Open Class System Essay

An open class system is where people are ranked by the status they achieved and United States considers itself a meritocracy with an open class system. In an open class system some people’s social status goes down because of failure or illness while others move at a parallel by switching jobs at the same level of the social hierarchy. The positions in this system depend on achieved status, like education, and gender. Social mobility is the movement from one social class to another by individuals, families or groups. Social mobility can be classified as vertical mobility, horizontal mobility, intra-generational mobility, and inter-generational mobility. In horizontal mobility people move within the same status category like a doctor leaving

Vertical mobility can occur in two different ways depending on the direction of the transition. Individuals can either improve their place in the social hierarchy by moving up in their place or they can fall down in the social hierarchy. The following factors affect mobility: structural factors, individual factors, and social class factors. Structural factors determine the proportion of high status positions that needs to be filled and the degree of industrialization of the economy raises the rate of mobility. Individual factors determine the proportion of well-paid positions in a society. Social class factors are associated with the number of children in a middle class or another social class filling positions in the same

The structural factors that affect the American society’s vertical mobility includes all the above and disabilities as well. Occupational mobility is the easiness of movement of resources between jobs. Occupational mobility is most common among men and about 70 percent of men in the United States are employed in higher ranked jobs than their fathers. Statistically speaking, African Americans starting at the bottom percentile of 50% has only a 3% chance of reaching the top and college dropouts at the bottom percentile of 54% has only 1% chance of reaching the top. Even though there is a great impact of mobility in the United States it is very insignificant because the people who go above or below their parents usually advance or fall back in their jobs. The odds of someone reaching the highest position are very rare unless they began their job at a high position to start with. Education plays a very important in social mobility because it is one of the major variables that determine social inequality, income and quality of jobs. A person from a high social class is more likely to have a better education resulting in that person maintain a high class social position. However, the impact that education has on social mobility has weakened to some extent in the past few years. For instance, a Bachelors degree