Midterm #2 Review PDF

Midterm #2 Review Chapter 18: Education 18.1 Why is formal education universal? Purposes of formal education: 1. help students navigate their futures and find success in life or creating an educated workforce that can compete with other countries. - These are obviously important both for individuals and for societies as a whole. 2. Schools teach students how to get along with non-family members, follow direction, and learn to work independently. 3. Schools provide opportunities for extra-curricular activities such as sports & the arts. 4. High schools and colleges are dating and marriage markets, places where young people often develop their first intimate relationships. 5. Schools may even help prevent crime by keeping youths off the streets. THREE FUNCTIONS OF SCHOOLING: 1. socializing children outside of their family life. - Socialization begins in families and extends throughout the life course, but schools play an especially important role in teaching young people the habits and practices expected of members of the community. - In the classical functionalist theory of education, the classroom itself was portrayed as a small society where children learn the rules of the adult world they will soon enter. - Hidden curriculum of schools - the unstated standards of behavior or teachers' expectations - The often-unstated standards of behavior that teachers and administrators expect from children within the education system. These often-unstated expectations may reflect the middle-class biases and norms of school professionals 2. providing students with direct and indirect knowledge about the ethics and morals of the society they live in. 3. students become armed with the knowledge needed to be active, engaged citizens; this is socialization of a very different kind. - students should be taught not just to obey rules and absorb platitudes about the goodness of their society, but instead be places where students learn how to critically examine their own and other societies - Active learning - An approach to teaching and learning in which students learn through activities rather than passively absorbing information MOST IMPORTANT REASON: help prepare young people for future opportunities in the adult labor market. Human capital - The stock of experience, knowledge, skills, and habits that an individual has that they can use to do productive labor. Meritocracy - the idea that the most desirable jobs will go to those with the most “merit” and/or human capital—is in large part based on the notion that the school system is a central place where individual merit is best settled. Credentialism - (a result of meritocracy) "refers to the requirement of certain specific degrees or certificates before you can be considered for a particular job." In other words, the way schools operate may be more familiar and comfortable to some students than to others, magnifying the advantage that children from upper and middle classes bring to school in the first place. This aspect of education, and its consequences, is known as social reproduction theory, the ways in which education reinforces already existing advantages that some children have Education is seen as an equalizing force in society The Morrill Act in 1862 established the land-grant college system, providing each state resources to build a state university The G.I. Bill in 1944 paid for veterans' college including a living allowance; 7.8 million former soldiers used it 18.2 How is education related to important life outcomes? Soft skills also enhance job prospects: knowing how to dress, act and present oneself at work, and being able to work well with other people - Also called noncognitive traits - these are social skills—such as being on time, the ability to focus and complete tasks, and the ability to get along well with a variety of other people—that have been shown to enhance a person’s job performance and likelihood of success. Why do people with more education do better economically? Two competing explanations: 1. Human capital theory: argues that education provides knowledge and skills that employers reward because it makes workers more productive; soft skills may also play a role - Human capital sees education as changing you by making you more productive, so you are different in key ways that influence how much you earn (and how valuable you can be to your employer). - argues that investments in education and training improve people's productivity and enhance their ability to succeed in the labor market. 2. Closure theory: sees the educational system as limiting the number of people eligible to work in various kinds of jobs, creating scarcity which pushes wages up. - Associated with Max Weber - Closure theory, by contrast, views the educational system as dispensing, or allocating, credentials that make those who have them eligible for various kinds of jobs. It is a barrier to entry, so to speak. Key Differences Between Closure Theory and Human Capital Theory: Aspect Closure Theory Human Capital Theory Focus Social mechanisms that restrict Investment in skills, education, and access to resources. training to enhance productivity and earnings. Emphasis Group power and exclusion; Individual effort and investment in how social groups limit education and skills as the path to opportunities for others. success. Mechanisms Social groups create barriers Focuses on skills and education as (e.g., credentialing, gatekeeping). resources that increase individual market value. Social Emphasizes how social closure Inequality can arise due to unequal Inequality creates inequality by limiting access to education and training, but it is access to valuable resources. framed as an outcome of individual choices and investments. Structural vs. Structural forces (social groups, Individual responsibility for acquiring Individual professions) restrict access to human capital (skills, education). opportunities. Social Capital Social networks and social group Human capital is the focus—individual membership play a key role in knowledge, skills, and abilities are the determining who has access to key assets. resources. Allocation theory: A theory regarding the impacts of education that focuses on how education channels people into positions or institutions that offer different opportunities for continuing to think, learn, and earn how resources, opportunities, or rewards (such as jobs, educational opportunities, or wealth) are distributed across society. It examines the mechanisms and processes that determine who gets access to these resources and how they are allocated how resources are distributed based on different factors like merit, social position, class, or need. People with more education are likely to find and hold better jobs, report being in better physical and mental condition, and live healthier lives. People with less education are more likely to be channeled into physical labor, sometimes in difficult, toxic, or dangerous conditions. Having good quality health insurance—a key benefit of having a good job—is, not surprisingly, strongly related to better health Consistent with human capital theory, some evidence suggests that more highly educated people have better access to health information, understand it better, better comprehend probabilities and risks, and overall are in a better position to obtain the help they need CORRELATION BETWEEN EDUCATION LEVEL AND INTIMATE RELATIONSHIPS: Education is also closely related to how likely you are to marry, your marital happiness, the type of person you select as a spouse, the age when you have children, and your likelihood of divorce. In the United States, people with higher levels of education are far more likely to marry and stay married to the same person than those with less education. Among women aged 25 to 34, 59% of college graduates are married, compared with 51% of non-college graduates (Martin 2006). Among those aged 35 to 44, 75% of college graduates compared to 62% of non-college graduates are married, and for those 65 or older the gap is 50% of college graduates married compared to 41% of nongraduates. Even more striking are the very large differences in divorce rates. College-educated couples are much less likely to divorce than non-college educated couples. One likely reason for this difference is that college-educated people delay marriage relative to their less well-educated peers; the average age of first marriage for a woman with a high school diploma is currently about 23 years of age, compared to almost 30 for women with a bachelor’s degree or higher. Delaying marriage improves the chances of a successful marriage, in large part because with age comes maturity and a better understanding of one’s self. Many college-educated Americans are also having children later in life and having fewer children. Women, in particular, are waiting longer so that they can spend more time pursuing education and careers. Educational homogamy: individuals are more likely to marry others with similar education levels → further increases the inequality between households with college graduate couples and households with high school graduate couples. Two other factors help explain why college-educated people are “better” at marriage than non-college-educated people: 1. less likely to see marriage as the primary goal in life; marriage is something they choose to do because they want to, not simply because it is expected of them or because they need to marry for financial reasons (Finkel 2017). Paradoxically, this “choice” approach to marriage, as opposed to marriage out of necessity or societal expectations, appears to strengthen marriages. 2. more likely to marry other educated people who have good incomes, and the resulting financial security that two college-educated people have also contributed to greater marital happiness and reduced likelihood of divorce 18.3 Do Schools Provide All Children an Equal Chance to Succeed? Educational disparities - the gaps in educational opportunities and outcomes between different groups of people. - These disparities can be reflected in test scores, graduation rates, and enrollment in higher education Causes: - Race and ethnicity - Socioeconomic status - Covid Effects of social class on education: individuals from higher socioeconomic backgrounds → greater access to better education → higher academic achievement compared to those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds this often manifests as disparities in school quality, parental involvement, and access to higher education opportunities, perpetuating educational inequalities across social classes RACE DIFFERENCES IN EDUCATION: Until the 1950s, school districts across America were allowed to maintain separate schools for White children and Black, Asian, or Latinx children. Invariably, the schools attended by White children were superior on many dimensions to those attended mostly by non-White children. In 1954, faced with overwhelming evidence that “separate but equal” schools across the country were, in fact, hardly “equal,” the Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling in the civil rights case Brown v. Board of Education - take steps to desegregate. Slowly, and often with much resistance from parents, school districts and local politicians schools became more integrated. It didn’t happen easily or overnight. In many cases, federal courts