Through this article let us examine the differences between these two concepts in depth. If we pay attention to the society, people are divided and categorized into different groups based on their income, wealth, occupation, status, and similar factors. This is known as social stratification. According to the wealth, occupation, and the status of a particular individual he is placed in a social class.
Social stratification can be seen in all societies whether it is a very modern society or else a traditional society. This is a resultant of social inequality. When we observe the modern society, there are mainly three social classes. They are the upper class, the middle class , and the lower class. Although this model is adopted in most societies, in the past, there were other models of social stratification.
For example, in Asia, people were stratified based on the caste system. In the discipline of Sociology, Social stratification is one of the key topics that is being addressed about social inequality. Karl Marx and Max Weber presented a theoretical framework with which social stratification can be comprehended. According to Marx, the society is stratified into two classes in all societies. He looks at each society as a mode of production. In each case, there are two groups, the haves, and the have-nots.
He believed that the economy was the most important factor in creating and sustaining social inequality and stratification. In class systems, people have the option to form exogamous marriages , unions of spouses from different social categories. Marriage in these circumstances is based on values such as love and compatibility rather than on social standing or economics. Though social conformities still exist that encourage people to choose partners within their own class, people are not as pressured to choose marriage partners based solely on those elements.
Marriage to a partner from the same social background is an endogamous union. Meritocracy is an ideal system based on the belief that social stratification is the result of personal effort—or merit—that determines social standing. High levels of effort will lead to a high social position, and vice versa. The concept of meritocracy is an ideal—because a society has never existed where social rank was based purely on merit.
Because of the complex structure of societies, processes like socialization, and the realities of economic systems, social standing is influenced by multiple factors—not merit alone.
Inheritance and pressure to conform to norms, for instance, disrupt the notion of a pure meritocracy. While a meritocracy has never existed, sociologists see aspects of meritocracies in modern societies when they study the role of academic and job performance and the systems in place for evaluating and rewarding achievement in these areas.
Social stratification systems determine social position based on factors like income, education, and occupation. Caste systems correlate with high status consistency, whereas the more flexible class system has lower status consistency.
Susan earned her high school degree but did not go to college. That factor is a trait of the lower-middle class. She began doing landscaping work, which, as manual labor, is also a trait of lower-middle class or even lower class. However, over time, Susan started her own company.
She hired employees. She won larger contracts. She became a business owner and earned a lot of money. Those traits represent the upper-middle class. In a class system, a person can work hard and have little education and still be in middle or upper class, whereas in a caste system that would not be possible.
In a class system, low status consistency correlates with having more choices and opportunities. Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, who is in line to be king of England, married Catherine Middleton, a so-called commoner, meaning she does not have royal ancestry. It is rare, though not unheard of, for a member of the British royal family to marry a commoner. Kate Middleton has an upper-class background, but does not have royal ancestry. Her father was a former flight dispatcher and her mother a former flight attendant and owner of Party Pieces.
Its social hierarchy placed royalty at the top and commoners on the bottom. This was generally a closed system, with people born into positions of nobility. Wealth was passed from generation to generation through primogeniture , a law stating that all property would be inherited by the firstborn son.
If the family had no son, the land went to the next closest male relation. Women could not inherit property, and their social standing was primarily determined through marriage.
Commoners moved to cities, got jobs, and made better livings. Gradually, people found new opportunities to increase their wealth and power. The long-ago differences between nobility and commoners have blurred, and the modern class system in Britain is similar to that of the United States McKee Today, the royal family still commands wealth, power, and a great deal of attention.
If he abdicates chooses not to become king or dies, the position will go to Prince William. If that happens, Kate Middleton will be called Queen Catherine and hold the position of queen consort.
She will be one of the few queens in history to have earned a college degree Marquand There is a great deal of social pressure on her not only to behave as a royal but also to bear children. In fact, Kate and Prince William welcomed their first son, Prince George, on July 22, and are expecting their second child.
