Deck 7: Social Class: the Structure of Inequality

Question 1

Which of the following is one of the basic principles of social stratification?

A) Low-level groups often have basic access to the rewards and privileges of higher-level groups.
B) With each new generation, families' social positions start anew.
C) All societies stratify according to wealth accumulation.
D) It is maintained through beliefs that are widely shared in a society.

Answer 1

D

Question 2

Which is true of social mobility in a caste system?

A) Social mobility is common with hard work.
B) A great deal of social mobility occurs.
C) A small but significant percentage of each generation will experience upward social mobility.
D) There is little or no chance of social mobility.

Answer 2

D

Question 3

What criteria does a social class system use to stratify its members?

A) heredity and employment status
B) occupational attainment and gender
C) wealth, property, power, and prestige
D) race

Answer 3

C

Question 4

Although they make very little money,priests,ministers,rabbis,imams,and clergy are often very prestigious members of their communities.Which social theorist first suggested that this is an important element of class status?

A) Karl Marx
B) Emile Durkheim
C) Pierre Bourdieu
D) Max Weber

Question 5

To what social class do "white collar" workers (workers employed in technical and lower-management positions)belong?

A) the working class
B) the lower class
C) the middle class
D) the upper-middle class

Question 6

What system of stratification is commonly used in capitalist societies?

A) gender
B) social class
C) social caste
D) slavery

Question 7

An accountant with a college degree and a license from the state accounting board works for the Department of Defense as a senior auditor.He makes about $100,000 a year and will soon retire with benefits and a pension.To what class would you expect him to belong?

A) upper class
B) working class
C) middle class
D) upper-middle class

Question 8

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?

A) relationships of community and religion
B) relationships based on social bonds and solidarity
C) economic relationships
D) cultural relationships

Question 9

Which of the following is true of the upper class in the United States today?

A) They are a largely self-sustaining group and rarely add new members.
B) They are comprised mainly of skilled workers in technical fields.
C) They make up about 30 percent of the population.
D) They usually work in executive, managerial, and professional jobs.

Question 10

Sociologists often point out that systems of stratification in the United States systematically favor white men.Sometimes people contest this,pointing to wealthy and powerful black women like Oprah Winfrey or Toni Morrison.A valid counterpoint to this argument is that:

A) black women are often the exception to this tendency.
B) Winfrey and Morrison have higher social status because of other markers of class that they inherited, like regional accents.
C) stratification is a characteristic of a society rather than a reflection of individual differences.
D) women like these must have inherited a high social status from their parents.

Question 11

Which of the following demonstrates Karl Marx's conviction that social inequality would continue to grow?

A) "No one knows who will live in this cage in the future, or whether at the end of this tremendous development entirely new prophets will arise, or there will be a great rebirth of ideas and ideals, or, if neither, mechanized petrification, embellished with a sort of convulsive self-importance."
B) "The modern laborer . . . instead of rising with the process of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth."
C) "A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, i.e., things set apart and forbidden-beliefs and practices which unite in one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them."
D) "for the metropolis presents the peculiar conditions which are revealed to us as the opportunities and the stimuli for the development of both these ways of allocating roles to men."

Question 12

According to Karl Marx,what social relations matter most in a capitalist system?

A) family and kin
B) community bonds
C) economic relations
D) nationalistic bonds

Question 13

Mother Teresa was a person with tremendous power and prestige,yet she was very poor.Mother Teresa is an example of which of the following?

A) status inequality
B) status inconsistency
C) status contradiction
D) status reversal

Question 14

What do most Americans claim about their class status?

A) They are upper class.
B) They are lower class.
C) They are middle class.
D) They do not feel they have a class status, or they are unaware of it.

Question 15

What sorts of jobs are usually available to members of the lower-middle class?

A) technical or professional jobs
B) executive or managerial positions
C) blue collar jobs, or manual labor
D) lower-management jobs

Question 16

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

A) Race and ethnicity are more important than any other factor in determining social class.
B) These multiple dimensions of status and inequality intersect to shape who we are and how we live-a concept known as intersectionality.
C) These other variables matter for members of the upper class but not for members of the middle or lower classes.
D) These variables matter for members of the lower class but not for members of the upper or middle class.

