Are those at the top and bottom of the social class hierarchy there because they deserve to be?

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Alba Maria Pintos Suarez                  03/05/2007

                 

                                                                                                                                                                  

Are those at the top and bottom of the social class hierarchy

                   there because they deserve to be?

 

Social mobility is when people can move up or down the social class hierarchy. This allows people to improve their social class from the class they were born into and in some cases to unfortunately to also go descend from the social class that they were born into.

The social class hierarchy is measured with the Registrar-General’s Scale, which uses status associated with the occupation that a person performs. This type of division is known as stratification. In stratification there are two types the ascribed position and the achieved position. An ascribed position is when you are born into a certain family in the upper class were your future is already planned for you, for example Prince William has been ascribed to be king when Queen Elizabeth dies. An achieved position is when you work hard to move ascend in the society we live in, for example someone who was born into a family in the working class works hard to achieve a position in the middle class. Sociologists study social mobility because they want to know how open is our society really is. An open society is also known as an open system is when there’s a possibility to ascend in the social class hierarchy and to fall down to a lower class in other words when there changes in society. There’s a growing gap in wealth between the upper class and bottom class this is making it increasingly harder for those at the bottom to achieve any mobility.

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The bottom class are know as the Underclass, some people argue that they are to be seen as working class but that’s an individual opinion. The people who are classed as the Underclass are people who are unable to move upwards in the social hierarchy. Because of the lack of chances and possibilities the percentage of the Underclass is continuously increasing. Who are the Underclass? Crisis’ explanations are people who have had to go through debts, reductancy, relationship breakdown, eviction or simple bad luck. Others like those with mental health problems and a history of physical abuse. Shelte’s explanations are ...

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