Social Class

Social class is a category of people who share a similar socioeconomic position in society. Social stratification is the sociological study of these social inequalities — it asks the basic question of who gets what, and why. Stratification is closely tied to a person's socioeconomic status (SES), which may depend on ascribed or achieved status, is shaped by prestige and power, and connects to social capital, social mobility, poverty, and global patterns of inequality. This article covers the vocabulary and frameworks sociologists — and the MCAT — use to describe how and why social position differs across individuals, groups, and nations.

Key Takeaways

• Social stratification is the study of social inequality — who gets what, and why — tied to a person's socioeconomic status, shaped by ascribed status (unchosen traits) or achieved status (earned through effort).

• Prestige and power structure social relationships; Marxist theory frames class conflict around class consciousness (the working class organizing around shared interests) versus false consciousness (a barrier: misperceiving one's own position). Anomie (Émile Durkheim) and strain theory (Robert K. Merton) link social breakdown to deviance.

• Social capital (Robert Putnam) comes from networks and trust and can create situational or positional inequality; cultural capital (Pierre Bourdieu) comes from individual knowledge and skill; communities also rely on strong ties and weak ties (Mark Granovetter).

• Class intersects with race, gender, and age partly through intersectionality (Kimberlé Crenshaw, 1989); the U.S. Census/OMB use a five-race classification, with Hispanic/Latino tracked as an ethnicity rather than a race.

• Social mobility includes intergenerational and intragenerational mobility, is complicated by rising inequality and fears that meritocracy is becoming a plutocracy, and includes both vertical mobility (upward/downward) and horizontal mobility (same-class change).

• Poverty can persist across generations via social reproduction — explained by the culture-of-poverty theory (Oscar Lewis) or structural poverty theory — and is measured as absolute or relative, against a poverty line (developed by Mollie Orshansky) that doesn't adjust for geography.

• Social exclusion compounds poverty's effects through isolation and powerlessness.

• Spatial inequality plays out through residential segregation, suburbanization, urban decay, urban renewal, gentrification, and environmental justice concerns.

• Globally, World System Theory (Immanuel Wallerstein) explains inequality through core, semi-peripheral, and peripheral nations.

Ascribed status derives from clearly identifiable characteristics a person doesn't choose — for example, age, gender, and skin color. Achieved status is acquired through direct, individual effort — obtained through hard work or merit.

MCAT Callout — Ascribed status vs. achieved status: ascribed status is assigned to a person based on traits they didn't choose and generally can't change (age, gender, race). Achieved status is earned through a person's own actions (education, career, accomplishments). A vignette describing someone's status based on who they were born as is testing ascribed status; a vignette describing status gained through effort is testing achieved status.

Class, Status, and Power

Prestige is the amount of positive regard society has for a given person or idea. Power is the ability to affect others' behavior through real or perceived rewards and punishments, based on the unequal distribution of resources. Power defines the relationships between individuals, groups, and social institutions, and functions to maintain order, organize economic systems, conduct welfare, and rule over and exploit people.

Marxist theory holds that the proletariat (the working class, who sell their labor) will overthrow the bourgeoisie (the class that owns and controls production) and the capitalist economy by developing class consciousness — the organization of the working class around shared goals and recognition of a need for collective political action. False consciousness is a major barrier to class consciousness: a misperception of one's actual position within society. Under false consciousness, members of the proletariat can't see how bad their conditions actually are, can't recognize the commonalities between their own experiences and those of others in their class, or are too clouded to assemble into revolutionaries.

MCAT Callout — Class consciousness vs. false consciousness: class consciousness is the working class recognizing its shared exploitation and organizing around that shared interest. False consciousness is the opposite outcome from the same class structure — workers misperceiving their own position, which prevents that organizing from happening. A vignette describing workers recognizing shared interests and mobilizing is testing class consciousness; one describing workers who don't see themselves as exploited, or who blame each other rather than the system, is testing false consciousness.

Émile Durkheim's concept of anomie describes a lack of social norms, or a breakdown of the social bonds between an individual and society. Social inequality is accelerated by anomie and by capitalist economies more broadly. Robert K. Merton's strain theory explains how anomic conditions can lead to deviance: conditions like excessive individualism, social inequality, and isolation erode social solidarity and produce strain between culturally prescribed goals and the legitimate means available to reach them.

Social trust is important for the proper functioning of civil society, and comes from two primary sources: social norms of reciprocity and social networks. Associational ties have diminished over time, leading to a decline in social capital — a trend often attributed to society becoming more urbanized, self-centered, and materialistic.