Question 17

Which system of social stratification was in the final stages of breaking down when Karl Marx developed his ideas?

A) feudalism
B) capitalism
C) slavery
D) communism

Question 18

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.

A) 10 percent
B) 53 percent
C) 90 percent
D) 99 percent

Question 19

Apartheid is a specific example of what system of social stratification?

A) caste
B) class
C) slavery
D) racial

Question 20

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

A) Weber did not believe that owning the means of production mattered in any way.
B) Weber believed that class status was inherited and was an extension of the old feudal system.
C) Weber believed that wealth was the only factor that mattered, regardless of how that wealth was acquired.
D) Weber believed that wealth, power, and prestige could all affect a person's social class.

Question 21

What school of social thought insists that all social structures,including systems of stratification,are built out of everyday interactions?

A) functionalism
B) symbolic interactionism
C) Weberianism
D) conflict theory

Question 22

The tendency to choose romantic partners based on similarities in background and group membership is called:

A) homogamy.
B) background knowledge.
C) reflexivity.
D) heteronormativity.

Question 23

Symbolic interactionists stress the way we make "snap judgments" about other people's class statuses.Since we are aware that other people are judging us,we often pay close attention to what cues we display.Given this,why did Paul fussell decided to measure class status with a "living room scale" rather than assessing some other part of the house?

A) The living room is a part of the house the whole family uses.
B) The living room is where we receive guests.
C) The living room is where the most expensive furniture goes.
D) The living room is where the television is usually found.

Question 24

Greg J.Duncan and a team of researchers analyzed the effect of parental income on the academic achievement of children.Given what you have read about socioeconomic status and life chances,what do you think Duncan found?

A) There was no correlation between class status and educational achievement.
B) Class status helped to predict high school grades but had no relationship to later academic success.
C) Children from working-class families are more likely to attend and graduate from college, as they have better work ethics.
D) Parental income is strongly correlated with academic achievement, especially in low-income families.

Question 25

According to Chapter 7,what general predictions can sociologists make about a person's life prospects if all that is known is the person's social class?

A) what quality of education he or she will receive
B) his or her college major
C) if he or she will be a "dog person" or a "cat person"
D) his or her favorite color

Question 26

Why are people more likely to marry individuals with social and cultural backgrounds very similar to their own?

A) Parents and other family members always exert pressure to marry within the group.
B) People spend a great deal of time alone, and therefore can have few opportunities for meeting people.
C) People have greater access to individuals like themselves.
D) People develop irrational fears of out-group members and are scared to date them.

Question 27

Homogamy,a term sociologists use to mean the tendency to choose romantic partners based on similarities in background and group membership,is very common.Why?

A) We tend to have more access to people like ourselves.
B) People are rebelling against the common knowledge that "opposites attract."
C) We are hardwired to actively look for partners similar to ourselves.
D) It is too difficult to raise children with people who have different backgrounds from us.

Question 28

When young people go away to college,it is often the first time they make friends with people of substantially different class statuses.Sometimes this leads to tension when the wealthier member of a friendship is oblivious to his or her friend's class status and suggests activities that are beyond the friend's means.This tension results from a lack of:

A) historical materialism.
B) status inconsistency.
C) prestige or power.
D) everyday class consciousness.

Question 29

What do sociologists call awareness of our own and others' class statuses?

A) class consciousness
B) ideology
C) false consciousness
D) cultural capital

Question 30

Given what you have read about socioeconomic status and life chances,what activity is most likely to take the place of a yoga class for a working-class woman?

A) taking care of her children after work
B) watching television
C) meeting neighbors for drinks at the local bar
D) taking a night class at a community college

Question 31

What does Paul fussell's living room scale attempt to measure?

A) judgment
B) the pace of interaction
C) social class
D) ideology

Question 32

What does Pierre Bourdieu call the tendency of social class to be passed down from one generation to the next and consequently remain relatively stable over time?

A) the invisibility of poverty
B) slavery
C) ideology
D) social reproduction

Question 33

What are the tastes,habits,and expectations called that children "inherit" (or learn)from their parents and that help to achieve material success in life?

