Exam 7: Social Class: the Structure of Inequality

It is often said that you can always tell a millionaire by her shoes.She may dress like a slob in every other respect,but someone from the upper class is bound to have expensive,custom-made footwear.Whether this is true or not,it helps demonstrate the way we:

If an individual takes adult education classes,attends lectures and concerts,or travels to Europe,what might he or she be trying to gain more of?

Poverty can be defined in either relative or absolute terms.How does absolute deprivation measure poverty?

How is Max Weber's idea of social class different from Karl Marx's?

The American Dream is the pursuit of material and personal success and the idea that anyone can achieve such success.How does widespread belief in the American Dream and individualism actually serve to reinforce socioeconomic barriers?

What is the relationship between social class and race,ethnicity,gender,and age in the United States today?

A reporter who covers the police beat at a newspaper changes careers.She becomes an editor of nonfiction books and is paid the same salary as she was at the newspaper.What has she experienced?

Contrary to popular myth,most people living in poverty are employed.Explain how the current minimum wage contributes to someone being part of the working poor.

The upper class makes up just 1 percent of the total U.S.population,but its total net worth is greater than that of ________ of the rest of the population.

How do observers determine someone's socioeconomic status when meeting him or her for the first time?

Residential segregation is the geographical isolation of the poor from the rest of a city's population.Explain how residential segregation is able to flourish in the United States and what characterizes a neighborhood that is segregated in this manner.

Karl Marx spent much of his life attempting to describe and understand how capitalism works.In one particularly vivid passage,he described in this way the turbulence he saw as inherent in capitalism: "All that is solid melts into air,all that is holy is profaned,and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real condition of life and his relations with his kind." What sort of relationships did he think his readers had with other people?

Briefly explain the concept of social mobility.What is the current trend of social mobility in the United States today?

What sort of jobs can support a middle-class lifestyle in America today?

Why do members of the lower class exercise LESS often?

The folk-pop singer Jewel is famous for having lived in her van when she first moved to San Diego and started performing in a coffee shop.Soon after she was signed by Atlantic Records,her advance allowed her to rent a house and buy a new car.Of what class-based phenomenon is this an example?

What do sociologists call it when large numbers of people move up or down the social class ladder as a result of changes to society as a whole?

Social mobility that occurs over the course of an individual's lifetime is called ________ mobility.

Many sociologists in the 1960s noticed that economic obstacles alone were not sufficient to explain disparities in the educational attainment of children from different social classes.Which concept was introduced to explain these disparities?

In what ways does the digital divide contribute to social inequality?