Social Capital

Social capital, a concept developed by Robert Putnam, is considered the investments people make in their society in return for economic or collective rewards. The greater the investment, the higher the level of social integration — the peaceful movement into mainstream society — and inclusion.

Social networks are one of the main forms of social capital, and can create two types of inequality: situational inequality (based on socioeconomic advantage) and positional inequality (based on how connected a person is within a network). Inequality in networks creates and enforces privilege, and low social capital leads to greater social inequality.

Cultural capital, a related concept developed by Pierre Bourdieu, refers to the benefits a person receives from their own knowledge, ability, and skills — distinct from social capital's focus on network connections and trust.

Communities are joined together through both small and weak ties. Mark Granovetter's research on the "strength of weak ties" distinguishes strong ties — peer-group and kinship contacts, quantifiably small in number but qualitatively powerful — from weak ties — social connections that are superficial individually, but exist in large numbers and provide a wide range of connections to other individuals. Groups without multiple weak ties may find it extremely difficult to contribute to and access social capital.

MCAT Callout — Social capital vs. cultural capital: social capital is built from a person's networks, trust, and social connections — it's relational, existing between people. Cultural capital is built from a person's own knowledge, ability, and skills — it's held by the individual. A vignette describing someone leveraging connections or networks is testing social capital; one describing someone leveraging their own education or expertise is testing cultural capital.

Class Intersecting with Race, Gender, and Age

Social inequality remains higher among certain disadvantaged groups than others, including racial and ethnic minorities, female-headed families, and the elderly. This is partially due to intersectionality — a term coined by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989 to describe the compounding of disadvantage seen in individuals who belong to more than one oppressed group.

Some of this disparity may be caused by the oversimplification of racial categories. The U.S. Census Bureau and the federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) use a minimum classification of five races — White, Black or African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, and Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander — with Hispanic or Latino tracked separately as an ethnicity rather than as one of the five races. Sociologists argue that racial and ethnic boundaries should be understood as more fluid and ambiguous than any fixed model can capture, promoting a hyper-diverse view that reimagines the population as a complex, multicultural mosaic of national origin, ethnicity, race, and immigration status. This oversimplification (or overreliance on a fixed model) can enhance or obstruct social mobility.

Patterns of Social Mobility

Social mobility is the ability to acquire higher-level employment opportunities, given proper credentials and experience requirements. It's typically the result of economic and occupational structure.

Intergenerational and Intragenerational Mobility

Intragenerational mobility refers to changes in social status that happen within a single person's own lifetime. Intergenerational mobility refers to changes in social status from parents to children. It's widely believed that America has provided ample opportunity for both types of mobility, but the increasing gap between the lower and upper classes disputes this — social inequality is at its highest point in over a century, meaning social mobility may not primarily occur in a positive, upward direction.

Meritocracy

Meritocracy is advancement up the social ladder based on intellectual talent and achievement. Due to the rising level of social inequality and the concentration of wealth in the U.S., some argue that a strong work ethic, conscientious drive, and mastery of skills no longer reliably offer opportunities for advancement — a fear that meritocracy in America is becoming a plutocracy, or rule by the upper class. Meritocracy still plays a key role in some sections of society, such as school, but this doesn't directly translate into upward mobility.

Vertical and Horizontal Mobility

Upward mobility is a positive change in a person's status that results in a higher position; downward mobility is the opposite. Higher education doesn't guarantee upward mobility, but it does help. Vertical mobility is movement from one social class to another — upward or downward social mobility. Horizontal mobility is a change in occupation or lifestyle that remains within the same social class.

Poverty

Poverty is defined by low socioeconomic status and a lack of possessions or financial resources.

Social Reproduction

Social reproduction is the idea that poverty can be passed down from one generation to the next. The culture-of-poverty explanation, developed by anthropologist Oscar Lewis in his 1959 book Five Families: Mexican Case Studies in the Culture of Poverty, holds that a lifestyle of poverty, powerlessness, isolation, and even apathy is handed down from one generation to another as a feature of society. Poverty also depends on other factors, such as where one lives, and a present-orientation (not thinking about the future).

Structural poverty is a competing theory, based on the idea that poverty is caused by "holes" in the structure of society. The same individuals don't necessarily occupy these holes over time, but the percentage of society in poverty stays roughly constant.