had to intervene to issue desegregation orders requiring school districts to integrate their schools. The last of these court rulings were in the early 1980s, nearly 30 years after Brown v. Board of Education. But American schools did become significantly more integrated along racial and ethnic lines between 1955 and 1990. But after 1990, some of these changes began to reverse By 2020, more than 40% of Blacks and Latinx students were attending schools where minority students comprise more than 90% of the student body, a type of school known as hyper-segregated desegregation efforts had enabled growing numbers of Black children to attend schools with a majority of White students, but since 1990 that percentage has steadily fallen. There is variation across America in the extent to which hyper-segregated schools can be found, but for a society that claims to be moving “beyond race” this is a very worrisome trend. GENDER DIFFERENCES: For most of the history of organized education around the world, schools systematically favored boys (and families may have reinforced this by pushing their male children to pursue more education than girls) Now, it is girls who are outperforming boys on many educational outcomes On average, girls are now getting significantly better grades than boys. girls are now equally likely to take demanding math classes (Mulkey et al. 2005) and more likely to take advanced placement (AP) classes than boys. Young women are also more likely to graduate from high school and attend college in the United States than young men Chapter 23: Population, Aging, and Social Demography 23.1 Why study population? Concerned that the world’s population was growing much too quickly and soon, this ticking time bomb would have catastrophic effects 2012 - world’s population hit 7 billion As the years go on, it takes less years for the population to double The number of human beings alive doubled in the 100 years between 1810 and 1910, doubling again during the next 57 years, and again in the next 45 years Demographers believe the world’s population is unlikely to double again to 14 billion contrary to what Ehrlich believed and past history Census and population research Demography - the study of population Demographer - social scientists who study populations and population trends Census - a count of everyone (or everything) residing in a particular location; a national census attempts to enumerate all persons living in they country at the time the census is conducted - Early census - not representative of actual population; typically ignored enslaved people, sometimes women and children Enumerate - systematically count Why do virtually all governments think it is so important to know how many people are living in a country, region, city, or town? Several key reasons can be identified to study population: 1) want to know about the size of their population because this determines how much can be collected in taxes and how many persons (typically men) might be available should war or other armed conflict arise. 2) Population analysis is essential for estimating future social needs, such as whether or not to build more roads, houses, schools, churches, office buildings, or any other socially important physical infrastructure. Before making those decisions, officials and policymakers need to have a good idea whether (and how fast) the population of an area might be growing. 3) determining political boundaries in democratic countries. Ex) seats in a national legislature (such as Congress) are often based on population size. Currently, each district in the U.S. House of Representatives has approximately 700,000 people. 4) Population trends can have a huge impact on a national (or regional) economy. The composition of a nation’s (or region’s) population will impact how productive it will be and is a big factor in predicting whether to invest (or not) in business and jobs in the area or country. Ex) a country with a large percentage of college graduates can offer businesses a more skilled and adaptable workforce than a country with a small percentage of college graduates. Ex) healthcare costs, labor demand, consumption 5) Population trends also have important consequences for government policy. If there are too many young people, jobs for those seeking to enter the labor market might be scarce and create social pressures without some effort to generate opportunities. If there are too many older people working beyond a country’s widely accepted retirement age, the cost of providing them with pensions may become prohibitively expensive (as some countries around the world are now facing). 6) Businesses are also keenly interested in the demographic characteristics of a population because many things they sell are geared to specific segments of society. Thus, clothes, music, and other goods and services bought by young people (one demographic) are often very different than those bought by older adults. Social demography - a subfield that uses population research to study societal trends Social demographers - Population scientists who study “social” questions, not just broad overall population trends. Social demographers are interested in questions relating to population subgroups (such as racial, ethnic, or religious groups), families (and trends among and within families and intimate relationships), employment patterns, and political trends. Ex of what social demographers study: - Racial and ethnic composition - Marriage and the family - Employment issues - Life expectancy Stylized facts - empirical information we can surmise or determine with a great deal of certainty Population trends: include changes in social structure, urban/suburban/rural residence, education, religious involvements, political participation by different groups, crime rates (for example, who commits crimes), and prison populations. Population dynamics - how the size of any place or group has changed either in the past or how it hanging in the present or the future Big three: - Fertility - birth rate, measured by number of births per female of childbearing years - Morality - death rate, measures by # of deaths in a particular calendar year - look at health factors, cause of death - Migration - how many people move into and out of a given region or country, immigration - act of moving to a new country and emigration - leaving one’s home country Demographers also study factors that explain changes in fertility: - Contraceptives - Mortality - death of despair - suicide, alcohol, drug overdose - migration How a region/nation’s population will change over time is determined by these three factors: 1. how many people are born (fertility) 2. how many people die (mortality) 3. how many move in or out (migration) 23.2 How do populations change over time? First demographic transition - the transition by a region or country from a period of high fertility and high mortality to a period of low fertility and low mortality Pretransition: - High fertility → high mortality Transition: - Morality declines first and then fertility slowly declines Posttransition: - Low fertility → low mortality → likelihood of living into old age The story of the first demographic transition involves (1) an initial pretransition period characterized by high fertility and high mortality, then (2) a transitional period in which mortality first declines followed by a decline in fertility, and then (3) a posttransition period in which both fertility and mortality are low. Once fertility declines, it never reverses!! ex) Sudan fertility rate - 7 in 1950 and declined to 4 in 2010 Total fertility rate - A measure of fertility in a given calendar year reflecting the fertility of women at different childbearing ages. A total fertility rate of 3.2 in 2010 in a given population means that the average woman would have 3.2 children during her lifetime, if fertility rates in this population remained the same in the future. - hard to measure because you need to wait until all of them are done having children because you never know when they might have more Age pyramids - plot the age distribution of each country, males on left and females on the right - A diagram that plots the age distribution of a population, with the numbers at the youngest ages at the bottom of the graph and the numbers at the oldest ages at the top, and with males and females on the left- and right-hand sides, respectively. Replacement fertility - the number of children per women necessary to replace the population, about 2.1 children per women - If, on average, each female in a generation had two children, this would imply a more or less unchanging size in the population (taking into account that only females bear children) - Each set of parents would, on average, produce two offspring, thus replacing themselves by this number of offspring. - Over time, no change in the size of population Why does the U.S. continue to have some population growth given that fertility rates are at or below replacement? Answer: immigration and population momentum Population momentum - the tendency of a population that has been changing in size to continue to change in size even if factors such as fertility and mortality have shifted to levels that would, in the long run, imply no change in population size - Older women are having children …? - Japan's population has been declining as well as China - They havea low fertility rate for a long period of time Baby boom - a temporary marked increase in the birth rate, especially the one following World War II. - refers to the period following World War II from 1946 to 1964, during which the United States experienced a notable, extended, but ultimately temporary spike in fertility. Those born between 1946 and 1964 are referred to as baby boomers. Baby boomers are now beginning to enter old age, with many implications for American society. Cohort - persons born during the same time period - Ex) Silent Gneration (during great depression ad WWII) - Baby boomers (post WWII) - Generation X (rise of technology, the end of the Cold War, and the start of the digital revolution.) - Millenial (1980~1996) (first generation to grow up with the internet, social media, and mobile technology) (9/11) - Gen Z (2000-2012) - Generation alpha (2012-present) Population aging - some regions and countries of the world are facing rapid increases in the number of older people - Like the Japanese population Difficulty in measuring fertility: - Look at how many children were born to women age 15-45 - Until they completed their reproductive age 23.3 What factors influence fertility? Influences on fertility: 1. Infant mortality rate - A first theory argues that declines in infant mortality can cause fertility decline - Couples will have less children if they know that the children they will have will SURVIVE, there is not a high chance that they will die 2. Economic development (how advanced a nation’s economy is) - Fertility will decline as a country undergoes economic and social development and becomes richer - As poor countries become more prosperous economically, their mortality and then fertility rates would begin to fall - a number of things can greatly reduce infant mortality, including systems for waste and sewage disposal, the provision of clean drinking water, access to hospitals or clinics to monitor the health of pregnant people and to help them when they give