A) cultural capital
B) ideology
C) social welfare
D) education

Question 34

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:

A) try to "better ourselves" by increasing the amount of cultural capital we possess.
B) allow relative levels of prestige to determine our class status.
C) make split-second judgments about who people are and what social status they occupy based on their appearances.
D) surrender to the impersonal forces of the market.

Question 35

In House of Yes,a play by Wendy MacLeod,the character Marty brings his fiancée,Lesly,to meet his family.She comes from a different class,which leads to exchanges like this one between Lesly,Marty,and Marty's two siblings,Anthony and Jackie: Anthony: Would you like a glass of Liebfraumilch?
Lesly: No thank you.I'll just have a glass of wine.
Marty: That's the name of the wine.
Lesly: Oh! [laughs] I do not speak french.
Jackie: Who does?
Anthony: You do.
Jackie: Oh,that's right,I do.
According to Pierre Bourdieu,Marty's siblings are unhappy with Lesly because she does not have enough:

A) hubris.
B) cultural capital.
C) social capital.
D) integrity.

Question 36

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?

A) cultural capital
B) souvenirs
C) tennis shoes
D) wealth

Question 37

Why do members of the lower class exercise LESS often?

A) Exercise is a luxury often accessible only to those who do not have to struggle with day-to-day existence.
B) The poor are lazy.
C) Poor people care less about their health.
D) The lower classes do not have health problems that make exercise necessary.

Question 38

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

A) his or her speech and gestures
B) his or her age
C) his or her gender
D) his or her parents' occupations

Question 39

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?

A) the American Dream
B) cultural capital
C) status inconsistency
D) class consciousness

Question 40

What is realistic about "Cinderella stories" like the film Pretty Woman?

A) Prostitution is a common route to social advancement.
B) Class boundaries are often crossed in marriage.
C) When class boundaries are crossed, women usually marry up, while men marry down.
D) Marriage customs are usually heterogamous.

Question 41

What sort of social mobility often results from losing a job?

A) horizontal
B) upward
C) career
D) vertical

Question 42

What do sociologists call it when an individual changes his or her career but remains within the same social class?

A) vertical social mobility
B) structural mobility
C) intergenerational mobility
D) horizontal social mobility

Question 43

When the children of working-class parents manage to attend college and get a job in a professional field,it is an example of ________ mobility.

A) intragenerational
B) horizontal social
C) a lack of
D) intergenerational

Question 44

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?

A) structural mobility
B) intragenerational mobility
C) horizontal social mobility
D) vertical social mobility

Question 45

The difference between a person's ascribed status and his or her achieved status is measured in terms of his or her:

A) good fortune.
B) skill and personal character.
C) intergenerational mobility.
D) intragenerational mobility.

Question 46

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

A) life-cycle
B) intragenerational
C) structural
D) intergenerational

Question 47

A society where social mobility is highly restricted by formal or informal rules,like those of a caste system,is called:

A) capitalism.
B) a system of achieved status.
C) a closed system.
D) an open system.

Question 48

Many workers at auto plants in Michigan lost their jobs when the plants closed.for the vast majority of these workers,this has resulted in:

A) welfare reform.
B) vertical social mobility.
C) horizontal social mobility.
D) intergenerational mobility.

Question 49

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

A) by comparing the standard of living among the poor to the basic necessities of life
B) by comparing the poor to people with low socioeconomic status in other countries
C) by determining if the poor have minimal food and shelter
D) by comparing the poor to more affluent members of society

Question 50

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?

A) social welfare
B) structural mobility
C) horizontal mobility
D) intergenerational mobility

Question 51

Ascribed status is usually involuntary and often assigned at birth.Achieved status is voluntary and often based on merit,ability,or achievement.What sort of status would you expect to find in a closed system?

A) some ascribed status, but mostly achieved status
B) mostly ascribed status
C) only achieved status
D) an even mixture of both achieved and ascribed status

Question 52

In the United States,the federal poverty line is calculated using food costs,based on the cheapest possible diet that can still provide basic nutrition.What sort of measure of poverty is this?

