Social stratification and social inequality (стр. 2 из 2)

An aggregated socio-economic status

As various stratification models show, numbers of criteria to grouping people in each may vary. But their authors share the opinion that such parameters as income, power, education and prestige must be enlisted as the basic ones.

Income as an economic status is an amount of money a person or family makes for a definite period of time (month or year). Income is spent to satisfy needs but if it is high, it is accumulated and turns to wealth.

Wealth is accumulated income in the form of cash or materialized money. The later can be movable property (car, yacht, securities) and real estate (house, masterpieces of art). Wealth can be inherited. It differs from income in the way that wealth can be inherited by those who work and who don’t, and income is earned only by those who work. Pensioners and unemployed have income but rags – don’t. The rich either can or cannot work as they are owners of wealth. Accumulated property is the parameter used to differentiate the high class from middle and low classes who live on income.

Wealth and income are distributed unequally and means economic inequality. Sociologists interpret economic inequality to show unequal chances of different groups of the population. Those who have more money have better food, live in more comfortable houses, prefer going by private car to public transport, can afford an expensive holiday etc. Besides having economic advantages, the rich possess a number of hidden privileges: they live longer than the poor even if the latter use the same medical achievements, children from poor families are less educated even if they go to the same public schools as children from wealthy families etc.

Power is a possibility to impose one’s will or decision on others regardless of their desire. It is measured by a number of people who have to follow one’s will or decision. Decisions made by the President or Prime-Minister of the country should be accepted by the whole population of the given country, and decisions by a sole proprietor – by his employees only.

In a highly stratified society power is guarded by law and tradition, it means privileges, a wider access to social wealth, and possibility to make decisions which are most essential to the society, laws for the benefit of the higher class being among them. People possessing power (political, economic or religious) constitute the elite of the society.

Education is measured by a number of years studied in state or private school, university etc. For instance, a professor has studied for more than 20 years (11 years at school, 5 – university, 3 – post-graduate courses, 3 – doctorate courses), a low qualified worker – not more than 11. A weak point of the criterion is that quality of education is not taken into account. Establishments of learning located in the capital of the country are likely to provide better quality than those located on the periphery. Another distinction is character of knowledge – theoretic, fundamental or branch, applied – that a person can get.

Income, power and education are objective parameters, and they have units of measure, correspondingly local currency, people, years; unlike them prestige is of subjective character.

Prestige is respect that public opinion gives to a certain job, profession or occupation. No doubt, the profession of a banker is more prestigious than that of a cleaner or plumber. All professions, occupations and jobs existing in the society can be ranked from top to bottom according to their prestige. Although professional prestige is very often defined by intuition, approximately, in some countries, for instance in the USA sociologists measure it with special methods.

Income, power, education and prestige combined together define an aggregated socio-economic status, or position and place of a person in the society. In its sense the status is a generalized parameter of stratification. An ascribed status characterizes a strictly fixed system of stratification or closed society where transition from one stratum to another is practically forbidden. Examples of a closed society are caste and slave-owning systems. An achieved status characterizes a mobile system of stratification, or open society with people’s free ascending and descending on the social ladder. An example is a capitalist society with its class differentiation. A feudal society is an intermediate type as it belongs to a relatively closed system: transitions are formally forbidden but in practice they are not excluded. Such are the historic types of stratification.

Stratification profile

Four parameters of stratification are made use of to create analytical models and instruments which can be applied to define not only the status of separate individuals but groups as well, i.e. dynamics and structure of the society in general.

Sociologists distinguish the stratification profile which enables to apply a deeper consideration of the problem of status incompatibility. Status incompatibility is a contradiction between statuses in the person’s set or between status characteristics in his status set. If some parameters of a definite status set go beyond the boundaries of a class, status incompatibility turns to stratification incompatibility.

Here is an example. As practice shows, in transitive societies like those on the post-soviet area a professor belongs to the lower class according to his income, and to the upper one – according to his prestige. It means a large dispersion of parameters extending the boundaries of the middle class to which a professor belongs in developed societies and testifies about stratification incompatibility. There are two ways to liquidate it and make status characteristics more or less equal: either to raise a professor’s salary to the level of the middle class or to decrease the level of education. Both things can hardly be done in a transitive society: the first one – due to economic reasons, the second one – due professional reasons.

