Soci 412 Test 1

For Fisher et al, what does the metaphor of the ladder represent?

That inequality is both about the sorting of individuals (which step) but also about how much difference there is between the top and the bottom (height and width of the ladder.)

True/False: Fisher et al. believe that the level of inequality in the United States is largely a result of differences in natural talent.

False. They believe that inequality with the US is largely the result of intentional policies.

True/False: Considerable inequality is needed for, and even encourages, economic growth.

False. Fisher et al claim that this assumption is false based on historical trends.

How does Fisher et al explain the vast inequalities that exist among Americans?

Fisher et al uses the ladder example to explain social stratification and argues that both social environments and political structuring play large roles in determining a person's social class. The article contends that societies (Americans) create inequalities and maintain them as well.

Define "social stratification."

"The condition in which layered hierarchy and inequality has be hardened or institutionalized, and ether is a system of social relationship that determines who gets what, and why."

Class placement that is hereditary, or based on qualities beyond one's control, is referred to as what?

Ascription

Can the Kuznets curve adequately represent the trends in contemporary inequality?

No.

According to the Grusky reading, the Kuznets curve predicts that economic evelopment has a relationship to inequality that is shaped like what?

Inverted U-shape.

List one of the possible reasons given in the Morris and Western reading as to why the decline and polarization of earnings has occasioned so little political response among the population at large.

Possible Answers: Most people now rely on two incomes to support a family, the explosion of consumer credit, or political apathy.

Name 2 of the 3 supply-side changes that sparked falling wages.

Baby boom generation, women working increased, immigration

Name the two restructuring forms that took place in the labor market during the postwar boom years.

Rise in "service economy" and increase in mediated employment relations

It was noted that “inequality is not merely a question of earnings”, but it affected three other trends. Name one of the trends.

politics, markets, and life chances

True/False: During the last three decades of the twentieth century, median income has risen and income distribution has become more equal.

False. Median income in the U.S. declined and inequality rose during the last three decades of the 20th century.

According to Grusky, what are the three main events that increased the labor force with workers of little work experience and education?

Baby boom, rising women's labor force participation and growing immigration.

According to Grusky, what is the difference that allows other countries to maintaing a level of equality unknown to the US in the face of growing global markets?

The difference is in politics not markets;it is possible to use political institutions to reverse the trend in wage decline and polarization.

Between 1993 and 2000, whose salary increased 232 percent?

Top CEO

A Gini index score of 0.0 indicates ___ in a society.

Complete equality.

According to the Kerbo reading, what is money, wages, and payments that periodically are received as returns from an occupation or investments?

Income.

What are two factors that have a huge impact on quality and longevity of life?

Education and Income

What class do the benefits of advances in medicine and disease prevention usually go to?

Higher classes

True/False: Scott believes that the gap between the upper and lower classes in relation to adequate health care is closing

False, Scott says the gap is widening

True or False: According to the absolute income hypothesis, a community with a more equal income will tend to have average health than a community with more inequality, even if the average income is the same between the two communities.

TRUE

According to what hypothesis, do those with the lowest incomes face poorer health and a greater risk of mortality owing to a variety of factors associated with extreme poverty, such as inadequate nutrition, lack of quality health care, exposure to a variety of physical hazards, and heightened stress?

absolute deprivation or poverty hypothesis

Name 2 of the possible 3 explanations Grusky lists as reasons for the association between income inequality and health

1) individual income interpretation 2) psychosocial environment interpretation 3) neomaterial interpretation

What is the income inequality hypothesis?

The hypothesis that societies with greater inequality produce worse health among citizens

Which hypothesis from "Health, Income and Inequality" supports the claim that redistribution could improve health even if average income was not increased?

Absolute Income Hypothesis

what is the difference between "pyschosocial environmental interpretation" and "neomaterial interpretation"

pyschosocial interpretation focuses on perception of inqueality in social capital - perceived mistrust, lack of social capital, etc - that work through behaviors and pyschosocial repsonses of people. Neomaterial interpretation suggests the greatest inequality exists in inequliaties of human, physical, health, and social infrastructure

describe the "absolute income hypothesis"

It argues that if all that matters to health at the level of an individual is income, a community with more equal income will tend to have better average health than a community with more inequality when comparing two communities with equal average income.

What are the two main ways to distribute/allocate healthcare?

1. pricing mechanism; 2. principle of need

T/F the U.S. is the only developed country in the world not to ensure healthcare for all its citizen.

True. Every other developed nation ensures healthcare for its citizens. Reforms have been pushed in the U.S. since 1914 for nationalized healthcare but nothing has been successful.

Name one of the big three areas national power now resides:

Economic, Political, or Military

Who is the power elite composed of?

"The power elite is composed of men whose positions enable them to transcend the ordinary environments of ordinary men and women; they are in positions to make decisions having major consequences."

Why does it matter whether or not the corporate community and the upper class are intertwined?

"If the corporate community and the upper class are essentially one and the same in terms of people and objectives, then it is more likely that they have the wealth, socoial cohesion, and awareness of their common interests to organize themselves well enough to dominate government."

True/False: Do most American's believe that corporations have too much power?

True. 70 to 75% of Americans say that corporations have too much power.

