Three-Class Model

Examples of Three-Class Model in the following topics:

• Social Class

  • Social class in the United States is a controversial issue, having many competing definitions, models, and even disagreements over its very existence.
  • Many Americans believe in a simple three-class model that includes upper class, the middle class, and the lower class or working class.
  • More complex models that have been proposed by social scientists describe as many as a dozen class levels.
  • By adhering to class expectations, individuals create sharper distinctions between classes than may otherwise exist.
  • While social scientists offer competing models of class structure, most agree that society is stratified by occupation, income, and educational attainment.

• Consequences of Social Class

  • Social class in the United States is a controversial issue, with social scientists disagreeing over models, definitions, and even the basic question of whether or not distinct classes exist.
  • Many Americans believe in a simple three-class model that includes the rich or upper class, the middle class, and the poor or working class.
  • More complex models that have been proposed by social scientists describe as many as a dozen class levels.
  • Regardless of which model of social classes used, it is clear that socioeconomic status (SES) is tied to particular opportunities and resources.
  • Sociologists may dispute exactly how to model the distinctions between socioeconomic statuses, but the higher up the class hierarchy one is in America, the better health, educational, and professional outcomes one is likely to have.

• Social Class

  • The popularity of the Occupy movement demonstrates the reality of class conflict and significance of one's social class in today's society.
  • While hereditary characteristics, such as being born into a wealthy family, continue to influence the ease with which one establishes adult social standing, the model that emphasizes class and achieved status maintains the status quo in capitalistic societies, particularly the United States.
  • Social class is commonly organized into a three-class model, by which individuals are separated into upper, middle, and lower classes.
  • Social class in the United States looks a little bit different than one might suppose given the three-class model.
  • As you can see, the upper class in the United States contains very few Americans; the population is concentrated in the middle and lower classes.

• Social Class in the U.S.

  • Social class in the United States is a controversial topic; there have been many competing definitions, models, and even disagreements over its very existence.
  • Many Americans believe in a simple three-class model that includes the rich or upper class, the middle class, and the poor or working class.
  • More complex models that have been proposed by social scientists describe as many as a dozen class levels.
  • One social class model proposed by sociologists posits that there are six social classes in America.
  • In this model, the upper class in America (3% of the population) is divided into the upper-upper class (1% of the U.S. population), earning hundreds of millions to billions of dollars in income per year, while the lower-upper class (2%) earns millions in annual income.

• Class

  • Common models used to think about social class come from Marxist theory: common stratum theory, which divides society into the upper, middle, and working class; and structural-functionalism.
  • Contemporary sociological concepts of social class often assume three general categories: a very wealthy and powerful upper class that owns and controls the means of production; a middle class of professional or salaried workers, small business owners, and low-level managers; and a lower class, who rely on hourly wages for their livelihood.
  • The middle class is the most contested of the three categories, consisting of the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socioeconomically between the lower class and upper class.
  • In France before the French Revolution, society was divided into three estates: the clergy, nobility, and commoners.
  • Compare and contrast Marx's understanding of 'class' with Weber's class model

• Class Structure in the U.S.

  • Social class in the United States is a controversial issue, having many competing definitions, models, and even disagreements over its very existence.
  • Many Americans recognize a simple three-tier model that includes the upper class, the middle class, and the lower or working class.
  • Some social scientists have proposed more complex models that may include as many as a dozen class levels.
  • In this model, the upper class (3% of the population) is divided into upper-upper class (1% of the U.S. population, earning hundreds of millions to billions per year) and the lower-upper class (2%, earning millions per year).
  • While social scientists offer competing models of class structure, most agree that society is stratified by occupation, income, and educational attainment.

• Optimization by tabu search

  • Figure 14.3 summarizes the "badness of fit" of the models.
  • Look first at the results for three partitions (figure 14.4).
  • At this level of approximate equivalence, there are three classes - two individuals and one large group.
  • With only three classes, the remainder of the actors are grouped into an approximate class with roughly equal (and higher) variability of both sending and receiving.
  • Fit of automorphic equivalence models to Knoke information network

• The Working Class

  • Secretaries, farmers, and hair stylists may all be considered members of the working class.
  • Since many members of the working class, as defined by academic models, are often identified in the vernacular as being middle class, there is considerable ambiguity over the term's meaning.
  • In the class models devised by sociologists, the working class comprises between 30 percent and 35 percent of the population, roughly the same percentage as the lower middle class.
  • Due to differences between middle and working-class cultures, working-class college students may face "culture shock" upon entering the post-secondary education system, with its "middle class" culture.
  • Explain how differences in class culture may affect working-class students who enter the post-secondary education system

• Introduction

  • In this rather lengthy chapter we are going to do three things.
  • The whole idea of "equivalence" that we discussed in the last chapter is an effort to understand the pattern of relationships in a graph by creating classes, or groups of actors who are "equivalent" in one sense or another.
  • They are particularly helpful in visualizing the similarity or distance among cases, and for identifying classes of similar cases.
  • Third, we will examine the most commonly used approaches for finding structural equivalence classes.
  • In addition, the "block model" is also commonly used to describe structural similarity classes.

• The Upper Middle Class

  • The upper-middle class refers to people within the middle class that have high educational attainment, high salaries, and high status jobs.
  • Sociologists use the term "upper-middle class" to refer to the social group consisting of higher-status members of the middle class.
  • This is in contrast to the term "lower-middle class," which is used for the group at the opposite end of the middle class stratum, and to the broader term "middle class. " There is considerable debate as to how to define the upper-middle class.
  • There is some debate over what exactly the term "upper-middle class" means, but in academic models, the term generally applies to highly educated, salaried professionals whose work is largely self-directed.
  • Moreover, members of the upper-middle class are generally more economically secure than their lower-middle class counterparts.