birth, and a variety of improvements in the nutrition, health, and medical care of infants, children, and their mothers. - Why??? - When women receive higher education, they are less likely to have children - They may have higher aspirations for their children so they want to have fewer children to provide more resources for them 3. Birth control - 1) the growing acceptance of the view that people can (and should) exercise control over their fertility - 2) technological advances in birth control → fewer unintended children 4. Costs and benefits of childbearing - Fertility decline results from the costs and benefits of having and raising children -In agrarian economies, children were a net benefit to parents because they provided an additional body for tending crops or livestock & a potential safety net → the surviving children could take care of their aging parents - Industrialization: increasing numbers of workers migrated to urban areas and cities to work in factories, which lessened the economic benefit of having many children who could help work in the fields even at young ages. 5. Norms and values: - Second demographic transition - theory that argues that recent fertility change is a consequence of changes in norms and values - increases in divorce - premarital sexual activity - increased cohabitation - out-of-wedlock childbearing 23.4 How are trends in aging and mortality emerging as critical issues in many societies? Epidemiology - study of health-related events in an entire population: the causes and consequences of health-related factors How might the first demographic transition influence health when we think about overall health in a nation’s population? Epidemiological transition - a concept that refers to the transition of a population from health conditions primarily involving infectious disease (often extremely deadly to infants, children, and young adults in poor and developing countries) to health conditions primarily involving chronic disease (often shaping the health conditions of individuals, and especially older people, in rich countries like the United States and Japan). Infectious diseases - A disease caused by the entrance, presence, or growth of a microorganism or other foreign agent inside the body. Contrast between infectious diseases vs chronic diseases: - Infectious diseases are caused by germs that enter the body, some can be cured - chronic diseases are long-term conditions that can usually be controlled but not cured Life expectancy - average number of years a population at some age can expect to live - One of the most common measures used to describe the health of a population - Why does the U.S. have a lower life expectancy than Japan? – Healthcare system, nutrition, smoking Why has mortality declined (and life expectancy gone up) in poor countries? - improved conditions by cleaning up and protecting water supplies - developing better systems of waste disposal - immunizing and providing better health care and nutrition to infants, children, and their mothers. Healthy life expectancy - the average number of healthy years one can expect to live if current patterns of death and illness remain the same. - many of us want to know how many “good years” we have left—years when we can anticipate good health and ability to do a normal range of activities. Chapter 9 (Sections 9.3 - 9.5 only): Markets and Organizations: The Sociology of Economic Life 9.3 What is the Sociological approach to the study of economic markets? Behavioral economics revolutionized the way that economists think about individuals as rational actors. Psychological factors lead individuals to act in ways that do not always maximize their interests. Example: Loss aversion: individuals place greater value in not losing what they have than in gaining something Economic sociology makes a different critique of purely rational market behavior. The social context in which we operate matters. Embeddedness: Individuals and firms exchanging in markets are also embedded in their society and its social influences Norms influence economic markets - Norms shape economic behavior. Without norms about how market interactions are supposed to operate, it would be very difficult for successful exchanges to occur. These informal rules are just as important as formal (legal) rules. (Example: rules about how to bargain) - many of the rules that govern market behavior, like all arenas of human interaction, are not formal, written, or even explicit; rather, they are informal, absorbed into our everyday consciousness in ways that we take for granted and don’t normally notice Markets - places where buyers and sellers exchange goods and services Social factors that affect markets - I. Power II. Trust III. Social networks Power as it relates to markets - But in reality, people and firms with power and resources are able to tilt market processes in their favor (The "Matthew Effect": those who are already privileged will become more so over time) Amazon or Walmart can compel suppliers to charge lower prices because they are so much bigger (Monopsony); that makes it harder for smaller enterprises to compete Power also affects who has access to loans and credit and at what terms: It is easier for those who are already wealthy to receive credit and at lower interest rates. By contrast, the poor get unfavorable terms and must rely on check cashing companies or payday loans Trust as it relates to markets - Trust is critical for economic markets to function Trust - "the belief that another person with whom you might interact will not cause you harm even though he or she may be in a position to do so." When trust is high, people can operate with more confidence and certainty. McDonaldization of society: Sociologist George Ritzer argued that people are more likely to choose brands they feel they can trust, so they are less likely to try something new. If this persists, everything becomes standardized like a McDonald's restaurant, limiting variety and innovation. Social network/social ties - widely associated with technological platforms that connect individuals and facilitate the exchange of information and, increasingly, goods and services (Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and a myriad of other social media sites). Markets need social ties to establish the trust necessary to carry out economic exchanges. Social networks are important for spreading information related to markets - Ex) someone’s chances of getting a job are highly influenced by who they know. Granovetter interestingly discovered that it wasn’t someone’s primary connections (the people whom one knows personally) but rather second-degree connections—friends of friends—who were most helpful for securing new jobs Sociologist Mark Granovetter showed that a person's chances of getting a job are influenced by who they know; interestingly someone's first-degree connections are less important than second-degree connections (friends of friends) for securing a job Markets often need these social ties to establish the levels of trust that are necessary to carry out economic exchanges. - Ex) word of mouth about a business is extremely important for building and maintaining a business; no matter how much advertising a business might do, most will benefit far more from their existing customers referring their friends. In addition, sociologists who have studied banks and loan-making have found that, while we might expect that a person or a business would search for the lowest interest rate when borrowing money, many businesses, in fact, prefer to stay with the bank that they know, even if they have to pay a bit more contemporary markets contain within them a variety of organizations, large and small, that shape the boundaries of most markets. In almost everything we do, we encounter an organization, and an almost endless array of organizations impact our daily lives - Ex) day care centers, schools, churches, businesses, hospitals, and government. Virtually every market has a set of key organizations that operate within it in both competitive and noncompetitive ways. 9.4 Why are organizations important for social and economic life? Organizations - "a group engaged in a specific activity that has an identifiable purpose or goal and that has an enduring form of association that is independent of the people involved in it at any one moment" - Human constructions - (1) an organization has to be more than just a collection of individuals doing the same thing. - Ex) a group of friends going fishing is not an organization, but a company that farms fish and sells them to supermarkets is - (2) the organization is not dependent on who the current members are, and will persist over time even as new people come. - Ex) the New York Yankees baseball team is an organization, with new players replacing old ones all the time, whereas a group of friends who regularly meet to play softball but stop when some of the players move away or don’t have time anymore is not. ORGANIZATION vs. INSTITUTION: A common confusion many people have is between organizations and institutions. Similarities: - They are enduring forms of social organization - they have strong norms that shape the behavior of the individuals who become involved in them - they are typically slow to change. But the term “institution” is much broader. - Ex) The Catholic Church is an organization, but religion (which includes all denominations) is properly known as the institution. - Ex) Mississippi State University is an organization, while education is the institution. - Institutions usually have multiple organizations that engage in activities that fall under a single institutional umbrella. Bureaucracy - A type of organization that has rules and responsibilities for each position (or job) spelled out, in which selection into those positions occurs on the basis of merit (not typically by election or inheritance). Many bureaucracies are also responsible for setting out policies and procedures that are to be adhered to by others. Bureaucracies have many advantages but they also create stifling routines and boring jobs and make it more difficult for organizations to be creative and innovative, and to adapt to changes in markets as soon as they get big enough to create written rules and establish defined roles for organization of members, the beginnings of a bureaucracy are present, and the bigger a company or organization gets the more likely it will become more bureaucratic. BENEFITS OF BUREAUCRATIC PROCESSES: - provide strength - Coherence - stability for an organization LIMITATIONS OF BUREAUCRATIC PROCESSES: - create barriers to effective decision-making. - full of “red tape” - “inefficient” - “bloated” - ineffective Max Weber’s theory of bureaucracy emphasized 3 central features: 1. bureaucracies establish positions of authority that are hierarchically organized—that is, the higher up you go in a bureaucracy, the more authority is vested in that position. - Bureaucracies are hierarchically organized so that there is a chain of command, and everyone working in the bureaucracy is responsible to the office above him or her. (Even the president or CEO of an organization is typically responsible to an outside board of some kind.) 2. written rules define the scope and responsibility of each position within a bureaucratic organization. - Each employee is expected to perform those (and only those) roles. 