Measuring Economic Systems
The U.S. has an open class system of life chances and opportunities within the market place. An open class system is an economic system that has upward mobility, is achievement-based, and allows social relations between classes. A closed caste system is an economic system that allows no mobility between caste levels. You are born into the caste you stay in your entire life, and you can't have social relations between the castes. An example of a caste system still exists in parts of India today. Historically, India had a highly structured caste system with 5 distinct caste layers.
An open class system is an economic system that has upward mobility, is achievement-based, and allows social relations between classes.
A closed caste system is an economic system that allows no mobility between caste levels.
Sociologists like to study how people improve, diminish, or leave unchanged their economic status. We call this process social mobility.
Social mobility, or the movement between economic strata in a society's system.
Upward mobility is moving from a lower to higher class.
An example of upward mobility would be someone who was born into poverty going to college and becoming a professional.
Downward mobility is moving from a higher to a lower class.
An example of downward mobility might be someone who commits a serious crime and is no longer able to perform their job. For instance, what if a doctor prescribed illegal prescriptions. The doctor would lose his or her medical license, and because the doctor is no longer able to work, he or she moves down in social class.
Horizontal mobility is remaining in the same class.
Horizontal mobility is when an individual makes a life change but there is no significant change in income. This might be someone moving from one company to another to do the same job. Even if the person receives a raise, it must be a significant raise to justify moving into another social class.
Intergenerational mobility is the research of mobility between generations.
Sociologists study the mobility between or within generations of family members. This is a comparison of parents to children. Basically, if you become more educated than your parents and have a higher income than your parents, this would be an example of upward intergenerational mobility.
Intragenerational mobility is the research of mobility within a generation.
Intragenerational mobility is similar to the previous example except that it is a comparison of family members in the same generation. Basically, this is your property, power, and prestige between you and your brothers and sisters (or cousins).
Structural mobility is mobility in social class which is attributable to changes in social structure of a society at the larger social, not personal level.
When the financial crisis happened at the end of 2008, a large number of people lost their retirement funding, and the nation saw an entire group of people's wealth decline. This is an example of downward structural mobility because an entire group of people moved down the social class ladder.
The next slide shows the median household income in 2006 dollars from 1967 to 2006.
As you can see, the United States has experienced collective upward social mobility over the last 40 plus years.
Unfortunately, because of the before mentioned financial crisis, this social mobility went significantly downward in 2007 and just started going back up in 2011. It takes a long time to recover from a negative structural mobility.
United States Median Household Income from 1967 to 2006:
*Source: US Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, 1968 to 2007 Annual Social and Economic Supplements. Note: Median household incomes were not calculated for the US before 1967. Retrieved 22 April, 2009 from http://www.census.gov/population/www/pop profile/files/dynamic/MoneyIncome.pdf
Occupational structure refers to the aggregate distribution of occupations in society, classified according to skill level, economic function, or social status.
When looking at occupational structure, sociologists look at the various types of jobs in a society. For example, we would compare the percentages of people working in farming to the percentages of people working in manufacturing or white-collar work.
Structural occupational changes are the change made to the occupations of an entire society, such as during the industrial revolution shifted society from largely agrarian workforce to a largely industrial one.
