than a person’s economic status, and some of those effects can be difficult to measure.

Gender Inequality

Gender inequality refers to the unequal treatment of people based on their gender. Gender is a social construct that has traditionally created social roles for males and females, and people living in a society must make choices on which outcomes are based. Gender-based roles change over time and between societies because societies construct such roles. Physiological differences exist between people of different sexes, but gender roles deal with more than the physical differences between males and females. The origins of gender inequality are unclear, though gender inequality has existed in many societies throughout history. Gender roles may have developed because men and women did not have the same childbearing capabilities and childrearing responsibilities. Gender inequality in a society is affected by the structure of society. For example, anthropologists believe that hunter-gatherer societies had less gender inequality than later agrarian societies.

Gender inequality has existed in the United States throughout its history. One of the most prominent struggles in American history for attaining more gender equality was the suffrage movement of the 1800s and early 1900s. Even after women earned the right to vote, they continued to experience inequality as they did not have equal rights under the law or equal treatment in the workplace. In the mid-1900s, people focused on gender inequality in terms of the lack of opportunities for women in the workplace. In the early twenty-first century, gender discrimination came to the forefront. Individuals pointed out that women were paid less than men for doing the same work. Often, gender inequality has led to more positive outcomes for men and less positive outcomes for women, which is why many efforts to create gender equality focus on women’s rights. However, gender inequality can also refer to situations in which men have worse outcomes than women. For example, in the United States, men are more likely to be incarcerated than women.

Racial Inequality

Racial inequality refers to how people within a society are treated based on their race. Race, like gender, is a social construct based on physical characteristics. People have developed racial groups based on physical characteristics such as skin color, bone structure, and hair texture. Nevertheless, like gender roles, definitions of racial groups can change over time and in different societies, indicating that they are socially constructed rather than natural categories. Racial inequality is related to racism, which is treating people differently based on their race. Most sociologists specifically link racial inequality to systematic racism, which is racism that is built into systems either on purpose or unknowingly. Because systematic racism is built into social systems, it can come to be seen as part of a natural order. People can start to believe that the outcomes influenced by these systems are a “natural” outcome of the nature of certain groups. Racial inequality, like other types of inequality, is related to and influenced by other forms of inequality. Racial inequality was common in many nations in the early twenty-first century. In other words, a person’s outcomes in life are more likely to follow a certain path based on their race.

Racial inequality has existed in the United States before it gained independence from Britain. The British colonies practiced race-based slavery, a practice that continued for hundreds of years. After slavery ended, racist Jim Crow laws, segregation, unequal education opportunities, redlining practices, and racist migration laws (e.g., the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882) all contributed to racial inequality. Although the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and other laws passed in the United States during the civil rights movement helped change racial discrimination, racial inequality remained. Economists and sociologists in the United States disagree about the causes of racial inequality, but many researchers who specifically study the topic agree that systems, such as the justice system, are major factors in determining levels of racial inequality.

Status Inequality

Status inequality is a type of inequality that occurs because of variations in esteem or honor. Status inequality is unique among other types of inequality because it is directly related to nearly all inequality types. For example, societies often give special honor or recognition to people from certain social classes, races, or genders. Status hierarchies are social inventions that can change over time and differ in some societies. Status is more changeable than other traits that cause inequalities, such as gender or race.

Status inequality is important because it helps reproduce other types of social inequality. Social reproduction is the idea that social conditions, including social inequality, are passed on from one generation to the next. For example, if a family experiences economic inequality, it is more likely that the children of the family will also experience economic inequality when they become adults. Status inequality helps reproduce social conditions such as inequality because people with status have greater power to leverage and more connections. People who do not have status have fewer connections and less power to leverage. These factors can help reproduce social conditions from one generation to the next.

Political Inequality

Political inequality is when the government fails to consider the interests of all people when making decisions. Put another way, it is when some citizens have an unequal influence on the government. Political inequality is especially important in democracies where all citizens are supposed to have an equal influence on government. In other words, political equality should be part of a healthy democracy.

Scholars with different ideologies view political inequality in varying ways. Two main understandings of political inequality have developed in the United States. One understanding posits that society achieves political equality by allowing universal suffrage and participation in public matters. This understanding asserts that these conditions allow all people to participate. People who do not participate are using their liberty to choose not to. Therefore, political inequality exists only because citizens choose not to participate.