3. while organizations may have volunteers, they are only properly considered bureaucratic when the decision-making officers of the organization are full-time, salaried positions. 9.5 What is the relationship between Organizations and Their External Environment? Organizational ecology - The rise and fall of organizations, including the factors that cause organizations to emerge, grow, and/or decline and die. Structural inertia - Strong resistance to change - An organization that is successful early in its history has little reason to change - “Don’t fix what’s not broken” - CON: prevent the organization from adapting needed changes at some point How do organizations survive in the face of competition? - Although situations can be unique, the most common way that an organization competes is to successfully identify and fulfill a niche - Niche - a distinct segment of a market or social process for which the organization’s services or products are in demand. - A niche might provide high-end (expensive) products or services to a small group willing to pay very high prices for the “best,” cheap goods and services to a larger group, or a good or service that no one else is currently providing. A sociological findings about organizations = over time successful organizations in the same institutional field will tend to look a lot like each other New institutionalism - companies are resembling each other more and more Organizational isomorphism - refers to the process whereby organizations in the same field tend to become increasingly similar to each other over time - Organizations are pressured to comply with certain legal requirements, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act’s (ADA’s) requirements that all buildings must provide wheelchair access (coercive isomorphism) - Ex) adhering to environmental laws - Ex) Adoption of financial reporting standards by public companies due to regulatory requirements - Nature of influence: External, formal, and often involuntary - No autonomy, they have to conform - Organizations respond to pressures exerted over their legitimacy, shared professional norms, standards, and expectations. It is driven by the influence of professional training, education, and the adoption of industry-specific standards. (normative isomorphism) - Ex) when most hospitals across a region adopt similar patient care practices and standards because their medical professionals are all certified by the same medical board, leading to a shared understanding of best practices and a consistent level of care, largely driven by the professional norms established by the medical association - Ex) common in healthcare and education - Nature of influence: Internal and often voluntary (although external organizations may push norms) - Organizations generally voluntarily conform based on professional norms - Facing uncertainties, organizations look at what other organizations are doing or copy them (mimetic isophorisms) - The phrase that organizational insiders often use to capture this process of imitation is “best practices.” By making itself look like all the others, that is, by adopting the best practices in the industry, the organization and its leaders do not attract negative attention. Chapter 12 (sections 12.1-12.2 only): Jobs, Occupations, and Professions: The Sociology of Work 12.1 What is the Division of Labor in Modern Societies? Division of labor - The specialization of individuals into different tasks in an economic system or an organization. - There is thus a division of labor in all of society (with different people working in different occupations), a division of labor in individual organizations (where different people perform different tasks), and a division of labor in individual families and communities. - includes both paid and unpaid work - Ex) housework or caring for a child or older family member is a critical part of any society’s division of labor The distinction between paid and unpaid labor marks the difference between the labor market and the entire division of labor. Labor market - The process through which workers and employers find each other. - The process through which employers identify and hire individuals to work under specified terms of employment. - But there is no single labor market. - Different occupations have their own labor markets. - less broad than the division of labor - Ex) When families hire other people to clean or maintain a physical shelter or care for family members (such as nurses, in-home aids, assisted living facility workers, and so forth), however, those jobs (which are paid) are part of the labor market. Occupations - A job that has been formally established and has some requirements (often formalized) for training or knowledge to perform it. - require special training or educational credentials—and which individuals may perform over an entire career—have labor markets in which employers do not look at all possible individuals seeking work, but only those with the requisite skills and training to do the job. The Historical Evolution of the Division of Labor: Craftsman - A traditional term used to describe skilled labor based on experience and deep knowledge of the tasks required. Industrial revolution - The period in which mass production in factories began to develop and foster rapid economic growth. The timing of the Industrial Revolution varied from country to country but is generally thought to have begun in the late 18th century and evolved throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. Specialization - Knowledge or skills related to a narrow field of practice; a specialist typically knows a lot about one or a small number of things that a generalist is not likely to know. - Most professions today have high (and increasing) forms of specialization - A new kind of division of labor Distinctive occupations that require special training or educational credentials—and which individuals may perform over an entire career—have labor markets in which employers do not look at all possible individuals seeking work, but only those with the requisite skills and training to do the job. If those skills are in short supply, workers usually have more leverage than in the case of non-skilled jobs and may be able to bargain for higher wages. In the case of professional labor markets, employers may search nationally or even internationally for the best candidates. Some labor markets are truly international—perhaps most famously in professional sports, where a top football (or soccer, as it is called in the United States) player can have a career that involves playing for many different teams in different countries at different points in time, and because top players are always in short supply, the player/employee can bargain aggressively for a high salary. Caring work - such as raising children or taking care of sick or aging family members or close friends - Not paid work The Evolving Labor Market: White-collar jobs - Jobs that do not require physical labor, in which employees work in offices or at desks, as opposed to “blue collar jobs” that involve physical labor. Blue-collar jobs - Manufacturing or service jobs involving physical labor (the “blue collar” refers to the idea that these workers (originally mostly men) doing physical labor do not wear “white collar” shirts like those of professionals). Changes in the labor market by industry: CONCLUSION: Manufacturing, mining, construction, domestic and personal services all decreased Manufacturing jobs were 32% of the total of non-farm jobs in 1910, whereas today they are less than 9%. Almost 10% of jobs in 1910 were in mining, while today they are only a small fraction. Construction has fallen by half (9% to 4.5%), though it has held up much better than manufacturing. Domestic and personal services performed inside the household (such as household maids, cooks, nannies, and personal servants) combined were almost 15% of the workforce in 1910 but are just 1% today (again, many of these jobs are still done but are now outside the home, such as at childcare centers, assisted living facilities, or in restaurants and fast food establishments). CONCLUSION: professional services have increased professional services—this includes both professionals and the people who assist them—have shot up from 3% to 29%. smaller changes can be seen in finance and real estate, which nearly tripled from 2% to 6%. What the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) calls “wholesale and retail trade” (this includes all kinds of workers involved in selling things) has grown from 13% to 23%. Changes in the labor market by occupation: CONCLUSION: jobs in farming, skilled, unskilled, less-skilled manual labor have declined The graph shows how employment in farming collapsed, going from about 1/3 of total employment in 1900 to just 2% at the end of the 20th century. The skilled and nonskilled manual labor has declined dramatically over the course of the 20th century, with skilled manual workers making up 15% of the workforce in 1940 but just 9% today. The less-skilled manual worker category has also declined, although many of the workers in less-skilled jobs today are not working in factories but rather doing things like janitorial services. CONCLUSION: Construction – part of skilled and less-skilled categories – has not declined Both skilled and less-skilled categories include construction, which has not declined as much. CONCLUSION: professionals and white-collared workers have increased Professionals have shot up from about 5% in 1900 to about 23% by 2019. White-collar clerical and sales workers, as well as business managers of all kinds, have also increased dramatically since 1900. Post-industrial society - one in which economic growth is not generated by producing goods but by knowledge and professional expertise. - Yet employment in low-skill jobs – such as store clerks and cashiers, janitors and other maintenance workers, fast-food and other restaurant workers, baristas, farm laborers, and in-home aides and attendants— in the service sector has also grown Gig economy - The sector of the economy in which income is received from doing jobs on a short-term basis, with no commitment from either employer or worker beyond a single transaction (typically organized via the internet). - Ex) Companies like Uber and Lyft (ride services), TaskRabbit (home repair services), Seamless and DoorDash (food delivery services), Care (babysitting services), Instacart (grocery delivery services), Airbnb (apartment/house rentals) and similar firms facilitate matching workers and consumers via Internet platforms. - Proponents have extolled the unique ability of these firms to provide flexible employment to those who sign up to work for them, allowing people to work whenever they want and as much or as little as they want. - Some have seen these companies as “disruptors” with the ability to replace many kinds of traditional jobs, stating that the on-demand nature of these jobs makes it easier for companies to avoid hiring workers with benefits on payrolls Day laborers - have worked as farm and construction workers, cleaners, and dockworkers since the rise of the modern economic system. - Terms like “hobo” or “vagrant” came to be used for these casual workers in the early 19th century, as rather than keeping a year-round residence they would move to where work