Main content
MCAT
Course: MCAT > Unit 14
Lesson 1: Social inequality- Social inequality questions
- Overview of social inequality
- Upward and downward mobility, meritocracy
- Intergenerational and intragenerational mobility social mobility
- Absolute and relative poverty
- Social reproduction
- Social exclusion (segregation and social isolation)
- Environmental justice
- Residential segregation
- Global inequality
- Prejudice and discrimination based on race, ethnicity, power, social class, and prestige
- Health and healthcare disparities in the US
- Intersectionality
- Class consciousness and false consciousness
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Upward and downward mobility, meritocracy
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Want to join the conversation?
- what is the usa's social inequality system? a combo of class and meritocracy?
in india, caste still reigns supreme
see excerpt
As India transforms, one might expect caste to dissolve and disappear, but that is not happening. Instead, caste is making its presence felt in ways similar to race in modern America: less important now in jobs and education, but vibrantly alive when it comes to two significant societal markers — marriage and politics.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/opinion/sunday/caste-is-not-past.html?_r=0(6 votes)- In the USA, at least from what I'm seeing, meritocracy does play a role. I strongly believe in credentialism...having the proper credentials plus suitable training and work experience should automatically allow you to rise up the social class ladder (ESPECIALLY if you have a strong independent initiative). Unfortunately, however, nepotism still plays a large role in getting jobs and in the social class system in general here in the USA. I'm talking about the "who you know" factor. You always here that around here...it's all about "who you know." Well, I'm sick and tired of that. How can somebody purely get a position based on who you know alone? This is why the American capitalist system is so screwed up, and also why people with only high school diplomas are in very well-paying jobs.(8 votes)
- Why is horizontal mobility () even important? Why is it worth mentioning? 1:25(0 votes)
- To give a term that contrasts vertical mobility(13 votes)
- If a meritocracy is purely based upon ability, and specifically a person's most recent level of performance and achievement, what about people who are disabled, either temporarily (e.g. surgery, children in school) or permanently (e.g. chronic disabling disease, old age)? (rhetorical question) I imagine we would want some stability for instances like these, so is there a more ideal social construct than a meritocracy and/or is there such a thing as a conditional meritocracy i.e. where a society is meritocratic under certain conditions but not others? (actual question) 5:50(4 votes)
- Hi! In regards to the mertiocracy pyramid...doesn't background still play a role in the pyramid? In the previous model as you go up the pyramid your resources for education, healthcare, and overall opportunity increase...so doesn't merit work with background in a way? The background gives you the ability to hone your skills..you would be at an advantage if you were in the middle versus lower class in moving up the ladder with merit...unless I should just be looking at these models in ideal conditions? Where the system is purely based off merit and just look at them as separate entities?(3 votes)
- I'm a little confused about the concept of social stability. Is it a good thing to have less social stability or a bad thing? Whats an example of low social stability?(2 votes)
- I believe the point they are trying to make is the following; it's relatively easy for someone in the Caste System to be born rich and die rich, they don't have to do much of anything to maintain that social status. On the other end of the spectrum in the Meritocracy System your social status is 110% based on the "effort" that you put into life and the skills that you possess. I don't believe they are stating that social stability is necessarily a positive or a negative thing but rather pointing out the differences in fluidity of social stability amongst the different systems. I personally think concrete social stability is a negative thing. I believe an individual should be rewarded based on the work they put in, although someone born rich in a Caste System would most likely think differently.(3 votes)
- Hi,
Do you mind clarifying what is meant by social stability? Is being socially unstable referring to the fact that one may undergo downward mobility?(2 votes)- That's right. Social instability is the likelihood of moving up or down the social ladder. A manager of a restaurant may suddenly be demoted to regular staff due to poor reviews from customers and/or coworkers and vice versa.(2 votes)
- Do some economic structures result in lower levels of inequality than others?(2 votes)
- This is probably the question that we should ask before partaking on anymore governmental formation that occurs. This is probably the most hotly contested idea that, on some level, led to the Cold War - some believing that capitalism creates a better society independent of inequality, while others thinking communism/socialism creates a more equal society.