Stratification incompatibility may entail a feeling of social discomfort which may turn to frustration, the latter – to dissatisfaction with one’s place in the society. That’s why the fewer are the cases of status and stratification incompatibility in the society the more stable and sustainable is the society. Russia of 1995-2000 is a typical example of a transitive society characterized by both status and stratification incompatibility.

As far as the society is concerned, its stratification profile, or a profile of social inequality, should be distinguished. A stratification profile is defined as structural distribution of wealth and income. As a rule, it shows a ratio of the upper, middle and lower classes in the country’s population, or the level of social inequality in the given society. If the ratio is in interest, the table is made up.

The stratification profile is also easily viewed graphically. It can have three forms – that of a rhombus or diamond, and a pyramid with either broad or narrow footing. For instance, in modern highly developed countries the profile is a rhombus.

Types of stratification profile

Upper class
Middle class
Lower class

a) b) c)

Picture 1. a) rhombus; b) pyramid with broad footing; c) pyramid with narrow footing.

The stratification profile may speak a lot of stability in the society. Its extreme stretching or increase of social distance between the poles of differentiation of the society (as in case c) leads to strengthening social tension in the society. On the other hand, extreme compression (as in case b) can also have negative consequences as egalitarian principles in income, property, power, status positions deprive people of both important stimuli to activities and source of social development, which is social inequality. In other words, it leads to stagnation of the society.

Sociologists are unanimous in their opinion that middle class plays an important role in ensuring stability in the society. Sociological surveys prove that in modern Western countries middle class accounts for about 60% of the population. Occupying an intermediate position in a social hierarchy it serves as a kind of shock-absorber that partially puts out contradictions arising between the poles of social differentiation of the society and reduces the poles’ opposition. The larger is the share of the middle class in the population the larger is the impact it has on the socio-economic policy of the state, on formation of the public opinion etc.

Social stratification of modern Belarusian society

Under transferring from one socio-economic system to another in post-soviet societies in general and in Belarusian society in particular some deconstruction of criteria for social stratification has taken place. The following three parameters are of primary importance nowadays:

· owning the capital brining in profit;

· participation in redistribution of public wealth resulted from privatization of state property;

· level of personal income and consumption.

These parameters in a generalized form may represent material well-being measured per capita monthly in US dollars. Such methods are used by Russian sociologists, for instance, by N.M. Rimashevskaya and others who consider as rich those people whose monthly current income exceeds $ 3,000 per capita and as poor – those people whose monthly income is less than $ 50.

Having applied these methods of calculations a Belarusian sociologist E.M. Babosov suggested a seven-step socio-structural matrix which shows social stratification of the Belarusian society by 2002:

1) rich people (1,5-2% of the population);

2) prosperous people who can afford expensive goods, trips, holidays etc. (3-4%);

3) well-doing people with the income of $1,000-500 who feel a bit restrained while buying expensive cars, visiting restaurants, going abroad etc. (8-9%);

4) moderately-doing people with the income of $300-100 who have to make a choice how to spend spare money with focusing on the family primary needs: to buy either good clothes or good food or high-tech equipment but never all these things at a time (38%);

5) little-doing people who feel seriously restrained as they can’t buy household or other expensive equipment, good clothes etc. (14-15%);

6) poor people who only sometimes afford to buy meat, fruit, clothes, who can’t pay for their children’s education (31%);

7) rags who can’t buy meat, fruit, clothes for themselves and their children; being beggars they often live on handout (7%).

