Patterns and Trends in Social Class - A2 OCR SOCIOLOGY

Patterns and Trends in Social Class - A2 OCR SOCIOLOGY

1. Income

   • Wilson and Pickett
     • Poverty Brings socio-economic backgrounds
       • Poor diet
       • Weak Immune system
       • High divorce rates
       • Depression
   • The flow of money to a person or househole over a rime period
   • The rich pay more in taxes, but they pay a smaller percentage of their income
   • In the last year, chief executive wages rose by 49%, but workers wages only rose 3%

2. Wealth

   • 'Stock' concept of economic resources and posessions of a person or household at a specific time
   • Hard to define what counts as wealth
   • Rowlingson and Mullineux
     • Birmingham Commissions Report
       • Wealth inequalities occur in different ways
         • physical and mental wellbeing
         • employment opportunities
         • Educational opportunities
   • Atkinson
     • Increasing proportion of national income comes from inhereted wealth
   • John Hills
     • The sunday times list is probably better at capturing buisness assets, but the ONS data probably gives better coverage of assets such as pensions
   • The poorest 50% of the population own 10% of national wealth

3. Work and Employment

   • Inequalities in...
     • Financial rewards
     • Status
     • Power and Control
     • Opportunities for advancement
     • Job Satisfaction
     • Job Security

4. Measuring Social Class

   • Hope-Goldthorpe Classification
     • 7 occupational classes
     • Service class, Intermediate class, working class
   • Murray
     • Underclass
   • National Statistics Socio-Economic classification
     • Used to classifcy individuals in official statistics
   • Submissive
     • Marshall et al.
       • Many people call themselves working class despite having non-manual jobs
     • Savage
       • People are reluctant to identify themselves with a social class
         • "Relatively muted"
     • Tony Blair
       • "we are all woking class now"

5. Max Weber

   • Life chances

6. Social Mobility

   • Two types...
     • Intergeneration
     • Intrageneration
   • Goldthorpe
     • Oxford Mobility Study
       • Didn't study women
       • Based on occupations, which not everyone has
   • Roberts
     • Female and male social mobility differs
       • Female intermediate class
     • Upward mobility opportunity for the working class
       • Chances of escaping the working class didn't not increase though

7. Poverty

   • Two types...
     • Aboslute
       • Bradshaw
         • Budget standard of poverty
     • Relative
   • Mack and Lansley
     • Necessities
       • Lacking 3 = poor
       • Lacking 5 = severe poverty