Class Inequality: Mobility and Class Structure - Assignment Example

INEQUALITY: MOBILITY AND STRUCTURE The book The Inequality reader is the ideal textbook for undergraduate inequality s.It provides the most relevant classic and contemporary readings, providing a balanced coverage of inequality’s both in the present and past. The essays in the book cover vital course topics suh as discrimination, poverty, and gender.In Blau and Duncan, “The Process of Stratification” the authors develop the idea of status attainment. They claim that the lower an individual begins, the greater chances for that individual to be mobile upwards.

However, this ideology seems to be flawed and therefore focused on how people attain their statuses rather than on how individuals are mobile. The status-attainment model by Blau and Duncan is the core idea on the theory of status attainment.In Featherman and Hauser, A Refined model” the authors are trying to unearth the underlying patterns of association in the mobility table. They do so by applying the technique of loglinear analysis that draws conclusions independent of marginal distributions.

Their findings show that there is great immobility in occupational extremes.In Lin’s, “Social Networks and Status Attainment” the author traces the development of the research enterprise called social resources theory. This theory is concerned with the relation between embedded resources in social networks and socioeconomic attainment. The theory supports the idea that social capital enhances the chances of an individual attaining better status. In Acs and Zimmerman, “Like Watching Grass Grow” the authors try to differentiate between income inequality and economic mobility.

Rising mobility can lead to the long-term distributional effects of rising income inequality. This essay studies changes in economic mobility in the United States of America for the past two decades and compares mobility today to that of earlier decades.In Jonson, Grusky, Di Carlo and Pollack, "Its a Decent Bet that Our Children Will be Professors Too” the authors expand their focus on policy issues that allow students to learn about the possibilities for improving inequality. It gives students ideas on ways of upward mobility in society.

In Saez, “Striking it Rich” there is the description of the recent rise in income inequality in the United States. This essay talks about the change in the groups of winners and losers over the years. This view is explored with a uniquely long-term historical view so as to place current developments in deeper context.In A. Grusky and Weeden, "Is [it] Market Failure?" describes how the study of inequality has been at the core of sociology from the beginning. It describes how society is divided into unequal groups forming the term stratification.

The author tries to explain the mechanisms through which inequalities are produced.In Eagan’s, "No Degree and No Way Back to the Middle" the author describes the implications that social class has on our lives. Most Americans believe that even the poorest of people can become rich via hard work, education, or sheer gumption. This essay describes how a combination of wealth, education, and occupation influence the destiny of a society.ReferencesGrusky, D. B., & Svelenyi., S. (2007). The Inequality Reader.

New York: Westview Press.