Social Class And Social Mobility Essay

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“Social Stratification/ Effects of Social Mobility” 1. Describe your own social class and social mobility. Do you relate to Dr. Bell Kaplan, or has your experience been very different? How? According to the text, a social class is a category of people who have a similar standing or rank in a society based on wealth, education, power, prestige, and other valued resources(Benokraitis, p. 138). There are many levels of social classes but the four general social classes are the upper, middle, working, and lower. Each of these classes however can be broken down into smaller social classes. For example my family is in the middle class but the middle class itself can be divided into the upper-middle-class and the lower-middle-class. The upper-middle-class members, although rich, live on earned income rather than accumulated or inherited wealth(Benokraitis, p. 142). While the lower-middle-class, which is more diverse than the upper-middle-class, is composed of people in nonmanual and semiprofessional occupations(Benokraitis, p. 143). Living in a lower-middle-class family I am very fortunate and have lots of privileges because of how hard my parents work each day and …show more content…

Social stratification can be defined as the hierarchical ranking of people in a society who have different access to valued resources such as property, prestige, and status(Benokraitis, p. 137). I also learned about the open and closed stratification systems and how those affect our movement in society like how much wealth, prestige, and power we have or can achieve. Another thing that was most intriguing was reading about all of the statistics and how the top one percent owns thirty-six percent of all wealth compared with only thirteen percent for the bottom eighty percent(Benokraitis,

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