Class System

The class system in America puts those with the most wealth, power, and prestige at the top of the hierarchy and those with the least at the bottom. This article discusses stratification and class in the United States. It defines what stratification is, looks at the major sociological theories regarding stratification, and describes the major stratification systems of slavery, caste, and class, with a focus on the class system in America. It goes on to discuss inequality and poverty; the causes of poverty, such as job sprawl and spatial mismatching; the feminization of poverty; and some possible solutions to the problems caused by inequality in the United States.

Keywords Absolute Poverty; Alienation; Capitalist Class; Class Conflict; Exurbs; Income; Job Deskilling; Job Sprawl; Meritocracy; Middle Class; Pink Collar Workers; Poverty Threshold; Prestige; Power; Relative Poverty; Socioeconomic Status (SES); Spatial Mismatching; Status Consistency; Underclass; Wealth; Working Class; Working Poor

The Class System

Overview

In the late 1970s, the United States experienced an economic downturn and the beginnings of post-industrialization, whereby many manufacturing jobs began leaving America for low-income countries and for workers willing to accept much lower wages than US workers. These changes caused economic inequality to increase dramatically, and Americans began to wonder whether there was a way to reverse the trend for themselves and their own families. Was education the answer to turning the income tide? College became a huge industry, with more and more people seeking not the traditional liberal arts education but rather college programs that would translate into job skills. What about the people who lagged behind them in education and could not catch up, or those who could not afford to enter the world of computers and high technology? Would they be able to compete with those segments of the population that managed to stem the low economic tide? If not, what will happen to them in this land of the rich, where poverty exists but is often hidden behind mass-market clothing, easy credit, and cheap consumer items (Neckerman, 2004)?

In order to begin examining these issues and more, some background in the sociology of stratification is needed.

What Is Stratification?

The United States is divided into social groups, or classes, with the divisions based on the wealth, prestige, and power of members of each group. Because these groupings are hierarchical, with the top categories receiving more of the opportunities available in America, the country is said to have a system of stratification. This hierarchical system puts those with the most wealth, power, and prestige at the top of the hierarchy and those with the least at the bottom.

The Major Stratification Systems: Slavery, Caste, & Class

There are three basic historical social systems in use in the world:

• Slavery,

• The caste system, and

• The class system.

Each of these systems is subject to erosion as technology and industrialization become central to a country's economy. In the southern United States, until the late nineteenth century, slavery was an important part of the plantation-based agrarian economic system. But advances in technology allowed the plantation system that required human toil to be replaced by agribusinesses utilizing machinery that could do the work of hundreds of people.

Some might argue that in the United States, there is more of a caste system than a class system, because there is less upward mobility for some social groups than people might think. Indeed, the class system is a stratification system based on birth, like the caste system, as well as on achievement (Macionis 2007).

Slavery and the caste system are both closed systems of stratification. Both should begin to erode with the advent of industrialization. India is an example of a country where the caste system is slowly dissolving as education and employment become more universal. Slavery involves the ownership of some people by other people. Slaves are considered property; they have little or no control over their own lives or, often, over the lives of their offspring. Historically, there have been only five Western slave societies: ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, the United States, the Caribbean, and Brazil (Engerman, 1995).

The caste system is a closed system in that people's social status is decided at birth, usually because of their parents' status. Others are placed in a caste based on their race or the type of work that they do. Many have argued that a caste system exists in the United States, where poor children tend to remain poor and fail to experience upward mobility into upper strata. Others point to various guest worker programs that have been proposed for immigrants, including the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013. Both legal and illegal immigrants, whether they are living and working in the United States with or without proper paperwork, are necessary to the nation's economy. Through their labor, their taxes, and their consumerism, they contribute to the wealth of the American middle class.

It is argued that undocumented immigrants' status as second-class citizens would be institutionalized through a guest worker program. Undocumented workers are often exploited, working for low wages in poor working conditions. If they complain, employers can threaten to have them deported. Entire industries, such as meatpacking, use many undocumented workers, making up a critical mass of employees; this threatens the livelihoods and standards of other American workers, who end up competing with immigrants who accept less pay. With US jobs offering lower pay and benefits, the exploitation of immigrants could be undermining American workers as well (Traub, 2007).