I will contend that socialism/communism leads to less social inequality, although the conditions may be, on average, below the average living conditions of one in capitalism (which seems to harbor social inequality).(2 votes)
- What is the different between vertical social mobility and intragenerational mobility?(1 vote)
- Intragenerational mobility is when a person experiences vertical social mobility within their lifetime. Vertical social mobility is a person moving up or down the social classes.(2 votes)
- I disagree with this theory; what if there is not much merit and skills happening in the top class. The social stability from economic loss will be doomed for being irresponsible and illiterate in contrast to a meritocracy where they are able to maintain economic stability. That is one question where theory can have errors in contrast to the complex reality we are facing in most countries.(0 votes)
- currently many professional and graduate school admission and scholarship criteria/policies in North America are not an ideal meritocracy because they ask for all post-secondary transcripts/grades rather than the most recent(0 votes)
Video transcript
- [Voiceover] So, in our society we have quite a number of ways in which we tend to break down society into different layers, different social layers, and one of the ways that we do that is to break up society
into different classes. So, we can break society
up into the Lower Class, which basically consists
of a lot of people who do a lot of manual work, laborious work, often low-pay jobs. And then we have what's
called the Middle Class, so these are better paying jobs often involving a lot of professionals. And right at the top we
have the Upper Class, so these tend to be very
wealthy businessmen, heads of industry, people with a lot of family wealth and that occupy very prominent positions, and these are called the Upper Class. And one of the things that we know is that your different class
position often correlates to the amount of income that you get from your job. So, I guess one of the
things that we think about when we think about these
different social positions is that can we actually have movement. So, can an individual
actually move around? And the answer is "yes". An individual can in fact move around these different social positions, and there's various ways
an individual can move. The first way I want to mention is an individual can move horizontally. That's to say, an individual
can move within the same class. So, take our gentleman with
the blue hair in the middle. So, if he works as an accountant in one accounting company, if he switches job to a
different accounting company, but he stays at the same level, he's essentially experiencing
horizontal movement. That's to say that he's
not either going up in terms of social positioning, and he's not going down in
terms of social positioning. However, you could experience something called vertical movement, which is either a move up or a move down the social hierarchy. And example of this would be if he was, for example, a manager at a restaurant, and should he get a promotion and then become the CEO
of a fast food restaurant, then he would then fast move into a higher sphere. However, should he get a demotion, should he experience troubles at work, and then get bumped down
to just serving food and going on minimum wage, he may actually fall down
from his middle class, reasonably well paid job, into the lower working class, and in that case he would experience downward social movement, downward social mobility. So, as we could see as we
discussed social mobility, we can have horizontal movement and vertical movement as
we have described here. There are various different types of social constructs that allow for different levels of social mobility. Historically, some societies have had what's been called the caste system. And in the caste system there has been very, very, very little Social Mobility. And you may ask why. Because in a caste system your role in life is really determined almost entirely by your background, essentially to what position you're born, and to who you are married to. So if we look at the hierarchy, first the caste hierarchy, you're really limited to the social group to which you're born. regardless of your actual
aptitude and achievements. What that does often provide is a large amount of social stability, because the social structures
often do not change. People's social position doesn't change throughout their life, so they remain in the
same social situation with the same social network. The most common historic
example of the caste system was the Hindu caste system, which was historically outlawed, but some say it's still practiced to some degree informally today. Secondly, we go on to what's
called the class system. And this tends to operate
in many countries today, where we have the Upper Class, the Middle Class, and the Lower Class. And the class system is a step
away from the caste system because it allows for a
degree of social mobility. It is in fact a combination
of a person's background alongside their ability. It recognizes somebody's ability in terms of allowing them to go up or even down the social ladder. But what that actually results in that results in less social stability compared to the caste system. People can really change their social positioning
throughout their life, often by means of education for example. Now finally, I want to raise a rather idealized concept
of the meritocracy. And what a meritocracy is is a concept that people
achieve their social position based on their ability and achievements, and solely based on their
ability and achievements. So, in a meritocracy someone's position is
not really determined by their place of birth, their parental background. So, this is a highly idealized state that isn't really operating
anywhere in the world. Some people say the United States may be turned to meritocracy, but in an ideal meritocracy what we have is actually
extreme social mobility. People are continuously going up and down depending on their most recent level of performance and achievement. So, really now instead of background, we're basically purely focused on ability and their achievement. As you can imagine, there may not be as much social stability because their relative kind of the background organization
of families and social groups may be much less stable
than the caste system and the class system and the purest form or meritocracy. So, as we can see here, in a meritocracy we
have the greatest degree of upward and downward social mobility compared to the caste and class system.