Chapter 7: Socioeconomic Status and Inequality

Question 1

socioeconomic status

Answer 1

Question 2

social inequality

Answer 2

the differential and unequal distribution of goods, services, resources, and power that create a hierarchical social system

Question 3

social stratification

Answer 3

where individuals or groups are ranked hierarchically based on a set of shared characteristics like wealth, income, power, status and education

Question 4

Income

Answer 4

the amount of money you earn over time

Question 5

Income inequality

Answer 5

the unequal distribution of income among individuals or households

Question 6

Wealth (2)

+how its calculated

Answer 6

the value or worth of all possessions and assets owned by an individual. Wealth is determined by calculating the value of assets (like real estate) minus debts (like student loans) to establish net worth.

Question 7

Higher wealth contributes to

Answer 7

greater upward social mobility, provides financial resources to pursue education, and can also contribute to stronger employment opportunities

Question 8

Wealth inequality

Answer 8

the unequal or disproportionate accumulation and distribution of wealth among individuals

Question 9

—- inequality in Canada is more highly concentrated than income inequality

Answer 9

Wealth

Question 10

Gini index (2)

What does higher score mean?

Answer 10

• The Gini index is a measure of social inequality that looks at the actual distribution of income in a country compared to an equal distribution of all income. The Gini index uses a scale of 0 to 1, where a score of 0 represents perfect income equality where everyone has the same amount of income, and a score of 1 represents perfect income inequality where all income is owned by a single person.
• A higher score means more income inequality.

Question 11

Intergenerational mobility estimates +ex + higher/lower score means?(3)

Answer 11

• This measure shows the extent to which your parent’s socioeconomic status predicts your adult socioeconomic status.
• In other words, if your parents are lower SES, how much of their lower SES status predicts whether you will be lower class, middle class, or upper class as an adult.
• A higher score means more of your parent’s SES will predict your SES and therefore there will be less social mobility. A lower score means more social mobility because your adult SES is less tied to your parents SES.

Question 12

Percent persons living in poverty

Answer 12

This measure indicates the percentage of the population living in poverty, according the Market Basket Measure (MBM). MBM is a measure of low income based on the cost of a specific basket of goods and services that represents a basic standard of living in Canada. The basket includes things like healthy food, shelter, clothing, home maintenance, and transportation.

Question 13

Conflict perspectives argue that inequality, specifically class inequality, is a product of

Answer 13

the social and economic systems and a person’s relationship to the means of production

Question 14

What are the measures combined to reduce the structural inequality that arose from a capitalist economic system:

Answer 14

• Workers’ rights and protections
• income transfers or other social assistance programs from the government, companies, or unions were established to alleviate the financial burden individuals may face if they find themselves unable to work

Question 15

Conflict theorists have articulated how the state is organized to

Answer 15

serve the interests of the dominant economic class, and that law is used as a tool for subordinating (treat or regard as of lesser importance) groups and maintaining dominant social orders

Question 16

The Indian Act (6)

Answer 16

• the state controlled agricultural and resource production on the land
• misappropriated millions of dollars in profits through the Department of Indian Affairs
• removed barriers to state development of Indigenous land or the exploitation of resources on that land
• forced Indigenous people to stay on reserves
• prevented them from voting unless they renounced their Indigenous status
• prevented anyone from raising money for Indigenous legal claims without first obtaining a special licence

Question 17

While conflict theorists argue that inequality is a product of the economic structure, functionalists argue that inequality is

Answer 17

a natural feature of society. That is, some people are more gifted, more ambitious, and more willing to defer gratification than others, and those are the people who rise to higher positions in society.

Question 18

Davis-Moore hypothesis

Answer 18

The jobs that are more rewarded in terms of status and pay are those that require more specialization, more sacrifice in terms of years of schooling or training, and generally more competition.

Question 19

Functionalists believe that higher rewards are needed to

Answer 19

motivate individuals to make the necessary sacrifices and investments to embark on a challenging career path

Question 20

Memes circulating across social media depicting workers in supermarkets, cleaners, or couriers during Covid support a conflict perspective by further arguing that

Answer 20

these workers should not be barred from decent pay and benefits just because their jobs do not have high social status.

Question 21

Critique of structural functionalist approach to inequality

Answer 21

• Ignores how inequalities affect access to education and high-paying or prestigious jobs. Rather than rewarding merit, hard work, or ambition, high-ranking and high-paying jobs merely reward those who are advantageously positioned in society, to begin with.
• The subjective ranking of importance of any particular occupation

Question 22

conspicuous leisure

Answer 22

the use of time in non-productive ways as a sign of social status

Question 23

Productive labour

Answer 23

such as manual labour, mark someone as having low social status

Question 24

Considering that whisky is merely distilled grains aged in oak, how is it that such an item could command as much money as a house? The answer, according to symbolic interactionists, is

Answer 24

that we give meaning and value to items like these and elevate them to the status of luxury. The value of many luxury whiskies is derived, ironically, from remaining unopened, the epitome of conspicuous consumption—a trophy or status symbol only to be displayed.