As a society moves from an agrarian economic base to an industrial one, people must be placed in a variety of jobs requiring various skills and abilities. This process of sorting people leads to a class system, at least in the workplace. Some elements of the caste system exist in a class system. For example, the importance of the family unit in a class system society provides the stability and requirements of duty and loyalty that a caste system produces.

The class system is defined as the most open, allowing people in one class, through social mobility, to have the opportunity to move to a higher class—or even, with downward mobility, to a lower class. Even though birth affects one's social class, through achievement and mobility, a person can end up in a different class from other blood relatives (Macionis, 2007). The class a person occupies determines his or her life chances, or ability to receive more and better resources from the system. Within the class system, inequality among classes levels off when industrialization establishes itself, then begins to increase during a post-industrial phase. This could be caused by the growth of service-related employment, which takes the place of manufacturing jobs and often pays much less.

Meritocracy

An industrialized society needs people with a variety of abilities and thus develops a system of rewards in the form of better life chances, wealth, power, prestige, and quality goods. People in a class society come to expect that hard work, talent, and ability will lead to more rewards for some and fewer for others. This is a system of meritocracy. In a caste system, one receives reward for being obedient and dutiful. The class system uses meritocratic methods to increase productivity and efficiency in the workplace but relies on caste-system qualities such as the institution of the family to keep control and order in society (Macionis, 2007).

Status Consistency

Class systems offer greater mobility than other systems, so there is less status consistency. For example, someone with a college degree in the United States might make far less than a factory worker in an automobile manufacturing plant, although one would expect the opposite.

Class Differences in the United States Based on Income & Wealth

At some point in our development as human beings living in the United States, we begin to realize that some people have more than others: more material goods such as houses, cars, nice clothing, and toys, and more opportunities to obtain those goods. It seems that some people have all the latest luxuries that arrive on the market, while others struggle simply to put food on the table for their families and still others sleep in church dooryards. That ability to obtain certain goods and the quality of those goods is generally linked not just to personal preference but also to social class, part of a system of stratification. Stratification means institutionalized inequalities in the distribution of resources such as power, wealth, and status between categories of persons within a single social system. Thus, stratifications are a trait of society and not simply individual determinations (Macionis, 2007). These inequalities, which tend to run along race, class, and gender lines, help determine the ownership and control of resources and the type of work that people perform.

Compounding and perpetuating the problem is the fact that the US economy is blind to the needs of people who have fewer resources than others. Thus, a large number of Americans are not only poor but also less able to participate fully in society (Koepke, 2007).

Differences in the ability of some to accumulate more than others have historically led to conflicts between groups that have achieved success and those who feel that they have not received their fair share of society's wealth. This inequality continues to exist today in the United States. In 2010, of the thirty-four countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the United States ranked fourth in terms of inequality of income distribution, beaten only by Turkey, Mexico, and Chile (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2011).

Further Insights: Why Does Stratification Exist?

Sociologists use the accepted theoretical perspectives to look at and explain social class differences and how they relate to social inequality.

The Functionalist Perspective

Functionalists look for the things in society that make it stable and help it run smoothly and efficiently. Their perspective finds that inequality must exist and is not harmful. Certain positions in society are more important than others, and they must be filled by the most qualified people. These people must have the ability and the talent to perform these jobs and, therefore, must be compensated with a higher level of income, wealth, prestige, and power. One example might be a heart surgeon, who must spend years in school and in training and who has the welfare, if not the entire life, of an individual in his or her hands. This system of rewarding people with wealth, power, and prestige for their work in jobs that are unique and demanding is called a meritocracy. A meritocracy is a hierarchical system that rewards people based on their abilities and their credentials.

Davis-Moore Thesis

This thesis, by two prominent social scientists, argues that stratification is necessary and beneficial for the smooth operation of a society. The greater the functional importance of a person's job, the more he or she should be rewarded for it. This makes others want to strive for the same rewards and thus increases productivity. Equality among all people would essentially make them lazy and unmotivated to achieve (Macionis, 2007). This is an argument that is often used against the idea of implementing a socialized medicine program in the United States.

The Conflict Perspective

The conflict perspective in sociology argues that stratification does not simply reward some people for their extraordinary effort; it gives them an unfair advantage over others that is difficult to overcome.