Another understanding of political inequality asserts that political inequality can happen even when a society has universal suffrage and allows universal participation in public matters. This understanding believes that people have access to different amounts of political influence based on factors such as wealth, race, gender, education, and geographic location. It asserts that people having access to differing amounts of political power creates political inequality.

Further Insight

Numerous other types of social inequality exist. Many of these are related to and influenced by other types of social inequality. Factors such as gender identity, sexual orientation, disability status, ethnicity, nationality, race, social class, and immigration status all affect social inequality. People’s various identities affect the types of inequality they experience. They also affect how people view types of inequality.

Scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw developed the idea of intersectionality as a framework for understanding how people are affected by their various identities. Crenshaw created this framework because she observed that the experiences of Black women differed from those of Black men and White women. A Black woman’s intersecting identities—being Black and female—make her experience unique. This idea is important to the study of social inequality because people’s identities play a large role in the types of social inequalities they may or may not experience. Since various types of inequality are often linked, addressing only one type of social inequality for an individual or a society will not be as effective as addressing all inequality a person or society experiences.

Crenshaw also noted how some identities pit people against one another who should be working together, citing Clarence Thomas—a Supreme Court justice sued by Anita Hill for harassment. At the trial, Crenshaw observed feminists supporting Hill and anti-racists supporting Thomas—twin calls for inequality that should be working together instead of against each other. In the case of Black women previously noted, these two identities cause them to face social inequalities.

Viewpoints

Although inequality has been present throughout history, major social inequality is relatively new in human history. Many scholars point to the Middle Ages and the Industrial Revolution as the time when major social inequality began to emerge. People have attempted to analyze and understand inequality since at least the European Enlightenment. Scholars and philosophers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau began writing about inequality in the 1700s. In the 1800s, philosopher Karl Marx wrote about inequality and developed political theories based on his beliefs. In the twentieth century, American economist Simon Kuznets developed a theory that indicated that societies experience an increase and then a decrease in income inequality. In the twenty-first century, some prominent social scientists continued to agree with some of Kuznets’s findings, but others developed other theories about inequality. In 2014, French economist Thomas Piketty published his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century explaining his beliefs about income inequality between the 1800s and early 2000s. Theories about gender, race, and other social inequality factors began developing soon after ideas about economic inequality. In the United States, the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, and the gay liberation movement of the mid to late 1900s were inspired by increasing understanding and social discourse about such inequalities. By the 2000s, social inequality had become one of the most important social science topics.

Although social inequality has been well researched, social scientists admit that people’s views about inequality are influenced by their personal experiences, ideologies, and identities. For example, those with more conservative social and political ideas often view social inequality from a different perspective than those with more liberal social and political views. Nevertheless, views about inequality are shaped by more than political ideology, and people’s experiences, national origin, and other factors also shape their views about inequality.

Even those who have thoroughly researched inequality and developed theories, such as Thomas Piketty, have pointed out that personal observations from people’s everyday lives shape their views about inequality. Therefore, most social scientists have determined that the topic will always be somewhat subjective. Nevertheless, social scientists also agree that using data and well-established economic and sociological theories can help guide people’s understanding of inequality.

Measuring levels of inequality is also difficult for numerous reasons. Concepts such as resources, power, status, and wealth are broad and defined in various ways. Researchers studying inequality develop precise metrics for measurement in their work. However, two people studying the same type of inequality may develop different metrics, disagreeing about what exact criteria determine inequality. Furthermore, comparing inequality is challenging because people may disagree about what makes one type of inequality better or worse than another. For example, consider a researcher comparing economic inequality in Country A and Country B. Country A has a large middle class, but it also has wealth extremes at the top and the bottom. The people in the lowest economic class live in extreme poverty and struggle to survive. Country B has fewer people in the middle class and more people in the lower and working classes, but wealth and resources are more evenly distributed across all the classes, with fewer people living in extreme poverty. Individual’s opinions and personal experiences will most likely influence whether they designate Country A or Country B as having more inequality (Smelser & Baltes, 2001).

About the Author

Elizabeth Mohn earned a BS in communications in 2006. She has developed social sciences content for more than a decade.

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