became available at different times of the year Temp agencies - specialized in placing workers in temporary jobs. - Companies would contract with a temp agency to replace workers who might be out sick or suddenly quit. - But the temporary worker would not normally be hired permanently, filling in only as long as needed. - The history of temp agencies reveals considerable exploitation of these workers, who often took temp work as a last resort The gig economy has supplemented existing sources of temporary work to generate an important space in the modern labor market. If we include all workers doing gig work or temporary work, the U.S. Department of Labor estimates that it would include about 14%—about 1 in 6—of the American workforce. The Changing Character of Self-Employment: Self-employment - earning income without being employed and paid by someone else The character of self-employment has changed in recent decades. Self-employment appeared to be in a decline with large companies dominating the economy. Traditional self-employment (small shopkeepers and restaurants), other types of self-employment have increased: - Professional freelancers - Low-income, marginal informal self-employment (e.g., in-home childcare or day labor) This increase in self-employment reflects a restructuring of the U.S economy: companies are outsourcing work to self-employed people; saves money, no benefits or job security Freelancing - people are able to work with multiple clients, control their own work hours, and select among different challenges and opportunities they may be offered - lack the security that comes with a regular paycheck → create anxiety when work is slow. At the higher end of the income spectrum, many workers may prefer the flexibility of self-employment or independent contracting and find it liberating → freelancing At the lower end of the income spectrum, many “self-employed” workers do not have much flexibility and often are on-call as needed (akin to gig economy workers) 12.2 What is the labor process? Labor process - the term used to describe how jobs are organized and controlled by managers and bosses from above - The study of the labor process attempts to open up the workplace by examining how workers actually do their jobs, how managers and supervisors direct them, and how the relationships between the two unfold. The Labor Process: An Introduction: Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856–1915) - principles of scientific management gave expression to, and inspired, modern managerial organization of the labor process. - Taylor sought to make the labor process more efficient by closely studying each minute movement of workers, thus effectively wresting the knowledge of the production process from workers and putting it in the hands of supervisors. Scientific management - A movement that arose in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that attempted to improve productivity by ensuring that managers controlled all aspects of the labor process and would utilize the best practices available given existing technology and knowledge Hawthorne studies - 1920s and 1930s, Harvard industrial psychologist Elton Mayo and his associates conducted a variety of experiments with different teams of workers. - The studies aimed to identify what factors might induce workers to produce more output in the same amount of time. - While Taylor dealt with technical aspects, Mayo and his associates focused on various social aspects of the workplace. - Among other things, the researchers found that cooperation between workers was especially important for increasing productivity. - Workers were more productive when their work was organized in such a way that they had to work together, not just follow orders The 1974 publication of Labor and Monopoly Capital by labor activist and writer Harry Braverman marked an important shift: Talked about maximize profits, capitalist firms and their managers were continually driven to reduce their employees’ ability to control what they do on the job. Braverman, at one time an industrial worker himself, levelled a powerful critique of industrial sociologists, claiming that much of their analysis and reforms were rather superficial and concerned with making things more tolerable for the workers. Instead, he brought the focus back to Frederick Taylor and what “scientific management” was about. Scientific management, Braverman argued, is premised on the idea that managers need to figure out how to understand and control what the workers under them are doing. Instead of allowing workers to decide how something should be done, or done differently, managers should decide for them and keep workers focused on precise, increasingly fragmented tasks. The pinnacle of scientific management is the well-developed assembly line system of production, in which every task a worker must perform is completely scripted and usually paced by a machine. Ex) Henry Ford, the founder of the Ford automobile company in Detroit, was among the first to fully implement such a design early in the 20th century. His assembly line was copied all over the world. Deskilling - jobs are made simpler and workers become interchangeable. This way workers don't have the upper hand (automation is conducive to deskilling) Automation - the ultimate form of deskilling - when a machine performs a task that once was completed by a worker. - In this way, management seeks to block or prevent workers from having the upper hand because the worker (rather than management), knows how to “get the job done.” - Braverman argues that this disempowers the workers and takes away their ability to control the way they work. - since workers increasingly no longer have special skills, they are more easily replaceable (by another worker or by a machine), they might think twice before asking for a wage increase or considering going on strike. - weak position to resist what management wanted as a result. Skill-based technological change - hypothesis argues that technological changes since the 1970s increased demand for high-skilled workers and the wages they could command it does seem clear that there has been a long-term shift toward jobs that require more skill and more education, not less—one reason the income differences between college graduates and those without college degrees has been growing in recent years SHIFTS IN WORKPLACES: If you go into the headquarters of Google or Facebook, you will not find a set of rows or workstations, but rather very large open spaces with desks and couches and small meeting spaces everywhere. Team work, the rotation of job tasks among workers, as well as worker–management cooperation, is now increasingly common. The Scientific Management is still used today: Ex) having workers use laptops or smartphones provided by the employer allows the company to literally monitor everything the employee does, from the total amount of time each worker is “on task” all the way down to individual keystrokes they type on their computer. - Firms can also use technology in factories or warehouses to monitor workers’ movements more precisely than ever before. - It is a level of surveillance that Fredrick Taylor could only dream about. Indeed, some analysts have even described the emerging workplace representing the rise of surveillance capitalism The COVID-19 pandemic introduced a startling change into modern workplaces, by keeping most white-collar workers at home Telecommuting - white-collar workers perform their jobs from home. The full consequences of increased telecommuting are still not well known: - Provides flexibility and reduces commuting time - isolates workers from peers - allow work time to bleed into family or personal time - The COVID-19 pandemic increased telecommuting Sources of Power and Control in the Workplace: Workers versus Employers: Employers have a lot of advantages. In general, jobs only exist to the extent that employers make investments that create work and (they hope) profits. The workplace itself, and the tools needed to get things done are (usually) the private property of the employer. In some industries, the threat of moving jobs to other countries or regions can be a significant source of power of employers over their workers. TWO WAYS WORKERS CAN LEVERAGE POWER OVER THEIR EMPLOYERS: 1. when workers have skills that are in short supply. - Skilled or knowledgeable workers are in a position to walk away from one job and know they can find another. - But most workers do not have that particular luxury. 2. the formation of collective organizations of workers, such as unions, or when workers act together (such as in a strike). - The role of government laws and regulations also plays an important role. Unions - An organized association of workers created in order to protect and fight for rights or resources for their members. - Unions can be organized at a single workplace, across multiple workplaces of the same company, or in an entire industry. - a primary way in which workers obtain greater power in the labor process. Through collective bargaining agreements, they negotiate better working conditions and higher wages for their members. - Unionization has been in sharp decline in the U.S. - unionization rates reached their peak in the 1950s, 35% of workers were unionized - Today only about 10% are unionized - America has the weakest private sector unions of any advanced economy; while unions are still common in many government agencies and nonprofit organizations (like universities and hospitals), only about 1 in 16 workers in a private sector job is in a union (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2020). - In the public sector, where the “employer” is the government, unions are much more common (33% of all government workers are members of unions). BENEFITS OF UNIONS: create a way for workers to negotiate more effectively with their employers, instead of having each worker negotiate for themself. help monitor working conditions and ensure that employers abide by agreements with workers or government regulations. negotiate contracts called collective bargaining agreements with employers that give both sides—employers and workers—a set of guidelines that govern the workplace. Collective bargaining agreements - Agreements between employers and unions representing workers. Where unions and management have built bonds of trust with each other, they can often work together over long stretches of time. WHY UNIONS ARE DECLINING: I. Employers’ militant stances against unions have probably been the most important factor; beginning the 1970s, American employers vigorously resisted unions with considerable success II. unions are only certified in the U.S. after long election campaigns in which employers are free to do whatever they can to convince their workers not to join a union. - Ex) employers can threaten to move jobs to another location or out of the country, leaving the workers with nothing even if they succeed in getting a union in place. III. employment in manufacturing industries that were once mostly or completely unionized has declined, while employment has grown in historically nonunionized sectors of the economy (for example, services and white-collar occupations). - Walmart, Starbucks, McDonald’s: All of these large companies are union-free. IV. it has historically been more difficult to organize white-collar