Deck 7: Social Class: The Structure of Inequalit

Question 1

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) gender, race, and ethnicity

Answer 1

C

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 part of each generation will experience upward social mobility.
D) There is little or no chance of social mobility.

Answer 2

D

Question 3

A black man in the United States was convicted of a felony when he was 17.He is now 58 and has not committed any crimes since his release.However,he is still not permitted to vote.Michelle Alexander would describe this as an example of

A) everyday class consciousness.
B) status inconsistency.
C) the underclass.
D) the new Jim Crow.

Answer 3

D

Question 4

How does social class relate to 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.
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 5

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 statuses because of other markers of class that they inherited, such as regional accents.
C) stratification is a characteristic of a society rather than a reflection of individual differences.
D) Winfrey and Morrison must have inherited a high social status from their parents.

Question 6

A young girl from a poor family is sent to live with wealthy distant relations.Her relations expect her to take care of the household cooking and cleaning instead of going to school.They do not pay her and threaten her when she attempts to return home.Her situation is an example of

A) the new caste system.
B) modern apartheid.
C) modern slavery.
D) the new Jim Crow.

Question 7

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 8

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 9

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 10

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) Families' social positions start anew with each new generation.
C) All societies stratify according to wealth accumulation.
D) It is maintained through beliefs that are widely shared in a society.

Question 11

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 12

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

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

Question 13

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 14

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 15

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

A) It is a largely self-sustaining group and rarely adds new members.
B) It is comprised mainly of skilled workers in technical fields.
C) It makes up about 30 percent of the population.
D) Those in the upper class usually work in executive, managerial, and professional jobs.

Question 16

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 or manual labor jobs
D) lower-management jobs

Question 17

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 18

Karl Marx spent much of his life attempting to understand and describe how capitalism works.In one particularly vivid passage,he described 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 19

What system of stratification is commonly used in modern capitalist societies?

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

Question 20

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

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

Question 21

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 22

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 23

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

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

Question 24

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

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

Question 25

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 26

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

A) Weber did not believe owning the means of production mattered in any way.
B) Weber believed class status was inherited and that it was an extension of the old feudal system.
C) Weber believed 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 27

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

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

Question 28

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 29

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 30

Symbolic interactionists stress the way we make "snap judgments" about other people's class statuses.We often pay close attention to what cues we display since we are aware that other people are judging us.Given this,why did Paul Fussell decide 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 31

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 32

What is realistic about so-called Cinderella stories like the film Pretty Woman,where a low-status woman marries a wealthy,powerful man?

A) Sex work 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 33

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 social class,which leads to miscommunication and difficult interactions among Lesly,Marty,and Marty's two siblings.According to Pierre Bourdieu,Lesly not having enough ________ could cause the strained relations.

A) wealth
B) cultural capital
C) intersectionality
D) ideology

Question 34

When asked about how they met,the newlyweds explain that they were friendly as children because their families attended the same church,but they did not start dating until much later,when they ended up at the same university.This couple is an example of

A) heterogamy.
B) homogamy.
C) an open system.
D) a closed system.

Question 35

What general predictions can sociologists make about a person's life prospects if all that is known is the person's social class?

A) the level 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) whether he or she will have everyday class consciousness

Question 36

What might an individual be trying to gain if he or she takes adult education classes,attends lectures and concerts,or travels to Europe?

A) cultural capital
B) souvenirs
C) intersectionality
D) wealth

Question 37

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 statuses they occupy based on their appearances.
D) surrender to the impersonal forces of the market.

Question 38

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

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 have a better work ethic and, therefore, are more likely to attend and graduate from college.
D) Parental income is strongly correlated with academic achievement, especially in low-income families.

Question 39

In the 1960s,many sociologists noticed that economic obstacles alone were insufficient in explaining 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

Although "like usually marries like," when class boundaries are crossed in marriage,________ is more common for heterosexual women,whereas ________ is more common for heterosexual men.

A) a closed system; an open system
B) hypogamy; hypergamy
C) an open system; a closed system
D) hypergamy; hypogamy

Question 41

Why are people more likely to marry individuals with social and cultural backgrounds 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, 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 42

Many people became instant millionaires during the so-called dot-com boom of the late 1990s,though we usually think of social mobility as a result of individual effort.This is an example of

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

Question 43

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 44

Some immigrants have a hard time assimilating to a new culture.If their children assimilate and have a higher standard of living than their parents,the children are experiencing ________ mobility.

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

Question 45

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

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 46

Many people are optimistic that the many lost jobs in the United States in the recession of the late 2000s 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.This is due to the fact that the jobs being lost are largely in manufacturing and new jobs are often in information technology.This suggests 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 47

What is it an example of when the children of working-class parents manage to attend college and get a job in a professional field?

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

Question 48

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

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

Question 49

Poverty can be defined in either relative or absolute terms.How is poverty defined according to relative deprivation?

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

Question 50

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 51

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 52

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 53

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 54

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 Atlantic Records signed her,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 55

What is a society called in which social mobility is highly restricted by formal or informal rules like those of a caste system?

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

Question 56

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) overcome criminal charges due to the assistance of a public defender.
D) be healthy due to access to Medicaid.

Question 57

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

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

Question 58

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 59

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

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

Question 60

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

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 61

The sociologist Susan Mayer studied poverty and welfare.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

Question 62

In 2017,the U.S.Census Bureau identified the poverty threshold for a family of four as

A) $52,700.
B) $42,000.
C) $35,500.
D) $24,600.

Question 63

What defines the so-called official poverty in the United States based on household income?

A) social stratification
B) the federal poverty line
C) relative deprivation
D) absolute deprivation

Question 64

Oscar Lewis was the first to suggest that the poor develop a way of life with fundamentally different values and goals because they are excluded from mainstream social life.Consequently,they are much less likely to 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 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 increased both the self-esteem of the poor and their incomes.

Question 66

Under the Welfare Reform Act of 1996,________ years was the total amount of time in which families could receive assistance.

A) five
B) ten
C) fifteen
D) twenty

Question 67

What sort of measure of poverty are we using when we compare the salaries of the lowest-paid members of a corporation with the salary of the CEO?

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

Question 68

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 69

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

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 70

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

A) It shows poverty is connected to the local cost of living, which reflects the differences in rates of poverty in different parts of the country.
B) It shows 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 71

Paz does not have a computer in her house.She uses computers in the library to complete school assignments.However,because the computers are sometimes occupied and because the library closes early,she often has less time than her peers to do research and type her assignments.What term describes Paz's situation?

A) the digital divide
B) the federal poverty line
C) the simplicity movement
D) disenfranchisement

Question 72

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 73

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 74

In "The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation," Drew Westen argues that advocates of health care reform turn many people against universal health care when they talk about it as a way to help the "uninsured" or "underinsured." This is 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 75

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 76

A homeless shelter in Illinois held a "sleep out" to protest cutting funding for homeless shelters.The organizers of the rally suspected that most residents did not realize just how many homeless people existed in their community.This was 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 77

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 78

Poverty can be defined in either relative or absolute terms.How is poverty defined according to absolute deprivation?

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

Question 79

Americans are conflicted in their opinions about people living in poverty.About half think that circumstances beyond one's control are to blame if a person is impoverished while about a third say

A) people living in poverty do not try hard enough.
B) there are no people living in poverty in the United States.
C) poverty was created by social welfare programs.
D) poverty can only be fixed by turning toward oligarchy.

Question 80

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