Absolute and Relative Poverty

Absolute poverty describes a socioeconomic condition in which people don't have enough money or resources to maintain a quality of living that includes basic life necessities. Relative poverty describes being poor in comparison to the larger population in which a person lives — for example, a teacher living on the Upper East Side of Manhattan may be considered relatively poor.

The poverty line is defined by government calculations of the minimum income requirements for families to acquire the minimum necessities of life; in the U.S., this threshold was developed in 1963–64 by Mollie Orshansky, an economist at the Social Security Administration. The poverty line isn't contextualized according to geographic location, which is seen as a problem, since some places are more expensive to live in than others.

MCAT Callout — Absolute poverty vs. relative poverty: absolute poverty means lacking the resources for basic necessities, full stop — it doesn't depend on who else is around. Relative poverty means being poor only in comparison to a surrounding population, even if basic necessities are met. Someone can be relatively poor (poor compared to their neighbors) without being absolutely poor (still able to meet basic needs), which is exactly the "teacher in an expensive neighborhood" scenario the MCAT likes to test.

Some sociologists frame poverty as a form of powerlessness, or a sociological/psychological condition of hopelessness, indifference, and distrust — poverty as the result of an inability to control the events that shape a person's life.

Social Exclusion

Social exclusion can arise from this same sense of powerlessness, occurring when poor people feel segregated and isolated from society. This problem can create further obstacles to achieving self-help, independence, and self-respect. Disadvantaged groups, such as minorities, can experience magnified feelings of alienation and powerlessness even when living in an affluent community. Social exclusion is similar to anomic conditions, in that it accelerates social inequality.

Spatial Inequality

Spatial inequality is social stratification across territories and their populations. Analyzing spatial territory helps illuminate social inequalities, since it attends to how geography influences social processes. Gender, ethnicity, and race are distributed across space differently, and space can channel inequalities — or even amplify their effects, especially poverty — as seen in the formation of ghettos and slums. Social relationships between different agents, such as capitalists, laborers, and government, can cause varied social structures, built environments, and unequal regional development; for example, poorer neighborhoods tend to have less political and social influence than affluent ones, which can result in undesirable buildings (such as waste facilities) being located in those areas.

Residential Segregation

Whether someone resides in an urban, suburban, or rural environment — and which neighborhood within that environment — has a substantial effect on how people interact, cooperate, and advance. The cultural diversity and anonymity of an urban neighborhood usually offer a person a greater range of opportunities compared to rural communities; for example, people in urban areas are less likely to fall into an occupation due to family ties, and tend to have more career options, more easily improving their SES through education, career choice, and marriage — options less available in rural areas.

Affluent neighborhoods tend to have more homeowners, professionals and managers, college graduates, and higher-quality schools. Low-income neighborhoods have greater poverty, higher unemployment, lower-quality schools, and higher rates of homelessness, and are found to be less safe, with higher rates of violent crime, organized crime, and gangs.

Suburbanization is the migration pattern of the middle class to suburban communities, which are generally cleaner and less crowded, have lower crime rates, and often have better school systems. There's an overall greater concentration of poor individuals in urban centers, which may help explain the trend toward suburbanization. Members of the lower class are often less able to relocate to areas that might offer better opportunities, so many disadvantaged groups remain in urban centers under poor living conditions — conditions that can expose the poor to illness and disease.

Urban decay occurs when a previously functional portion of a city deteriorates and becomes decrepit over time, a process that may be spurred by suburbanization. Urban renewal is the reclamation and renovation of city land for public or private use, often fueled by gentrification — the process by which upper- and middle-class populations begin to purchase and renovate neighborhoods in deteriorated areas, which displaces low-SES populations.

Environmental Justice

Poor living conditions and dangerous environmental conditions can result in increased cases of illness and disease in low-SES groups. Poor and minority groups tend to reside closer to sites of environmental pollution, since these areas usually have cheaper housing — for example, hazardous-waste-producing plants and toxic-waste dumps tend to be located in low-income areas with a high concentration of ethnic and racial minorities. The combination of inadequate housing, heating, and sanitation, along with toxin exposure, results in increased medical problems: influenza, pneumonia, substance use disorders, tuberculosis, and whooping cough are all much more common in areas with poor living conditions.

Global Inequalities

World System Theory, developed by sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein, categorizes countries and emphasizes the inequalities of the division of labor at the global level. Core nations focus on higher-skill, higher-paying production while exploiting peripheral nations (which perform lower-skilled production). Semi-peripheral nations work toward becoming core nations, while sharing many characteristics of peripheral nations.