workers into unions (so most white-collar workers do not have a union). V. Finally, some internal critics in the labor movement have argued that the largest American unions have not been sufficiently aggressive in waging effective membership campaigns, even though the legal environment makes success difficult EFFECTS OF THE DECLINE OF UNIONS: Scholars studying declining wages and rising income inequality in the US have attributed a significant share of that trend to the drop in unionization rates a smaller share of corporate income is being paid to workers, with more going to shareholders and owners instead Some of the same benefits that unions can win for workers can also be achieved through government regulations: - Govemment job regulation - can protect workers and unions and can do some of the things that unions do (regulate work hours, overtime pay, when workers can be fired, etc.) - Ex) governments can regulate how many hours workers can be required to work, how much pay workers must get for overtime, under what conditions a worker can be fired, whether a worker can be forced to work an extra shift, that workplaces and jobs be safe, and what the minimum wage should be. - Some countries with particularly weak unions (such as France and Japan) achieve some of the same results as countries with strong unions (like Sweden or Germany) because of strong government regulations. - The United States, by comparison with most other countries, has both weak unions and fewer government protections than workers in Europe or Canada (Pontusson 2005). - America does have a minimum wage, rules about overtime pay, and rules about fair treatment of employees in the hiring and firing process, but on the whole, U.S. employers face far fewer workplace regulations than most other countries. Even those rules that do exist can often be (and are) ignored by many employers HOW UNIONS AND WORKPLACE REGULATIONS COMPLEMENT EACH OTHER: In any country, unions can be strong or weak, and government protections of workers can be either strong or weak. Workers can potentially be protected by their union, by regulations, or by both. Canada is like the United States in having relatively limited government regulation of the workplace, but Canada has significantly stronger unions than the United States. Sweden and some other Nordic countries have been moving toward fewer workplace regulations, combined with extremely strong unions and generous unemployment benefits. France has weaker unions, like the United States, but much stronger workplace regulations. Germany is an example of a country that has moderately strong unions and very strong workplace protections. Chapter 11: Inequality and Poverty The Big Questions 1. What is inequality? We know that some people simply have more than others. But why? Has the enormous gap between rich and poor always existed? What is the sociological concept of class, and does it help us understand inequality? We examine all of this in the first section of the chapter. 2. Why is America so unequal? Inequality in the United States today is about as high as it has ever been since we started measuring it in the early twentieth century, and poverty rates have remained persistently high. How does the United States compare with other developed countries most similar to it? And does the United States have more people living in poverty than other countries? Why is America so unequal? 3. Do we all have an equal opportunity to succeed in life? Social mobility, which refers to the movement of individuals from their family’s social position to their social position in adulthood, is one of the most important topics in the study of inequality. Inequality of opportunity arises whenever some individuals or groups have privileged access to better jobs and/or schools by virtue of the family they were born into. In this section, we examine how social mobility is measured, why countries differ in opportunity, how the United States compares to other countries, and the relationship between education and mobility. 4. How much poverty exists in the United States and around the world? Poverty is a complicated concept. Beyond a minimum of resources to ensure subsistence, it is difficult to define our “basic” needs. In this section, we examine two ways of viewing poverty and how much poverty exists in the United States and in other countries around the world. We will also look closely at the problem of childhood poverty 11.1 What is Inequality? Inequality - the unequal distribution of valued goods and opportunities - measured based on income, wealth or consumption, among other options FORMS OF INEQUALITY IN HISTORY: - Slavery - A slave system facilitates the creation of wealth for the slave owners, which enslaved people do not share, and creates a divide between humans living in the same vicinity. - Rise of colonialism - The domination of people and control over territory outside a nation-state’s own country. Traders who acquired desired goods in one place and sold them at a profit in another. The most successful of the merchants were able to become rich by buying and selling goods, building lavish homes for themselves and their families (and their many servants) - Feudalism - an economic system based on agriculture in which those who own land (landlords) are entitled to receive the products of the laborers, or serfs, who in turn are legally obligated to work the land. - The industrial revolution - allowed for rapid and sustained economic growth. In the 130 years between 1820 and 1950, average incomes in Western Europe increased nearly 4 times. And in just the 50 years between 1950 and 2000, they increased an additional 4 times over. Even more rapid growth was achieved in the United States, which had become the richest country in the world by the early 1900s - reinforced by the massive growth of government programs designed to provide everyone with some degree of protection from the worst ravages of poverty, including a living wage in retirement; support for poor families, disabled people, and the unemployed; as well as the rise of government-sponsored health care, universal educational opportunities, and many other programs. (Welfare state) The sociological field of social stratification examines inequalities among individuals and groups (how they are separated into state. It is the systematic study of inequality) Social stratification - examines inequalities among individuals and groups (how they are separated into state. It is the systematic study of inequality ASTONISHING FINDINGS: 1. The bottom 50% of the world’s population (3.8 billion people) has the same total wealth as approximately the 23 richest people in the world. Imagine a tug of war game, with 23 people on one side and 3.8 billion on the other—the two sides are equally matched in terms of wealth. 2. As of 2015, the world’s richest 1% own more than the bottom 99% combined (Oxfam 2016). 3. Over half of all the wealth in the world is controlled by the top 1$ of the world’s population. The bottom 99 percent of the world’s population shares less than 50% of all wealth. 4. The number of millionaires around the world is predicted to increase by 46% over the next five years to a total of 49.3 million adults. However, despite this dramatic increase, the total number of millionaires will only account for 0.7% of the world’s adult population. TWO CRITICAL MEASURES OF INEQUALITY: I. Income - the receipt of money or goods over a particular accounting period (a year, month, week, day, hour); it includes income from wages, investments, transfers from government (e.g., Social Security), transfers from relatives, etc. Multiple possible sources of income: - Earned income from a regular job - income received from investments or ownership of income-generating properties or businesses - income transfers from the government (such as Social Security) - income received from family or friends (inheritances or gifts) - income from illegal or “underground” earnings (such as from crime or informal and untaxed work or business activity). II. Wealth - the net value of the assets (minus debts) owned by the individual or family - the most common wealth asset is real estate (in most cases, a home) - Because homes tend to increase in value over time, home ownership has historically been the primary way that families with modest incomes can accumulate wealth (by buying a house and living in it for many years while it appreciates in value) - Wealth differences are usually much larger than income differences (figure 11.1) III. Consumption - how much individuals or families actually consume in a given time period, (how much an individual or family actually consumes in a month or a year, which may not directly correspond to their income if they are able to borrow money), health and well-being, and opportunity - can also be used to measure inequality THE SOCIOLOGICAL CONCEPT OF A CLASS: In most countries, there is a large middle class Middle class - A group of people who occupy the middle positions in terms of income and status in an economic system. - Includes people working for a wide range of businesses in mostly professional, technical, or managerial jobs, or are small business owners running modestly successful businesses - Those who have manual jobs, such as skilled factory workers, can also earn incomes that put them in the middle class, although that is much less common in recent decades. - Middle-class people and their families enjoy enough income to allow them to buy homes, cars, and the latest in consumer and technological gadgets. - They also have some savings and retirement accounts to help cushion them in the event of illness and when they retire. Class - The sociological concept that refers to a group of people who share a similar social and economic position in society. - Classes are groups, not individuals Social class - a term used by sociologists to identify groups of people in similar economic positions, who have similar opportunities in life, and who benefit (or are hurt by) the same government policies Features of a social class: 1. Have conflicting economic interests with other classes (for example, workers want more pay while business owners want to hold down workers’ pay to increase profits) 2. Share similar life chances (members of the same class are likely to have similar incomes and opportunities as they move through life) 3. Have similar attitudes 4. Have the potential to engage in collective action (such as when workers organize a union). Life chances - An individual’s long-term possibilities and potential, including future income and opportunities, given their current attributes such as level of education, social networks, and possession of marketable skills or assets. Members of the same class are generally said to have similar life chances Class analysis - The study of society focused on class or changes in the system of class inequality. Emphasis is placed on examining how, when, and where people’s actions and beliefs are influenced by their economic position. - study of how, when, and to what extent classes exist along these four dimensions in any society at any point in time, and how these classes have changed over-time - More apparent when there are sharp differences between them on some key political controversy or in periods of sharp economic grievances or revolution THREE APPROACHES TO IDENTIFY MIDDLE CLASS: I. Distinguish