A) a measure of poverty based on conflict theory
B) a measure of absolute deprivation
C) a measure of relative deprivation
D) a measure of social welfare

Question 53

Patrick Radden Keefe's The Snakehead describes (mostly)illegal immigrants to America from fujian,a province in China.Many of the immigrants took incredible risks to get to the United States and have a hard time assimilating,but Keefe is very optimistic that their children will assimilate and have a much higher standard of living than their parents.What does Keefe believe the children will experience?

A) intergenerational mobility
B) intragenerational mobility
C) structural mobility
D) immigrant mobility

Question 54

Which of the following variables have the greatest impact on crime rates?

A) poverty
B) funding for law enforcement
C) the availability of drugs
D) population density and anomie

Question 55

Although we usually think of social mobility as a result of individual effort,during the "dot-com boom" of the late 1990s,many people became instant millionaires.This is an example of:

A) structural mobility.
B) wise investing.
C) savvy technological genius.
D) horizontal mobility.

Question 56

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

A) jobs in manufacturing
B) blue collar work
C) jobs associated with skilled trades like carpentry
D) jobs in the service, information, and technology sectors

Question 57

Although the United States lost many jobs in the recession of the late 2000s,many people are optimistic that the lost jobs will be replaced with others.However,even if the optimists are right,the shift in the economy may permanently alter the class status of many,as the jobs being lost are largely in manufacturing and new jobs are often in information technology,suggesting that the newly unemployed will have trouble competing for newly created jobs.If this is the case,what is it called?

A) structural mobility
B) intergenerational mobility
C) intragenerational mobility
D) absolute deprivation

Question 58

Being born into a lower social class means that an individual will be more likely to:

A) feel at risk of being harassed by law enforcement.
B) complete college, due to receiving need-based scholarships.
C) beat criminal charges due to the assistance of a public defender.
D) be healthy, due to access to Medicaid.

Question 59

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?

A) socioeconomic status and life chances
B) apartheid
C) the culture of poverty
D) social mobility

Question 60

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

A) by considering access to food, shelter, clothing, and medical care
B) by comparing the poor to more affluent members of society
C) by asking which groups within a society have power and prestige
D) by comparing the poor to the poor of other historical periods

Question 61

One cost-of-living indicator available on the Internet shows that a salary of $40,000 in Santa Barbara,California,is equivalent to $14,000 in Wichita,Kansas.This is primarily because of housing,which is much less expensive in Wichita.What does this difference say about how the federal government calculates poverty?

A) It highlights something the poverty line shows us: that poverty is connected to the local cost of living, reflected in the differences in rates of poverty in different parts of the country.
B) It shows that the poverty line is more or less accurate, because it has been recalibrated to take into account housing costs.
C) It points to a flaw in the way the government calculates the poverty line, as the standard is uniformly applied without regard to regional differences.
D) It points to a flaw in the way the government calculates the poverty line, as it proves there are far more poor people in the Midwest.

Question 62

According to social psychologists,when people encounter a situation that seems to be unfair and they cannot or will not act to make things right,what do they tend to do?

A) dedicate themselves to bringing about change
B) try to find an authority figure who can take over the responsibility
C) try to use other resources, especially financial, to rectify the problem
D) convince themselves nothing bad has happened

Question 63

A majority of Americans believe that poverty is a big problem,but addressing it is NOT a priority for most.Why NOT?

A) Many people believe that poor people simply do not try hard enough.
B) Many people think poverty is good for the nation.
C) Many people hope that the government will fix the problem.
D) Many people believe we are on track to decrease poverty.

Question 64

Which of the following population groups are associated with higher rates of poverty in the United States?

A) working mothers
B) Asian Americans
C) people who live on the West Coast
D) Hispanics

Question 65

The Welfare Reform Act of 1996 ended the concept of entitlements by requiring recipients of welfare to find work within two years of receiving assistance.How has this changed the lives of the poor?

A) Moving from welfare to work helped single people much more than it did families or single mothers.
B) Moving from welfare to work caused many former welfare recipients to plunge into homelessness.
C) Moving from welfare to work did not substantially increase income levels; it simply shifted the poor from welfare to low-paying jobs.
D) Moving from welfare to work increases both the self-esteem of the poor and their incomes.

Question 66

Which of the following is a form of stratification in which all positions are awarded on the basis of merit?