The Marxian Perspective on US Class Structure

The most well-known conflict perspective regarding social class is found in the work of Karl Marx, who believed that people's wealth and position in society is based on whether they fit into the system of production as the owners of the means of production, such as factories, or as the workers who sell their labor for an hourly wage. Marx recognized only two classes: the capitalists, or bourgeoisie, who own the land, capital, factories, and mines; and the working class, or proletariat, who work for the capitalists to earn a living wage. Marx explained that exploitation of the proletariat by the capitalists occurs because the excess goods produced, which do not go to the workers but become profit for the capitalists, make for an unequal distribution of the accumulated wealth. When this occurs, the workers feel a sense of alienation, or powerlessness within the equation of capitalist over proletariat. Marx believed that continued exploitation of the workers would lead to class conflict, the overthrowing of the capitalists, and ultimately a more equal distribution of wealth, overseen by a more or less just government.

The Weberian Perspective on US Class Structure

Another prominent social scientist, Max Weber, pointed out that the relationship between the haves and the have-nots is not as cut and dried as Marx would have it. He identified three dimensions of stratification that determine a person's social class: wealth, prestige, and power.

Wealth is defined as one's assets, such as property and income. Those who have similar levels of such assets are included in one social class. The more wealth one has, the higher the social class to which he or she belongs. A case in point is Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft Corporation, who enjoys not only wealth but also the other two dimensions: prestige for his accomplishments and his philanthropy, and power for his ability to affect the lives of others using his wealth and prestige.

One can also be in a higher social class even without a lot of wealth if he or she commands prestige, which can be defined as the respect of others based on life work or position. For example, Mother Theresa, a nun from Macedonia who won the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize (Nobel Foundation, 1979), spurned the accumulation of wealth and chose to live in poverty, but she was courted by the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world because of her prestige as a champion of the poor.

The third dimension of Weber's notion of social class is power, which is when a person can enact his or her will despite the objections of others. An easy example of power would be the president of the United States, who can make very unpopular decisions and remain relatively unaffected by the will of the people, depending on if he or she will be running for reelection soon. Many Americans believe that one must stand behind the decisions of the president, whether right or wrong.

Symbolic Interactionist Perspective

While functionalist and conflict sociological perspectives take in the big picture of society and look at large groups of people, an approach that is called a macro-level analysis, the symbolic interactionist perspective takes a micro-level view of topics such as social class and stratification. A symbolic interactionist would then study the effects of poverty, for example, on a group of high school students' grades and their ability to attend college. Alternatively, the symbolic interactionist might study the language used in the workplace in order to determine how each worker ranks in the hierarchy, noting that those with less prestige are often called by their first names, while those with a higher office might be referred to with a title and last name (Rollins, 1985).

Social Classes

Social classes do exist, says journalist John O'Sullivan. If they did not, we would not have a need for etiquette books that teach us how to behave in social situations, because "there is no need for advice on etiquette in a society in which people remain fixed in the circumstances in which they were born. Everyone knows how to behave at home" (O'Sullivan, 2001, p. 1).

O'Sullivan's flippant observation aside, there is hard evidence that social classes do exist and that they can profoundly affect the lives of the people who inhabit them. Several classes, or groups, have been identified in American society, beginning at the top, with 1% of the population belonging to the upper and the upper-upper classes. These people have accumulated wealth over long periods of time due to inheritance, or they have come into a great deal of money through investment. Others in the upper class tend to be sports or entertainment figures. People in these classes often have a great deal of influence on the economy and society, despite the fact that they are few in number (Gilbert, 2003).

The upper-middle class makes up about 14% of the population and includes highly educated professionals such as physicians, attorneys, stockbrokers, and those in upper managerial positions. While most Americans consider themselves part of the middle class, only about 30% of the American population, including white-collar and skilled blue-collar workers, actually falls within this category.

The working class makes up another 30% of the population and includes factory, clerical, and retail sales workers. The working poor, about 20% of the population, includes laborers and service industry workers. These people are called the working poor because while they work full time, they do not earn enough to support themselves or their families. Many single mothers belong to this class, as do many people of color (Gilbert, 2003).

The underclass, about 5% of the population, is made up of temporary, seasonal, or part-time workers, many of whom also receive some form of public assistance. Members of this group are generally undereducated and do not work consistently (Gilbert, 2003).

What Inequality Means for Some People

Cross-National Income Inequality

With massive changes in the American welfare system, the welfare poor have now become the working poor. Poverty rates have not gone down with the welfare rolls; in 2010, the United States had the fifth-highest poverty rates in the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2011). US public policy is often blamed for the situation.