What is the name of the dominant core power group that Domhoff [Grusky 12] says shapes the policies of the federal government?

corporate communities

True or False? Transfer payments affect the distribution of income slightly, but it is government taxes and welfare spending that have a far bigger effect on reducing income inequality.

False: Transfer payments have a bigger effect on income inequality.

Bruce Western cites that the increasing rate of_______ and increasing occurrence of _______ have greatly influenced young, unskilled mens' employment oppurtunities.

Unemployment, Incarceration

According to Western, there are three categories of individuals excluded from unemployment calculations. Name two of them.

The three categories excluded from unemployment categories are the military, those in prison/jail, and the "discouraged" (those no longer looking for work.

According to Western, who are disportionally represented in prisons?

Young, black, unskilled men

What are the effects of the high incarceration rate in the US as suggested by Bruce Western. Name one.

"Short run: it has lowered conventional measures of unemployment by concealing joblessness among a large group of able-bodied , working-age man Long-run: it may raise unemployment rates by curtailing the job prospects of exconvicts and will certainly deepen economic inequality.

What effect has the U.S. incarceration policy had on unemployment rates?

The U.S. incarceration policy has dramatically reduced unemployment statistics, accounting for the differences between U.S. and European unemployment.

Name two of the three factors contributing to the disparity in incarceration rates between the United States and Western Europe as a whole?

The main reason that there are so many more people in prison in the United States does not mirror a higher rate of crime. It is actually a result of criminalization of drugs, more aggressive prosecution, and tougher sentencing.

Name one way that incarceration negatively affects a person’s chances for entering/re-entering the labor market.

One example: Resources for educational and vocational training in prisons have declined. Another example: People who develop the survival skills for the harsh and violent prison conditions cannot apply these same principles to have success in the job market.

True or False: Black ex-convicts earn about 10 percent less per hour than comparable men who were never incarcerated.

True. Many ex-inmates find themselves stuck in low-wage job trajectories, confined to casual or illegitimate employment in the secondary labor market.

True/False: Western claims that the US prison system may be exercising a systematic influence on largescale patterns of economic inequality.

TRUE

Both Western and Glenn C. Loury suggested that criminal justice and penal system in the US reflect _______ inequality.

racial

In the past decade, the United States has adopted a policy for criminals focused more on _______ and less on ______. Making it harder for criminals to re-enter society after their sentances are complete.

Punishment, Rehabilitation

What are the three big classes of modern society based upon the capitalist mode of production?

The owners merely of labour-power, owners of capital, and landowners, whose respective sources of income are wages, profit and ground-rent, in other words, wage-labourers, capitalists and landowners.

Karl Marx believed that capitalism bred conflict between two main classes: the ________, who were the owners of the means of production and capital versus the __________ the name given to the working class

Bourgeoisie and Proletariat

Fill in the blank: With some over-simplification, one might thus say that '_______' are stratified according to their relations to the production and acquisition of goods; where as '_______' are stratified according to the principles of their consumption of goods as represented by special '_______'.

classes, status groups, styles of life

Expanding upon Karl Marx's dichotomy of class struggle, Max Weber asserted that there is a range of classes that people fall into based on their relation to the ________ as opposed to their relation to the means of production

Market or marketplace

How does Weber distinguish between class and status?

Class is determined by economics with relations to production, while status is determined by honor, life style and consumption.

Kerbo indicates two main approaches to describing how order is maintained in society. They are _______ theory, which maintains thar order is maintained through general consensus of major values and norms and _______ theory which maintains that order is maintained through competition of different groups in society to gain power.

Functional, Conflict

True or False, in chapter 5 of Kerbo, Weber describes social and economic order as being identical.

False, social order and economic order are not identical. The economic order is the way in which goods and services are distributed and used. The social order is “conditioned” by the economic order and reacts upon it.

True or False: The welfare of the exploiter depends upon the effort of the exploited, not merely the deprivations of the exploited.

TRUE

The core of which concept discussed in the Wright reading revolves around a particular type of antagonistic interdependence of material interests of actors within economic relations?

Exploitation.

According to the Wright reading, the class of employees is divided along what two dimensions?

Their relationship to authority within production and their possession of skills or expertise.

In a capitalist society, what are the three basic classes and which class are the exploiters, exploited, both, or neither.

capitalists (exploiters), workers (exploited), and petty bourgeois (neither)

What is the difference between subjective and objective definition of class?

“Subjective is whether class has meaning to the people said to be in a particular class and objective is life chances or economic characteristics people may have in common”.

What are the two dimensions that Wright uses to explain the existence of the Middle-Class?

The relation to authority within production and the possession of skills or expertise.

State and briefly explain the Western capitalist contemporary stratification system according to Pakulski and Waters.

The contemporary societal stratification is known as a status-conventional society. In this society, stratification is derived from the cultural sphere and based on lifestyles and values

True/False: Pakulski and Waters argue that there is an overall decline in inequality and conflict in current society.

False. They argue that there is a decline only in class inequality and conflict; society is still highly unequal and divided.

Kerbo lists five main class divisions found within the United States. What are they?

The upper class, corporate class, middle class (can be divided into upper-middle and lower-middle), working class, and the lower class.