classes based on income - Those with high incomes belong in one class, those with incomes near the median are in the middle class, and those with low incomes are in the lower classes. - SOURCE of income >>> the AMOUNT of income II. Utilize more information about individuals, such as education, income, and current occupation, to assign them to a class location - researchers can construct a score for each individual’s socioeconomic status (SES) - SES - A broad definition of a person’s social class based on components such as education, income, and occupation III. Focus on occupation in adulthood (favored by a majority of sociologists) - views the place of each individual in the economic system as crucial, and their primary occupation provides one way of measuring that - makes distinctions between those individuals who own their own businesses (or are self-employed) and those who work for someone else. - Among those who are employed, distinctions are made between those who have jobs that either entail supervising others or require employer trust (what they call “the salariat”) and those that do not; between those involving manual work or not; and, among manual workers, those that require special skills and training versus those that do not 1. Salariat/Service Class 2. Routine non-manual workers 3. Petty bourgeoisie/Self-Employed 4. Farm owners 5. Skilled workers and supervisors 6. Nonskilled workers 7. Farm laborers 11.2 Why is America so unequal? Today, economic inequality in the United States is almost as high as it has ever been More inequality → more poverty examine the share of total national income that goes to different groups in the country. In a perfectly egalitarian (equal) society, the income share of each family (or household) is the same. Inequality rises when the difference between households goes up. Four reasons for an increase in income & Why America is so Unequal: 1. Technology - especially the growth and development of computing - From the 1970s onward, the United States and other rich countries have experienced major technological advancements. - There was a time not so long ago when nobody used computers and when face-to-face meetings or typed letters instead of e-mail and smartphones were the norm for communication - changes in computer technologies have dramatically reduced the need for bank tellers (an occupation that requires middle-level skills), with ATMs as well as online access to your banking records allowing a bank’s customers to make most routine financial transactions themselves. - At the same time, these improvements in computer technology have increased the need for a new type of banker: Financial analysts, who usually have an MBA or at least a BA. - In general, technology → jobs that require higher levels of education—especially a college degree or more—while it tends to replace jobs with middle and lower levels of education. - As a result, having a college degree or more pays off more than ever before—the so-called college wage premium—whereas people with less than a college degree have seen their earnings decline or have increasing trouble finding good jobs - As a result, people who have a college degree have become scarcer relative to the needs of the economy, and because of their relative scarcity they have been receiving higher salaries. 2. the decline of manufacturing - Deindustrialization - Developed countries like the United States have undergone a steady decline in industrial or manufacturing jobs (The decline in industrial (manufacturing) jobs.) - In 1950, almost 40 percent of all jobs were in industry and manufacturing, and wages for experienced manufacturing workers were relatively high. - Today, only 10 percent of jobs are in manufacturing, and the constant threat of manufacturing jobs moving to other countries has helped hold down wages for many of the manufacturing jobs that are left. Why have manufacturing jobs disappeared so rapidly? - it is increasingly being done in regions of the globe where workers will accept lower wages and companies can make higher profits by producing goods there due to globalization 3. Globalization - One of the key reasons why manufacturing jobs have disappeared in the U.S. is that manufacturing is being done in countries with lower wages Globalization - The growing permeability of national borders and the increase in flows of goods, services, ideas, and people across national borders. - increasing trade between countries → cheaper imported goods from these countries and, as noted, often allows companies to relocate manufacturing jobs in other countries, a process called offshoring - Because developing countries can often manufacture products at lower cost than in richer countries, trade can depress the wages of low-skill domestic workers who produce these goods. - these lower costs are often the result in sweatshops - A workplace that may be characterized by unsafe conditions, very low wages, and harsh working conditions Another important development: Economic restructuring - Changes in the way the economy, firms, and employment relations are organized that have taken place since the 1970s - More jobs became temporary, part-time, and less secure in various ways Why? - Unions are playing much less of a role than in earlier decades. Union membership has plummeted from a peak of about 35 percent of all workers in the 1950s to just a little over 10 percent today. - Unions help workers win higher wages and benefits, and perhaps most importantly, compel employers to share more of the firm’s profits with their workforce - The cumulative impact of economic restructuring and union decline can be seen most clearly in the flattening out of wages for workers in the middle and lower half of the American economy 4. Government policies: I. policies related to taxes (that is, the amount of taxes everyone has to pay on their incomes) - Progressive tax system - A system of taxation in which tax rates are higher on richer people than poorer people, with the idea being that it is fair to ask those who can afford to pay more to do so. These systems can be based on a progressive income tax and can also differentially assess taxes on wealth transfers, such as inheritances II. The declining value of the minimum wage - the lowest wage an employer is allowed to pay a worker. - The federal government has chosen not to raise the minimum wage to keep up with inflation, so the lowest paid workers make much less now than they did in earlier times. 11.3 Do we all have an equal opportunity to succeed in life? Inequality of opportunity - The ways in which inequality shapes the opportunities for children and young adults to maximize their potential. Equality of opportunity - all children have similar chances to succeed in life, regardless of whether they were born to wealthy or poor families If, in contrast, an individual’s chances to do well in life depend on the advantages (or disadvantages) of the family and circumstances they were born into → opportunity is unequally distributed MEASURING OPPORTUNITY: Social mobility - the socioeconomic movement across generations - The movement of individuals from one social position into another. - Intergenerational social mobility - a measure of the extent to which parents and their children have similar or different social and economic positions in adulthood. - Upward/high mobility is said to occur when an individual’s class is higher than that of their parents; downward/low mobility is the opposite. - A high-mobility society approximates the ideal of equality of opportunity; in such a society, where a child ends up in life is determined largely through her or his own achievements. - the “rags to riches” story - An immobile society, by contrast, is one where your chances are largely determined at birth; in extreme cases, immobility creates a caste society, one in which the advantages or disadvantages of birth determine fully your social position (such as was traditionally the case in India, where being born into a lower caste traditionally meant no chance to move into a higher caste). Two extremes: 1. in a perfectly mobile society, parents’ resources would be completely irrelevant for children’s outcomes; that is, everyone would have the same chances of succeeding in life regardless of their family background. 2. In a perfectly immobile society, however, chances of success would be entirely determined by parental resources. Children of poor parents would grow up to be poor, while children of rich parents would grow up to be rich. In the real world, all societies fall somewhere in between these two extremes. An association of zero → no connection whatsoever between parents’ income and children’s income (or parents’ and children’s occupation, or education). Thinking about income, for example, if parents’ income does not make any difference to how small or large their children’s income will be → perfect mobility exists. An association of one → parents’ income fully determines children’s income. In that situation, which is one of perfect immobility, if your parents have an income that is, say, 50 percent higher than the average income, you too as an adult will have an income 50 percent higher than the average. In other words, you wouldn’t go up or down—you’d end up exactly where your parents were. Countries such as the United Kingdom, Italy, and the United States have relatively high intergenerational association, that is, ↓ social mobility. Nordic countries such as Denmark, Norway, and Finland have much weaker associations between parents’ and children’s income, indicating ↑ chances of mobility. Factors that affect social mobility - 1. Families - parents play a large role in shaping how much education and other social and intellectual assets children acquire 2. Education - it is education and other assets that will largely determine children’s incomes. If a society’s education system is very limited, no matter what kinds of efforts parents make to encourage their children to learn, it may not lead to better educational outcomes. 3. Labor markets - The process through which employers identify and hire individuals to work under specified terms of employment. - When good jobs are expanding, upward mobility is more likely than in a society where good jobs are declining. 