Social Class. The challenge: You\'re a single parent of 3 children who has lost
ID: 457115 • Letter: S
Question
Social Class. The challenge: You're a single parent of 3 children who has lost your house and job and you have $1,000 to your name. Can you choose well enough among your limited options for housing, transportation, food and medical care to make it to the end of the month?
Navigate to the interactive game website ‘http://playspent.org/ http://playspent.org’ and answer the following questions in your post:
Explain the situations you faced, the decisions you made, and the results of those decisions.
What type of stress is associated with people trying to live on this type of budget?
How does poverty affect relationships (family, personal, work, etc.)? Explain how the following concepts from Chapter 9 relate to this activity: social class, social mobility, and Horatio Alger myth. Be sure to pose a question to the class at the end of your post. [Social Class]
Include in-text source citations using terms from the textbook.
Barbara Ehrenreich - Nickel and Dimed on (Not) Getting By
Explanation / Answer
The situations you faced, the decisions you made, and the results of those decisions:-
It was a really tough situation as I had to manage housing, transportation, food and medical care, 3 children within 1000$ and I had no job in hand. Sometimes, I delayed the chidren's school to invest in medical care as that was important and good step.
Another good step was to cut down the personal transport and used public transport.
Bad step was to avoid speding on house, food due to which the kids felt neglected and unsafe.
So it was a mix bag of decisions which I had to take.
Type of stress is associated with people trying to live on this type of budget
There is clear evidence that financial hardship is a key factor in increasing the strain on couple relationships and that poverty is a cause as well as a consequence of relationship breakdown. A series of robust quantitative and longitudinal studies, in particular those of Conger and Elder (1990; 1992; 1994) on economic stress theory, have shown that financial difficulties have a negative indirect effect on couple relationships. Poverty has a direct impact on parental mental health difficulties and depression (especially for mothers), which in turn negatively impacts on the couple’s relationship by increasing couple conflict, hostility in couple interactions and reducing warm and supportive behaviours. It also reduces relationship quality for couples including perceived relationship satisfaction and happiness and increasing relationship instability, such as behaviours and expectations regarding divorce and separation. Couple conflict and relationship instability then impairs and disrupts parenting which negatively affects children’s outcomes, for example child adjustment (Conger and Elder et al., 1990, 1992, 1994; Chang and Barrett, 2009; Mooney et al., 2009; Rodgers and Pryor, 1998; Coyne and Downey, 1991). A strong or long-lasting reaction to an event of great importance, such as parental divorce or re-partnering can result in adjustment disorder. Children may become depressed or anxious, exhibit hostility, pick fights, or refuse to go to school, and teenagers with untreated adjustment disorder are at a heightened risk of developing depression, chronic anxiety, and substance abuse problems. Ensuing disruption to the family can result in mothers temporarily or permanently ceasing paid employment, thus increasing the risk of family poverty. These studies are also significant by showing the complex causal links between couple relationships and poverty and the importance of indirect/ mediating variables in these causal pathways. The inclusion of the intervening variables of mental health and couple conflict, are critical in establishing the links between poverty and couple relationship breakdown. Similarly, the connections between poverty and negative child outcomes are revealed through the effects of couple conflict and impaired parenting (Conger and Elder, 1990; 1994; Conger et al., 1992). This demonstrates the salience of stress within families experiencing 31 poverty, and in particular maternal mental ill-health, couple relationship quality and levels of conflict. 4.2.2. Marriage and cohabitation Key points • Couples who marry have different characteristics from those who cohabit especially in terms of education, socio-economic status and poverty. • After controlling for these differences, cohabitation compared with marriage does not cause negative child outcomes. Rather it is differences between families’ poverty/socio-economic status and education which cause poorer child outcomes. There is a wide literature documenting that children born to cohabiting parents have worse outcomes than those who are married. Cohabitation which does not convert into marriage is seen as more fragile and unstable, with one-fifth of relationships ending before children reach the age of five, and children born to cohabiting parents more likely to see their parents separate than those born within marriage (Kiernan, 2003). This has led commentators to suggest that negative child outcomes, including socio-economic disadvantage, are due to the increased likelihood of cohabiting parents separating and leading to lone parenthood (Rangel, 2006; Artis, 2007) and that the decision to cohabit rather than marry itself results in these negative effects. However, this literature does not distinguish between marriage and cohabitation, but rather contrasts the benefits of two-parent compared with one-parent households (Ribar, 2004; Goodman and Greaves, 2010). Crucially, there also remains a lack of robust evidence on whether there is a causal relationship between cohabitation and poor child outcomes. However recent longitudinal cohort studies by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (Goodman and Greaves, 2010) have evidenced that parents who cohabit and those who marry are substantially and observably different, especially in terms of education and income/socio-economic status. They are also different in terms of occupation, housing tenure, mother’s age at birth, ethnicity, relationship duration before birth, relationship quality and stability. However, after controlling for these factors it is differences in education and income/socio-economic status rather than marriage per se that causes poorer outcomes in children.
