Quiz 8-14

Approximately what percentage of the United States population falls below the federal poverty line?

15.7 percent

What is the relationship between social class and race, ethnicity, gender, and age in the United States today?

Strictly speaking, social class is determined by socioeconomic status, but there is often overlap between class and these other variables.

What is the relationship between the American Dream and the system of social class through which the United States is stratified?

The American Dream legitimizes inequality by reinforcing the idea that everyone has the same chance to get ahead.

When the children of working-class parents manage to attend college and get a job in a professional field, it is an example of:

intergenerational mobility

What criteria does a social class system use to stratify its members?

wealth, property, power, and prestige

What is the principal sociological critique of the culture of poverty?

It tends to blame the victims of poverty for their own misfortunes while ignoring the structural causes of inequality.

Which of the following has the effect of making poverty socially "invisible"?

all of the above (residential segregation, political disenfranchisement, the use of law enforcement to move the homeless away from visible locations, the lack of exposure of successful attempts by the poor to organize)

According to social psychologists, when people encounter a situation that seems to be unfair, and they cannot or will not act to make things right, what do they tend to do?

convince themselves nothing bad has happened

In House of Yes, a play by Wendy MacLeod, the character Marty brings his fiancée, Lesly, to meet his family. She comes from a different class, which leads to exchanges like this one between Lesly, Marty, and Marty's two siblings, Anthony and Jackie: Anthony: Would you like a glass of Liebfraumilch? Lesly: No thank you. I'll just have a glass of wine. Marty: That's the name of the wine. Lesly: Oh! [laughs] I don't speak French. Jackie: Who does? Anthony: You do. Jackie: Oh, that's right, I do. According to Pierre Bourdieu, Marty's siblings are unhappy with Lesly because she doesn't have enough:

cultural capital

According to Karl Marx, what social relations matter most in a capitalist system?

economic relations

When individuals fail to see the ways in which they are oppressed by the social system they live in, Karl Marx calls it:

false consciousness.

A reporter, who covers the police beat at a newspaper, changes careers. She becomes an editor of nonfiction books and is paid the same salary as she was at the newspaper. What has she experienced?

horizontal social mobility

Ascribed status is usually involuntary and often assigned at birth. Achieved status is voluntary and often based on merit, ability, or achievement. What sort of status would you expect to find in a closed system?

mostly ascribed status

Figure 7.5 Poverty in the United States by Selected Characteristics, 2009 SOURCE: U.S. Census Bureau 2008f, 2010g What kind of poverty is being measured in Figure 7.5?

relative deprivation

What system of stratification is commonly used in capitalist societies?

social class

What do sociologists call it when large numbers of people move up or down the social class ladder as a result of changes to society as a whole?

structural mobility

Drew Westen, in "The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation," argues that, when advocates of health care reform talk about universal health care as a way to help "the uninsured" or "the underinsured," they turn many people against universal health care because there is an underlying assumption that poor people are getting what they deserve. What do sociologists call this assumption?

the just-world hypothesis

An accountant with a college degree and a license from the state accounting board works for the Department of Defense as a senior auditor. He makes about $100,000 a year and will soon retire with benefits and a pension. What class would you expect him to belong to?

upper middle class

According to Chapter 7, what general predictions can sociologists make about a person's life prospects if all that is known is the person's social class?

what quality of education she will receive