Social Class And Life Chances Analysis

The concept of life chances was developed by Max Weber, a German philosopher and sociologist, in the early 1900s. Weber believed that a person’s life chances is heavily determined by their social stratification, built upon a measure of power, prestige and property. Life chances is defined by the things a person can achieve or opportunities that are offered by society, essentially, Weber considered a change in outcome that could result in a move of social class, a life chance. Risk and resilience are the two main components of life chances, therefore, certain outcomes can either improve or worsen an individual’s life chances (Bendix, 1978). For example, a person with low income will have low life chances, as their standard of education may not

Life chances describes the resources available to an individual depending on their specific layer of stratification. Social class systems are defined by ascribed or acquired status; ascribed status is attained from birth, whilst acquired status has been earnt by an individual’s achievements. Capitalism impacts a person’s life chances both positively and negatively, according to Heath (2013), “thanks to capitalism, globalisation, technology and a reduced tolerance for violence, humanity has never had it so good”. On the contrary, Herman and Chomsky (1988), believed that capitalism is the central drive “of modern industrialized civilization has been individual material gain”. Different viewpoints of capitalism’s impact of a person’s life chances has been presented, helping determine the whether capitalism overall improves people’s life

Capitalism allows people to have rights to own assets, causing companies to respond to these demands and immediately produce products for consumers. As this demand increases, more businesses join the market to compete against each other for all the consumer’s money. This competition between businesses is beneficial for people as companies will require more workers and inevitably pay them a sustainable wage. As a result of competition being the underlying function of capitalism, companies are required to produce goods that consumers will invest in (Spark, 2018). Therefore, products are only made if they provide any form of benefit or interest to the consumers, otherwise the product won’t sell, and no profit will be made. Weber believes that capitalism improves a person’s life chances as it allows different layers of stratification to be accessed and achieved. For example, with economic growth and increase drive of innovation, real GDP is increased and improves peoples living standards (WSM, 2018). Consequently, with an increase of wealth, the majority benefit and a ‘trickle-down effect’ from the wealthy to the poor occurs (Pettinger, 2013). Thus, it can be argued that a person’s life chances can significantly improve as through competing for prestige and power, the individual’s social position and opportunities offered will be increased. Having this central