Social Stratification in the US: Crash Course Sociology #23

Social class in America is… hard to talk about. As for sociology, the difficulty lies in pinning down what we mean by “social class.” In this episode of Crash Course Sociology, Nicole chats to us about how sociologists figure this out so we can all have a clearer idea of what we’re talking about.

References:

• 2016 Income and Poverty Report from the Census https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2016/demo/p60-256.pdf
• Distribution of Household Wealth in the U.S.: 2000 to 2011 http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2322&context=key_workplace
• Survey of Consumer Finances 2013; graph available here in Figure 1 http://www.epi.org/blog/the-racial-wealth-gap-how-african-americans-have-been-shortchanged-out-of-the-materials-to-build-wealth/
• Fair Housing Act https://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/supmanual/cch/fair_lend_fhact.pdf
• Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/div-classtitletesting-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizensdiv/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B
• Measuring Occupational Prestige on the 2012 General Social Survey http://gss.norc.org/Documents/reports/methodological-reports/MR122%20Occupational%20Prestige.pdf
• Whither Opportunity?: Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children’s Life Chances https://www.russellsage.org/publications/whither-opportunity
• Educational Attainment in the United States: 2015 https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2016/demo/p20-578.pdf