Family Income Mobility

Despite the fact that the mean family income level in the United States is substantially higher than that of other industrialized countries, its poverty rate is also one of the highest. The reason, researchers argue, is a higher than ever inequality in family income and family income mobility, which is the ability for a family to increase its income over time or compensate for a low income one year by accumulating a higher income the next year.

In the years since the early 1970s, there has been sluggish growth in family income and rising earnings, combined with continual income inequality. Although there is substantial income mobility, the extent of mobility has not increased over this period, resulting in a larger gap between those at the top of the economic stratification system and those at the bottom (Gottschalk & Danziger, 1997).

To counteract the negative impact of the increase in inequality, the labor market must be improved with supplementation policies available to bolster the incomes of those who have not experienced any benefits from economic growth. This includes less-educated workers and inner-city residents (Gottschalk & Danziger, 1997).

Incarceration, Health Inequality, & Un- or Under-Employment

Although their numbers are large and ever-increasing, the poor are invisible in America's affluent society. Poor people are seldom depicted in movies or on television, especially during periods of economic prosperity.

By the year 2000, unemployment rates had dropped to historically low levels, but still there were large numbers of working poor, employed in minimum-wage jobs. Simultaneously, the stock market boomed and the rich grew richer; the poor, whether rural or urban, young or old, were forgotten.

Some things have changed for the demographics of the poor. Many elderly have pulled out of poverty through Social Security benefits. But poor urban African Americans remain the most isolated both physically and economically, due to congregating in cities in areas that have the lowest-paying jobs. This underclass, which resides outside the class structure, displays high rates of unemployment, crime, and family deviation. They are avoided by Middle America and thus ignored. Not until the economic problems that plague the underclass begin to filter into the middle classes, as happened during the Great Depression of the 1930s, does anyone notice urban poverty.

Further compounding the invisibility of the poor is their greater likelihood of imprisonment, which conceals offenders by removing them from the poor communities from which the penal system receives most of its population. Nor are their numbers reflected in any government account of economics, joblessness, or poverty. This exacerbates the inequality caused by incarceration. When the inmates of America's prisons and jails are taken into account, it seems obvious that racism and poverty, while over the horizon of high walls, are not far from reality (Western, 2004).

Health Inequality

According to Deaton (2003), "richer, better-educated people live longer than poorer, less-educated people." According to the National Longitudinal Mortality Survey, which tracks how long people live, those "whose family income in 1980 was greater than $50,000, putting them in the top 5 percent of incomes, had a life-expectancy at all ages that was about 25 percent longer than those in the bottom 5 percent, whose family income was less than $5,000" (Deaton, 2003). Not only are wealth, income, education, and occupation protective of one's ability to live longer, but so are several more interesting indicators. For example, one study discovered that the larger the gravestone, the longer that person's life-span; another study points out "that winners of Oscars live nearly four years longer than those who were nominated but did not win" (Deaton, 2003).

Pink-Collar Work for Women

Americans are being convinced that more and more families are "dual career families." Yet studies have shown that married women in such positions as lawyer, doctor, or college professor are a small minority of working women. The fact remains that women are still earning less than men and are still represented in smaller numbers in top-level professions (Benenson, 1984). At the turn of the 20th century, only one-fifth of women were in the US labor force. By 2010, that number had tripled to 59%, with 73% of those women working full time (US Department of Labor, 2011).

Despite these growing numbers, societal attitudes change slowly, and women are often perceived as unqualified for some types of work, often the types that tend to pay better. In addition, they are still held primarily responsible for the care of home and children. Even the women who work full time do what is called a "double shift" of work, first in the workplace and then at home.

Men dominate many job categories, such as the building trades, heavy-equipment mechanics, police officers, engineers, lawyers, physicians, surgeons, and corporate managers. Women are often relegated to so-called pink-collar jobs such as administrative assistants, secretaries, child care, health care, and food service.

Society defines some work as masculine and other types of work as feminine. Women are often not viewed as qualified for the masculine jobs. This translates, too, to a variance in income. In 2011, the median income for full-time working women was $37,160, while for men it was $47,549 (US Census Bureau, 2011).