Actually, this structural matrix of social stratification shows the distribution of wealth and income in Belarus but the population of the country can also be stratified according to people’s social statuses. E.M. Babosov suggested his own hierarchy with seven strata which is superposed with his socio-structural matrix. Obviously, his matrix differs from that of W. Warner with three basic strata further subdivided into upper and lower ones, because in modern Belarus, due to its historic development, there is no “old money” class, middle class is subdivided in three layers etc. So, due to statuses, in 2002 the Belarusian society was viewed by E.M. Babosov as follows:

· upper class – new elite is at the top of the pyramid: rich entrepreneurs, top officials like ministers and higher who are in fact a new bourgeoisie and higher state bureaucracy;

· upper middle class – middle and petty entrepreneurs, directors of enterprises, popular artists, actors, famous scientists, owners of medical centers etc.;

· middle class – professors, lawyers and doctors possessing a private practice, middle management of efficient enterprises, senior offices etc.;

· lower middle class – teachers, line managers and engineers, employees of cultural establishments, qualified workers etc.;

· lower class – low qualified workers, peasants, etc.;

· parasite layers – mafia groups, racketeers, gangsters, witches, magicians etc. They may belong to various classes due to their level of wealth, even to the upper class but their status in the society is not high that’s why they have to put on a mask of other statuses;

· marginal layers – the homeless adults and teenagers, beggars who descended from other social classes, refugees etc.

Sociological surveys carried out in 1990-2002 show that a stratification profile of Belarusian transitive society had the form of a pyramid with broad footing (poor or lower classes of the society) and small peak (economic and political elite). The footing was a zone of poverty which extended from 3% of the population in 1990 to 76,8% in 2001. The other area of the pyramid was for the elite and middle class, they being not numerous in number. Of four basic parameters of social stratification (income, power, education and prestige) only power and income worked here as clearly defined. As for the political elite, these parameters were power and, to some extent, income which enabled to define the political elite as the middle class, as for the economic elite – mainly income.

As for prestige, the rich couldn’t be defined by this parameter as most of them got money by robbing the society and sometimes by crimes. As for education, the political elite are university graduates, but only few of the economic elite (the so called “new Belarusians”) can have boasted having university diplomas. It means that in the Republic of Belarus characteristics of the middle class were less defined as compared to highly developed countries.

But over the last three years a tendency of increasing monthly wages and salaries has been observed in the country. The income of the population is gradually increasing that together with the results of various socio-economic reforms undertaken in the Republic of Belarus may soon lead to changing the structural matrix of social stratification of its society.

BASIC CONCEPTS

Aggregated socio-economic status – a person’s position and place in the society; a generalized parameter of stratification.

Economic stratification – a form of stratification when the focus is on the wealthy and the poor.

Horizontal social mobility – movements from one social position to another situated on the same level.

Income – amount of money a person or family makes for a definite period of time (month or year).

Lumpens – people who are completely discarded by the society.

Occupational stratification – a form of stratification if members of the society are differentiated into various occupational groups and some of these occupations are deemed more honorable than others, or if occupations are internally divided between those who give orders and those who receive orders.

Political stratification – a form of stratification when social ranks in a society are hierarchically structured with respect to authority and power.

Prestige – respect that public opinion gives to a certain job, profession or occupation.

Social inequality – unequal distribution of material wealth in a society.

Social mobility – people’s moving or transition from one social position to another in the social space.

Social stratification – differentiation of the population into hierarchically overlapped classes or strata (by P.A. Sorokin).

Status incompatibility – a contradiction between statuses or between status characteristics in the person’s status set.

Stratification profile – structural distribution of wealth and income that shows a ratio of the upper, middle and lower classes in the country’s population, or the level of social inequality in the given society.

Vertical social mobility – transitions of people from one social stratum to one higher or lower in the social scale.

Wealth – accumulated income in the form of cash or materialized money; it can be movable property and real estate.

Additional literature

· Blau P. Exchange and Power in Social Life. (3rd edition). – New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 1992. – 354 p.

· Bourdeiu P. Logic of Practice. – Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990. – 382 p.

· Coser L. The Functions of Social Conflict. – Glencoe, Ill: Free Press, 1956. – 188 p.

· DurkheimE.The Division of Labour in Society. – New York, NY: Free Press; 1997. – 272 p.

· DurkheimE.Suicide. – New York, NY: Free Press; 1951.– 345 p.

· Sztompka P. Sociology in Action: The Theory of Social Decoding. – Oxford: Polity Press, 2001. – 415 p