Social inequalities have increased on a worldwide level as local communities become more subject to the ebb and flow of the global market. Globalization has led to increased inequalities in space, food, water, energy, housing, and education, further exacerbated by a large population spike that places strain on the world's resources. Many people around the globe suffer from malnutrition and from parasitic and infectious diseases.

MCAT Callout — Core, semi-peripheral, and peripheral nations: core nations hold the higher-skill, higher-paying end of global production and benefit from the system. Peripheral nations hold the lower-skilled, exploited end. Semi-peripheral nations sit in between — transitioning toward core status while still sharing peripheral-nation traits. A passage describing a nation exploiting others' labor and resources is describing a core nation; one describing a nation supplying raw materials/cheap labor to wealthier nations is describing a peripheral nation.

Why Social Class Matters for the MCAT

MCAT questions on social class and stratification typically describe a social situation, relationship, or trend and ask you to identify the correct sociological concept:

• Sort a described trait into the correct category — ascribed vs. achieved status, absolute vs. relative poverty, or vertical vs. horizontal mobility.

• Recognize class consciousness or false consciousness from how a group of workers perceives (or fails to perceive) their shared position.

• Distinguish social capital from cultural capital based on whether the passage describes networks/connections or individual knowledge/skill.

• Identify a spatial-inequality mechanism — residential segregation, suburbanization, urban decay/renewal, gentrification, or environmental justice — from a description of a neighborhood or region.

• Place a country within World System Theory based on whether it's described as exploiting or being exploited in the global division of labor.

Common MCAT Mistakes

• Treating ascribed and achieved status as interchangeable. Ascribed status is assigned by unchosen traits (age, gender, race); achieved status is earned through effort (education, career). A vignette describing someone's status at birth is not testing the same concept as one describing status they worked toward.

• Mixing up class consciousness and false consciousness. Class consciousness is workers recognizing shared exploitation and organizing around it; false consciousness is the barrier that prevents that recognition in the first place. They describe opposite outcomes of the same class structure, not two names for the same thing.

• Confusing social capital with cultural capital. Social capital is relational — built from networks, trust, and connections between people. Cultural capital is individual — built from a person's own knowledge, ability, and skills. A passage about "who you know" is social capital; a passage about "what you know" is cultural capital.

• Assuming absolute poverty and relative poverty describe the same condition. Absolute poverty means lacking resources for basic necessities regardless of surroundings; relative poverty means being poor only compared to a surrounding population. A person can be relatively poor without being absolutely poor.

MCAT-Style Concept Check

Question: A country's economy centers on exporting raw agricultural goods and unprocessed materials to wealthier trading partners, and it depends on those partners for finished manufactured goods and advanced technology. According to World System Theory, this country is best classified as:

• A) A core nation

• B) A semi-peripheral nation

• C) A peripheral nation

• D) A nonaligned nation

Answer: C

Explanation: Peripheral nations perform lower-skilled production — such as exporting raw materials — and are exploited by core nations, which control higher-skill, higher-paying production and finished goods. This country's dependence on wealthier partners for manufactured goods and technology, while supplying raw materials in return, is the defining peripheral-nation pattern. A core nation would be on the receiving end of that raw-material export and the higher-skill producer, not the supplier. A semi-peripheral nation would show a mix of core and peripheral characteristics while transitioning toward core status, which isn't described here. "Nonaligned nation" isn't a category within World System Theory.

FAQ

What's the difference between ascribed status and achieved status?

Ascribed status comes from characteristics a person doesn't choose and generally can't change — age, gender, and skin color are common examples. Achieved status is acquired through a person's own effort, such as education or career accomplishments.

What's the difference between class consciousness and false consciousness?

Class consciousness is the working class recognizing its shared exploitation and organizing around that shared interest, as described in Marxist theory. False consciousness is a barrier to that organizing — a misperception of one's actual position within society that prevents workers from recognizing their shared conditions or commonalities with others in their class.

What's the difference between social capital and cultural capital?

Social capital, developed by Robert Putnam, comes from a person's networks, trust, and social connections. Cultural capital, developed by Pierre Bourdieu, comes from a person's own knowledge, ability, and skills. Social capital is relational; cultural capital is individual.

What's the difference between absolute poverty and relative poverty?

Absolute poverty describes lacking enough resources to maintain basic life necessities, regardless of one's surroundings. Relative poverty describes being poor only in comparison to the larger population one lives among — for example, a teacher living in an expensive neighborhood may be relatively poor without being absolutely poor.