Conclusion

The Future Class System

Americans have always believed in what Hertzler calls a "mobility orientation" (Hertzler, 1952, p. 1), meaning that the US class system is open and flexible. But we also know that the system is imperfect and allows some people to succeed who do not deserve to, a phenomenon often referred to as the Peter Principle (Clark, 2008), while at the same time leaving behind those who deserve better. Obstacles such as racism, discrimination, and unequal opportunity still exist and will be joined in the future by new obstacles. Social positions are becoming more rigid, with stricter boundaries, thus offering less vertical mobility.

It has become much more difficult to get ahead or launch a new business in the United States. Those who start out with a parent or parents in a highly technically trained field have an advantage over those trying to move into such positions from lower social strata. It costs more for the training and the apprenticeship necessary to gain professional status in certain fields. Even unions may be keeping some people out of jobs by requiring membership in the organization in order to be hired. When people want to change jobs to better themselves, being tied to the benefits offered by their current job may prevent them from doing so. Workers become dependent on their jobs for some of the securities of life, especially health insurances (Hertzler, 1952). The US educational system does the same type of sifting as the workplace; in 2005, students from the richest quarter of the population had a 74.9 percent chance of earning a college degree, while those in the poorest quarter had only an 8.6 percent chance (Brooks, 2005).

Th[RT1]e American Dream is becoming less real for more people. Americans are willing to settle for less, and the social strata are becoming more rigid. The loopholes that allow some people to break through the barriers from one social class to another are closing. Those who have attained a certain social and economic status are holding on to it and passing it on to their children. The potential contributions to society of the many people in the lower social strata could be lost in the future because of these tendencies.

Terms & Concepts

Absolute Poverty: The life-threatening inability to obtain resources.

Alienation: The feeling of isolation and powerlessness that Marx attributed to workers.

Capitalist Class: People who own and operate businesses in order to make a profit.

Class Conflict: The struggle between groups of people for the resources of society.

Exurbs: The regions beyond the suburbs of a city.

Income: Money one earns from working.

Job Sprawl: When more of a metropolitan area's employment is located outside a five-mile ring of the city center, rather than inside it.

Meritocracy: A system in which a person's social standing is based on individual merit or achievement.

Pink-Collar Workers: Women who work in traditionally "female" jobs such as service work.

Poverty Threshold: The federal poverty measure. In 2012, the poverty threshold for a four-person family unit with two children was $23,283; for one individual under age 65, it was $11,945; and for an individual 65 or over, it was $11,0119.

Prestige: Regard and respect from others.

Relative Poverty: The level of poverty at which one is able to provide the basic needs for life but unable to afford what others in the same socioeconomic status can.

Socioeconomic Status (SES): The measure of an individual's or family's economic and social position relative to others, based on income, education, and job.

Spatial Mismatching: When employment opportunities for low-income people are located far away from the areas where they live.

Status Consistency: The degree of constancy in a person's social status.

Underclass: People who tend to be jobless most of the time and have a low level of education.

Wealth: The accumulated goods, income, and property that a person has.

Working Poor: People who work full time but who fall below the federal guidelines for poverty.

Bibliography

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Brooks, D. (2005). The education gap. Retrieved November 13, 2013, from http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=F40910FB3F540C768EDDA00894DD404482

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Deaton, A. (2003). Health, income and inequality. National Bureau of Economic Research. Research Summary, Spring 2003. Retrieved August 12, 2008 from http://www.nber.org/reporter/spring03/health.html

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Koepke, D. (2007). Race, class, poverty and capitalism. Race, Gender & Class, 14 (3/4), 189-205. Retrieved July 2, 2008 from EBSCO online database, SocINDEX with Full Text: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=31792793&site=ehost-live

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Rollins, J. (1985). Between women: Domestics and their employers. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

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Suggested Reading

Dolbeare, K. & Hubbell, J. (1996). U.S.A. 2012: After the Middle-Class Revolution. New Jersey: Chatham House.

Hinshaw, J. & LeBlanc, P. (eds.) (2000). U.S. Labor in the 20th Century: Studies in Working-Class Struggles and Insurgency. New York: Humanity.

LeBlanc, P. (1999). A Short History of the U.S. Working Class from Colonial Times to the Twenty First Century. New York: Humanity.

Robinson, W. I. (2012). Global capitalism theory and the emergence of transnational elites. Critical Sociology, 38, 349–363. Retrieved November 13, 2013, from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=76180744&site=ehost-live [RT1]3 hrs