Question 25

Diff in how functionalist and conflict theorest see the word inequality opposed to symbolic interactionist:

Answer 25

Functionalists and conflict theorists see inequality as part of the social landscape, an objective fact of the world that needs to be explained. Symbolic interactions see inequality as an interpretation of that landscape. Nothing is objectively equal or unequal, but instead, people give meaning to contexts that they interpret to be equal or unequal (Blumer 1969). People learn to define inequality based on their socialization and their context, and often with significant variation in beliefs about inequality over time. Inequality is therefore never an objective state to the interactionist, but instead a perception that reflects a person’s particular interpretation in a particular time and place (Harris 2001).

Question 26

Pierre Bourdieu (2)

Answer 26

• studied power and social order
• popularized the concepts: human capital, social capital, and cultural capital.

Question 27

Human capital +ex (2)

Answer 27

• refers to investments made by an individual in their training, skills, and education.
• Pursuing a college diploma or university degree, gaining job experience, and developing skills throughout your life are all examples of investing in human capital

Question 28

Social capital

Answer 28

• the resources an individual accrues through connection with other people or a social network
• It consists of patterns of trust that enable people to gain access to resources through their connections to others

Question 29

cultural capital

Answer 29

• when middle- and upper-class parents pass on to their children cultural resources like knowledge, traits, preferences, and behaviours that act as status cues for high culture.
• ex: The young adult who knows how to dress for success, knows proper dinner etiquette, knows the finer points of wine or whisky, or has learned cultural references (art, music, literature) through their upbringing and education are displaying cultural capital.

Question 30

habitus (2)

life experience+social class

Answer 30

• The habits, skills, and dispositions that we acquire based on our life experiences.
• The embodiment of our cultural capital or the traits and preferences that we acquire based on our social class

Question 31

educational attainment

Answer 31

Question 32

Institutional inequality emerges from

Answer 32

systems put in place by governments such as systems of taxation or minimum wage rates.

Question 33

progressive taxation

Answer 33

the taxes you pay increase as your income increases

Question 34

regressive taxation

Answer 34

everyone pays the same tax regardless of their income

Question 35

redistribution

Answer 35

Redistribution is the process of transferring funds to programs that help reduce income inequality, like old-age pensions, child tax benefits, low-income tax credits, and social assistance

Question 36

absolute poverty

Answer 36

the deprivation of basic human needs like food, water, sanitation, health, and shelter

Question 37

Relative poverty

Answer 37

deprivation compared to an average standard of living in a society.

Question 38

According to relative poverty, someone is considered poor if

Answer 38

their standard of living falls below most people’s standard of living, even if they may have shelter and access to food.

Question 39

Low-Income Cut-off

Answer 39

Question 40

feminisation of poverty

Answer 40

women are more likely to be poor and they make up a growing proportion of the poor. Women tend to have a lower employment rate, earn less, work in lower-paying jobs, are more likely to work part-time, and are more likely to miss work due to caregiving obligations

Question 41

Poverty Reduction Act

Answer 41

set concrete poverty reduction targets, established the National Advisory Council on Poverty to monitor and report on poverty reduction benchmarks. It also created an official measure of poverty that takes into account the goods and services a family requires to meet their basic needs and achieve a modest standard of living (Canada 2018). The poverty reduction strategy aims to address many of the correlates of poverty, namely housing, education, employment, integration, and inequality, and it targets the groups at risk for poverty, such as Indigenous people and newcomers to Canada

Question 42

Social mobility

Answer 42

the process through which an individual or family moves from one social stratum to another

can be upward or downward

Question 43

achievement-based system (2)

What it is+ how to achieve upwards mobility

Answer 43

• people’s talents and merits determine their social class position.
• In an open, achievement-based system, people can achieve upward mobility through talent, training, education, hard work, and perhaps a little luck

Question 44

ascription-based system (2)

What it is+ how to achieve upwards mobility

Answer 44

• In ascription-based system is one in which people’s status at birth determines their social position. In ascription-based systems, there is little to no opportunity for social mobility.
• individuals are assigned roles or positions based on characteristics they are born with, such as race, ethnicity, or gender.

Question 45

Intragenerational mobility +ex (2)

Answer 45

• a change in social position during a person’s lifetime
• ex: If an adult upgrades their education, takes a higher-paying job, and is ultimately more successful, they have experienced intragenerational mobility

Question 46

Intergenerational mobility+ ex (2)

Answer 46

• a change in social position that occurs between generations.
• When a child is more financially successful than their parents and moves up in social class compared to their parents, they have experienced intergenerational mobility.

Question 47

intergenerational income elasticity

Answer 47

IGE compares the incomes of parents with those of their children when the children become adults; does your parent’s income influence your income and, if so, by how much? In other words, if your parents make a lower-class income are you also likely to make a lower-class income? It is measured on a scale of 0 to 1, where 0 represents complete mobility (there is no relationship between a parent and child’s income) and 1 represents complete immobility (a child’s income remains the same as the parent’s). Canada’s IGE is 0.32, meaning that 32% of the parent’s SES will be passed on to the child (Chen, Ostrovsky, and Piraino 2016). Another way to think about this: in Canada, 32% of a child’s income depends on the parents’ income, meaning that 68% of their future income is determined by other factors like education, job experiences, and credentials.

Question 48

A meritocracy

Answer 48

a system where people are sorted based on their talent and hard work. Those with the most merit receive the greatest rewards, like higher grades in school or higher pay and promotions at work.

Question 49

Household income

Answer 49

refers to the total income earned by members of that household