A) democracy
B) meritocracy
C) oligarchy
D) technocracy

Question 67

According to the text,which of the following has the effect of making poverty socially "invisible"?

A) political engagement
B) the use of law enforcement to move the homeless away from visible locations
C) highlighting successful attempts by the poor to organize
D) cultural products, such as movies, that highlight the lives of the poor

Question 68

Drew Westen,in "The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the fate of the Nation," argues that when advocates of health-care reform talk about universal health care as a way to help "the uninsured" or "the underinsured," they turn many people against universal health care because there is an underlying assumption that poor people are getting what they deserve.What do sociologists call this assumption?

A) disenfranchisement
B) the just-world hypothesis
C) class consciousness
D) the invisibility of poverty

Question 69

Barbara Ehrenreich studied the working poor,people with service jobs that paid mostly minimum wage or slightly more.Based on your study of poverty,what would she recommend that such workers do to move out of poverty?

A) save at least 10 percent of their paychecks every month
B) go back to school
C) nothing, because there are few ways for them to move out of poverty
D) collectively organize for higher wages

Question 70

In 2015,the U.S.Census Bureau defined the poverty threshold for a family of four at:

A) $52,700.
B) $42,000.
C) $30,500.
D) $24,250.

Question 71

Oscar Lewis was the first to suggest that,because they are excluded from mainstream social life,the poor develop a way of life with fundamentally different values and goals,which makes it much less likely that they will ever join the middle class.This way of life is usually called:

A) the culture of poverty.
B) the invisibility of poverty.
C) the social contract.
D) oppression norms.

Question 72

What is the maximum length of time a family can collect welfare based on the welfare reforms provided in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act?

A) five years
B) ten years
C) fifteen years
D) one year

Question 73

When we compare the salaries of the worst-paid members of a corporation with the salary of the CEO,what sort of measure of poverty are we using?

A) relative deprivation
B) cultural poverty
C) absolute deprivation
D) horizontal poverty

Question 74

A homeless shelter in Illinois held a "sleep out," a protest to alert members of the general public to the dangers of letting funding for homeless shelters drop,forcing shelters to turn away people in need.The organizers of the rally saw their work as particularly important because they suspected that most residents did not realize just how many poor people existed in their community,a result of what sociologists would call:

A) problematic categories.
B) the invisibility of poverty.
C) the latent function of welfare.
D) the just-world hypothesis.

Question 75

What is the principal sociological critique of the culture of poverty?

A) The poor often move into the middle class.
B) The values and norms of many Americans in all class groups include attitudes of resignation and fatalism.
C) It tends to blame the victims of poverty for their own misfortunes, while ignoring the structural causes of inequality.
D) Some people simply have a predisposition to making poor choices regarding finances.

Question 76

What makes the just-world hypothesis psychologically appealing to the average person?

A) It is supported by a wealth of empirical data.
B) Most people's everyday experiences teach them that society tends to distribute rewards and punishments fairly.
C) Most people have a strong need to believe that the world is orderly, predictable, and fair.
D) Many people develop skewed perceptions based on their worst experiences with the poor, which makes it hard for them to see things objectively.

Question 77

Which of the following is a serious flaw in the way the federal government defines poverty?

A) It is too complicated because it takes into account too many factors, especially the cost of housing in each major metropolitan area.
B) It justifies a welfare system that supports a great number of people who simply do not want to work.
C) It does not take into account regional differences in the cost of living.
D) It overestimates the number of people who cannot afford basic necessities.

Question 78

Several members of the Indian government have argued that poverty in India should be calculated according to how many calories per day people consume,not in relation to their incomes.What sort of measure of poverty would this be?

A) vertical
B) structural
C) absolute
D) relative

Question 79

Approximately what percentage of the United States population falls below the federal poverty line?

A) 3 percent
B) 15 percent
C) 27 percent
D) 40 percent

Question 80

The sociologist Susan Mayer,in What Money Can't Buy,studied poverty and welfare and concluded that raising parental income had little effect on the future life chances of children born in poverty.Instead,she concluded that character traits in parents like "diligence,honesty,good health,and reliability" led to increased achievement in children.Which theory do her conclusions support?

A) conflict theory
B) structural functionalism
C) feminist theory
D) the culture of poverty