How does poverty affect relationships (family, personal, work, etc.)
• Poverty is a complex, relative, multi-dimensional, dynamic, and gendered phenomenon. However, most international analyses are based on measurements of household income. • An assumption that income is equally shared within the household may hide the differing poverty risks of individual members within families or households. • Poverty measurements of different kinds of households (usually based on member composition) are a proxy measurement for the poverty risk of families with particular personal relationships. • Income poverty measures do not consider how the provision of unpaid work may decrease poverty risk in a family. • Personal relationships include those such as parent-child or couple relationships, but they are not limited to these nor conceptualised equally across the population. One type of relationship influences another and also impacts on the risk of poverty. This is especially relevant in the case of the relationship between the parents of a child and their individual relationships to the child. 3.1. Defining and Measuring Poverty As noted above (Section 2.4.1) there are many ways in which poverty can be defined. According to JRF, poverty is a state in which ‘a person’s resources (mainly their material resources) are not sufficient to meet their minimum needs (including social participation)’. Needs and resources are estimated to be those ‘reasonable by the standards of the society in question’. The literature points to poverty as a relative, multi-dimensional, dynamic (Deleck et al., 1992, Francesconi et al., 2008) and gendered (Ruspini, 2001; Dema Moreno and Díaz Martinez, 2012) phenomenon. It is much more than just low income and includes people´s capability to act or do (Sen, 1999). Its causes are interactive: individual, household, structural, economic, social and cultural factors play a part (Mead, 1994). In the EU context, the multi-dimensional nature of the phenomenon and the relevance of social participation have been recognised through measures considering only income, access to particular goods and services, and in relation to the labour market, and considering the three dimensions together. The particular indicators are: • AROP: people living below the poverty threshold (60% of national median income) are considered at-risk-of poverty • SMD: severe material deprivation 20 • LWI: people (aged 0-59, not students) living in households with zero or very low work intensity • AROPE: at-risk-of-poverty or exclusion rate (amalgamation of all three indicators) (Eurostat, 2012). Notwithstanding a greater consistency of this multi-dimensional approach with the definitions contained in the literature, evidence-based reports and analyses continue to rely on 50% or 60% of the national median income as the definition of at-risk of-poverty. This is especially the case with international comparisons which do not include non-EU countries (Chen and Corak, 2008; Backman and Ferrarini, 2009; Ugreninov et al., 2013) Another particular constraint for this review is that poverty is usually measured in terms of households, rather than in respect of individuals. People’s personal relationships may reduce or increase their risk or experience of poverty within the same or different households. However, the household measurement approach does not allow consideration of the fact that people entering or exiting different personal relationships usually experience differing levels and combinations of poverty risk factors (Davis and Joshi, 1994; Chen and Corak, 2008; Ruspini, 2001; Baruah, 2009). Life course changes and different ways of relating, such as becoming economically dependent on other family members, render some people more vulnerable to becoming poor (Jarvis and Jenkins, 1998; Ruspini, 2001). 3.2.Defining Personal Relationships and Family Poverty can be mitigated by policy interventions, although how and whether they work will also depend on formal and informal institutions, among which personal relationships may be a significant player. Family and non-family relationships and their cultural, legal and social constructions are the gears which complement markets and formal institutions (World Bank, 2011). This review focuses primarily on family relationships because arrangements to share time and other resources (income, assets) as well as paid and unpaid work among family members are more abundant, happen on a daily basis, and are maintained through the life-cycle. These relationships have significant consequences for increasing or reducing the poverty risk in direct and indirect ways, as they structure the close framework in which individuals take decisions. Income levels are affected by family relationships not only by virtue of legal and formal commitments such as marriage or parenthood, but also through altruistic or reciprocal exchanges in line with social and cultural expectations and identityrelated behaviours (Akerlof and Kranton, 2010). Mothers are culturally expected to be unconditionally altruistic and supportive while this is not the case for fathers (Coria, 2012). Policies frequently take this culturally-biased assumption for granted. Replication of this mother-child relationship in other personal relationships and the consequent renouncing of personal interests may underlie the cultural and social context of the feminisation of the poverty. Although other personal relationships, such as neighbours, peers, friends, colleagues, might also play a (lesser) role in the alleviation of poverty, the available 21 literature provides much more evidence on the importance and nature of family relationships in affecting the risk of poverty.