4. Government policies - the policies that governments adopt are very important, especially in relation to the education system. - government regulates both labor markets and educational systems. - Governments decide whether and to what extent disadvantaged children should get compensatory assistance (such as the Head Start Program, which provides education and health services to low-income children and their families), which may help them overcome disadvantages associated with their family background. - Governments also decide how equal schools are in rich and poor areas and how much support students receive for going to college. High inequality of opportunity → advantaged families can invest much more than disadvantaged families in their children’s education and that the quality of schools that wealthy children attend will be much better than schools serving poor children. High inequality → high payoff of having a college degree High inequality → role of the government High inequality is related to lower mobility (DOES NOT CAUSE) EDUCATION AND SOCIAL MOBILITY: In all complex societies, privileged, high-status positions by definition are scarce—that is, after all, what makes them valued. In modern times, these privileged positions in general are rarely directly inherited by children of the upper class, but rather through the education system. a doctor or lawyer cannot simply pass on the family business to their child unless the child can get into and through medical school or law school. Instead, these parents invest for decades in their children’s education in the hopes that similar occupational opportunities will be conferred indirectly 2 functions of education systems: 1. Education systems can function to challenge other traditional forms of allocating privileged positions in society. Ex) In traditional societies, for example, occupations are often simply passed on from parent to child. If a father was an agricultural laborer, his sons would also likely be agricultural laborers. - The establishment and spread of public education broke down these traditional forms of occupational inheritance and substituted a new way of deciding who will get what. Educational systems do this through what are known as principles of meritocracy Meritocracy - A system where rewards and positions are distributed by ability, not social background or personal connections 2. Education systems can be used to maintain and preserve privileged access to scarce positions if families with more resources are able to invest in more or better education for their children Ex) by moving to a better neighborhood or paying for private school or private tutoring. Furthermore, educational systems produce credentials, and groups can use these credentials to separate those with privilege from those without. In modern societies, high-status positions increasingly require educational credentials. It no longer matters how good you are at a particular thing, for example, teaching or healing people. Without the proper educational certificate, you are typically denied access to privileged jobs such as being a doctor or university professor. When individuals from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds attain privileged occupational positions with associated higher social rewards (such as status, prestige, and income), social mobility has occurred. Sociologists have repeatedly demonstrated that schools play a critical role in either blocking or facilitating social mobility. 11.4 How much poverty exists in the United States and around the world? Poverty - the inability to afford basic needs such as food, clothing, shelter and healthcare DIFFERENT MEASURES OF POVERTY: I. Poverty line - the minimum income threshold necessary to afford basic necessities. - The official method in which the federal government measures poverty in the United States is by setting an income threshold - In 2022, the poverty line for a single person was $13,590; for a family of four it is $27,750 - In 2020, for example, the poverty line for a family of four was $26,200. So families of four people with an income less than $26,200 were considered poor. - The poverty line for a person living alone, however, was $12,760. II. Absolute poverty - A measure of the minimum requirements needed for people to have basic standards of food, clothing, health, and shelter in the society they are living. - Any individual or family falling below this fixed amount is defined as living in poverty. The official U.S. (American) government definition of poverty is an absolute measure based on an estimate of minimum living standards first established in the 1960s and adjusted for inflation thereafter. - Ex) The examples discussed above about a car and a cellphone can make it hard for a poor person to connect with others in addition to the implications for finding and maintaining employment or taking care of children. III. Relative poverty - A term used to define people as poor not by assessing whether their resources are sufficient to obtain basic social necessities but rather by comparing their incomes relative to other people in society. - many European governments and most social scientists today have instead adopted - all families and individuals with incomes 50 percent below the median are sufficiently disadvantaged in comparison with other members of society to be considered poor. - Ex) the U.S. median household income for a family of four is currently around $70,000. A family of four with an income below $35,000, then, would be considered relatively poor, even if they are not absolutely poor (that threshold is $26,200). Using a relative measure of poverty, several million more families and individuals would be considered poor in the United States than by using the official definition. CAUSES OF POVERTY: I. Education - schooling is an important determinant of the skills that people can sell in the market in exchange for a wage. - Having less than a high school diploma puts anyone at higher risk of poverty. II. Employment status - & type of job are basically the outcome of education and other skills and assets. - Having and maintaining a job that pays wages higher than the poverty line will keep anyone out of poverty. - But there have never been enough jobs for all who want and need one, and even full-time jobs at the federal minimum wage are not enough to lift a family out of poverty. - So those who either do not have jobs or have very low-paying ones will be poor. III. Minority status - Blacks, Latinxs, and Native Americans are much more likely to live in poverty than Whites - It is also important to note that the largest numbers of poor people are White IV. Age - V. Family structure - Families in which there is a single parent—usually a female—are much more likely to be poor. - This phenomenon has been called the feminization of poverty, and it highlights the difficulties of complementing the roles of primary caregiver and provider on a single income One widespread belief about the poor is that most do not have jobs. ✖ not true many poor people in the United States are engaged in the labor market - Working poor - people who cannot make enough income to be free from poverty even if, as many do, they work part or full-time jobs Individual approach to poverty - to understand poverty, we have to look to those traits of individuals and families (such as their values or work ethic) that help them achieve success or lead them to failure. - The central assumption of those who take an individualist perspective on poverty is that there are always enough opportunities for individuals to find a good job and a chance to get ahead, but not everyone is able and willing to do so. - If the poor are “trapped” in poverty, it is because they have not developed the right set of attributes to seize the opportunities that are all around them. - emphasize two factors: (1) The role of governmental policies in discouraging the poor from working, and (2) the importance of the decline in two-parent (generally male–female) families (we don’t yet have data on same-sex family trends)—and in particular the rising percentage of births outside of the context of marriage—for their contributions to weakening the commitment to hard work among the poor. - According to this view, the problem with government assistance as a solution to poverty, in whatever form it takes, is that it does not require recipients to earn it, thereby encouraging the very behaviors that cause poverty in the first place. - SOLUTION to ending poverty, therefore, lies in helping individuals change their behavior A Structural approach to poverty - focuses on how opportunities and resources are distributed across the population, giving some people a better chance to succeed in life than others. - A structuralist would begin by pointing to all of the social and economic forces that impact our lives and argue that these forces are the primary explanations for poverty. - Structuralists also point to many reasons why some people are just not able to take advantage of whatever opportunities there may be for them. - There are the disabled and those with mental health problems. - There are people who struggle with drug addiction or alcoholism. - There are people living in small towns or rural areas that lack jobs and economic opportunity. - Trying to force people with these kinds of problems or issues into jobs (which may not exist) is not necessarily going to solve their individual problems or make society better off Almost all sociologists think about poverty from a structuralist perspective Food insecurity - A condition in which an individual or family does not have the means to assure an adequate amount of food. Homelessness - An extreme form of poverty defined by lack of permanent shelter to live in. Chapter 15: Cities and Communities Big Questions: 1. What draws people to cities? Most of the human population now lives in urban areas, which raises a number of intriguing questions about how to define a city and how city life has affected different aspects of our individual lives. As we explore these questions throughout the chapter, we will learn that a sociological understanding of cities is more complex than the “official” definitions provided by government agencies. 2. How do neighborhoods form and change? The development of cities and communities is not natural; rather, it is driven by political and economic forces. Individuals and groups with different, sometimes competing interests struggle to build communities in very different ways. Patterns of change over time can be seen as the product of these struggles. The types of communities that have emerged over time are dramatically diverse. 3. How do cities influence who we are, who our friends are, and how we live? Cities are distinguished not only by their size, density, or other measurable characteristics but also by how they affect the way we interact, work, and live together. 4. Why are so many social problems found in cities? Cities have increasingly become sites of the world’s most extreme wealth and poverty. Urban areas have always been great engines of wealth creation, but a growing proportion of the world’s poverty is now moving from undeveloped, rural areas into densely populated urban slums. 5. How is life in rural communities different from cities and suburbs? Most of the chapter to this point has considered issues associated with metropolitan areas (i.e., cities and suburbs). But every country in the world contains rural communities that are far from larger population centers. What is life like in small towns in America, and in what ways are these communities different than metropolitan places? How is rural life changing over time, and what are the central challenges facing rural communities in the twenty-first century? 6. How will cities change in an increasingly connected world? Cities link the world together. To fully comprehend the forces that shape our world, we must expand our view well beyond individual city streets and communities, and even beyond the boundaries of individual nations. 15.1 What draws people to cities? Urban - A geographic area with a high population density ( typically thought of as 1000 individuals per square mile, plus all surrounding regions with an overall density of at least 500 people per square mile ). Population density - The total number of people living in a defined geographic space (such as a square mile). Urban areas are also often call

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