Social Stratification Terms Used In Society

Social stratification is “a kind of social differentiation whereby a society groups people into socioeconomic strata, based upon their occupation and income, wealth and social status, or derived power.” In other words, it is the groups that a society is separated into because of their money and/or power. The most popular social stratification terms used in society (based on my own experience) is lower class, middle class, and upper class. Another way to describe the different classes would be in quintiles. Quintiles splits society into five different parts: the lower 20%, the fourth 20%, the middle 20%, the second 20%, and the upper 20%. This way of organizing is super interesting because it can never shift. No matter what happened economically …show more content…
Social mobility is is the ability for people move between the different classes defined in social stratification. It looks at how many people are able to move up from a lower quintile, move down from a higher quintile, or where the people in the middle quintile end up. This can me measured over a person's life, or from passing on through generations. In both cases, though the numbers are different, they tend to lead to the same thing. The people in the middle quartile have an almost equal chance of going either direction, whereas the bottom tend to stay more in the bottom, and the top tend to stay more in the top. This seems contradictory from my statement earlier about how america is a meritocracy, but it isn’t contradictory at all. This is just an average. Many people are able to move up, or at least get out of the bottom. With that, many people at the top tend to lose their position. And the people at the top who have a higher chance of staying at the top, have that because of unequal opportunities. Meritocracy just looks at the skills. Is it possible that the people at the top stay there because they have more skills, access to a better education, and they get in early so they have a lot more