The royal family recently changed its succession laws to allow daughters, not just sons, to ascend the throne. Stratification systems are either closed, meaning they allow little change in social position, or open, meaning they allow movement and interaction between the layers. A caste system is one in which social standing is based on ascribed status or birth. Class systems are open, with achievement playing a role in social position. People fall into classes based on factors like wealth, income, education, and occupation.
A meritocracy is a system of social stratification that confers standing based on personal worth, rewarding effort. The addition of the stratification indicators to the models, including social class, improved the model fit according to the Likelihood Ratio Test Table 4.
In Models 1 and 2, significant associations were present only for those with less than primary education and those in BRG classes IV and V. The addition of social stratification indicators improved the fit of the social class model Table 4. Among men, secondary i. The addition of social stratification indicators did not improve the fit of the social class models. However, in multivariate Model 1 adjusted by education , the only associations that remained significant were those involving semi-skilled workers and those with less than primary education; and in Model 2 only BRG class V remained associated with poor mental health Table 5.
Results indicate that poor health status is associated with supervisor, non-managerial, semi-skilled, and unskilled class positions among men and with semi-skilled and unskilled class positions among women. Poor mental health was also associated with semi-skilled and unskilled class positions among women.
Among both men and women, credentials are associated with general health after adjustment for education and BRG. The findings from the Barcelona HIS support several of our hypotheses with regard to the relationships between social class and health.
Although the findings for women were consistent with those for men, the managerial i. Neither social stratification nor social class are related to mental health in men. This is commonly found with the GHQ. On the other hand, among women both measures of social stratification were associated with mental health. Among those in capitalist class positions, poor self-perceived health was rare; however, the small number of representatives of this class in our sample 46 men and 16 women reduced the power of tests involving ownership relations in multivariate analyses.
This problem has also been noted in sociological surveys. This may be a limitation of contemporary survey research that could be overcome with qualitative research e. The poor health of the petit bourgeois in our sample could reflect the competition and high rates of business failure that this social class typically experiences, especially in the 21st century marketplace dominated by large corporations. Interestingly, in our study men in low-level supervisory class positions i.
Low-level supervisors are the de facto management to workers, while simultaneously occupying the position of workers in relation to upper management, and they are in conflict with both.
As expected, experts were found to enjoy better health than non-experts. The health consequences of the skill-credentials dimension may be crucial for individuals occupying dual class positions. Scarce credentials i. In addition to the limitations of cross-sectional data for drawing causal inferences, our survey was restricted to the employed population and thus we were not able to ascertain the social class positions of those working outside the labour market, such as the mediated class positions of family members dependent elderly, children, housewives devoted to unpaid household labour , or class trajectory positions students.
Additionally, in studies of social class inequalities in health, specific class positions managers, capitalists may need to be over-sampled, just as ethnic and racial minorities must be over-sampled.
Among men, neither the occupation-based BRG nor education seems to be a better predictor of self-perceived health than social class. Among women, we did not obtain strong associations. However, non-measured aspects of gender exposure to worse working conditions and lack of access to labour markets; household labour and social networks 9, 14, 42 could account for these results. Our results confirm recent studies 5— 7 in which social class, understood as a social relation of ownership or control over productive assets, explains some aspects of the variation in health outcomes, while social stratification explains others.
We can draw several conclusions from this study. Our findings suggest that surveys in social epidemiology could benefit from over-sampling large employers in order to assess the health impact of capitalist class positions, which are poorly represented in general population samples.
Furthermore, our study findings indicate that control over organizational assets, as captured by the power to hire and fire labour and decision-making power over company policy, may be an important determinant of social inequalities in health. Thus, our findings highlight the potential health consequences of social class positions defined by power relations within the labour process.
Description of the population studied by sex. Number of cases and column percentages. Working population, 16—64 years old. Barcelona Distribution number of participants, percentage, and age-adjusted percentage of health-related variables by measures of social stratification and social class. Working men population, 16—64 years old. Distribution number of subjects, percentage and age-standardised percentage of health-related variables by measures of social stratification and social class.
Working women population,16—64 years old. Bivariate and multivariate associations between poor self-perceived health status, social class, and social stratification. Working men and women population, 16—64 years old. Bivariate and multivariate associations between poor mental health status, social class and social stratification.
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