In-work poverty Households are more likely to be poor where there are not two adults working fulltime (Lawton and Thompson, 2013). In practical terms, this mainly refers to the ‘breadwinner’ or ‘one-earner-and-a-half’ models (full-time worker fathers who live with mothers who do not participate in the labour market at all or are employed part-time) or worker mothers with the father unemployed or with a non-residential father (lone parents). A further earner in a household vastly increases the likelihood of a household income being above the poverty threshold (Spannagel, 2013).
Relation to this activity: social class, social mobility, and Horatio Alger myth
What Is Social Class? A. Sociologists do not have a clear-cut, agreed-upon definition of social class. Instructor’s Manual for Henslin, Essentials of Sociology, 10/e Copyright © 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. 3 B. Most agree with Weber that social class can be defined as a large group of people who rank close to each other in property, power, and prestige. C. Property comes in many forms, such as buildings, land, animals, machinery, cars, stocks, bonds, businesses, furniture, jewelry, and bank accounts. Wealth is the value of someone’s property minus that person’s debts. 1. Wealth and income are not always the same; a person may own much property yet have little income, or vice versa. Usually, however, wealth and income go together. 2. Ownership of property (real estate, stocks and bonds, and so on) is not distributed evenly: 10 percent of the nation’s families owns 75 percent of the wealth, and the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans own more than one-third of all assets in the United States. 3. Income is also distributed disproportionately: the top 20 percent of U.S. residents receive half (50.3 percent) of all the income in the United States; the bottom 20 percent receives 3.4 percent. Each one-fifth of the U.S. population receives approximately the same proportion of national income today as it did in 1935; those changes that have occurred reflect growing inequality. 4. Apart from the very rich, the most affluent group in U.S. society is the executive officers of the largest corporations. Their median compensation (including salaries, bonuses, and stock options) is $9.3 million a year. D. Power is the ability to carry out your will despite resistance. 1. Sociologists Daniel Hellinger and Dennis Judd coined the term the “democratic façade” to refer to an ideology promoted by the elites to legitimate and perpetuate their power. 2. Mills coined the term the “power elite” to refer to those who are the big decision makers in U.S. society. This group shares the same ideologies and values, belongs to the same clubs, and reinforces each other’s world view. 3. Domhoff believes that no major decision in the U.S. government is made without their approval. E. Prestige is the respect or regard people give to various occupations and accomplishments. 1. Occupations are the primary source of prestige, although some people gain prestige through inventions, feats, or performing good deeds for others. Occupations with the highest prestige pay more, require more education, entail more abstract thought, and offer greater autonomy. 2. For prestige to be valuable, people must acknowledge it. The elite traditionally have made rules to emphasize their higher status. 3. Status symbols, which vary according to social class, are ways of displaying prestige. In the United States, they include designer label clothing, expensive cars, prestigious addresses, and attending particular schools. F. Status inconsistency is the term used to describe the situation of people who have a mixture of high and low rankings in the three components of social class (property, power, and prestige). 1. Most people are status consistent; they rank at the same level in all three components. People who are status inconsistent want others to act toward them Instructor’s Manual for Henslin, Essentials of Sociology, 10/e Copyright © 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. 4 on the basis of their highest status, but others tend to judge them on the basis of their lowest status. 2. Sociologist Gerhard Lenski determined that people suffering the frustrations of status inconsistency tend to be more politically radical.
Social Mobility A. There are three basic types of social mobility: intergenerational, structural, and exchange. 1. Intergenerational mobility is the change that family members make in their social class from one generation to the next. As a result of individual effort, a person can rise from one level to another; in the event of individual failure, the reverse can be true. 2. Structural mobility involves social changes that affect large numbers of people. 3. Exchange mobility is movement of people up and down the social class system, where, on balance, the system remains the same. The term refers to general, overall movement of large numbers of people that leaves the class system basically untouched. B. Women have been largely ignored in studies of occupational mobility. 1. As structural changes in the U.S. economy have created opportunities for women to move up the social class ladder, studies of their mobility patterns have appeared. 2. One study indicated that women who did move up were encouraged by their parents to postpone marriage and get an education.
Horatio Alger Myth
Because of real-life examples of people from humble origins that climbed far up the social ladder, most U.S. residents (including minorities and the working poor) believe that they have a chance of getting ahead. 1. The Horatio Alger myth obviously is a statistical impossibility. Despite this, functionalists would stress that this belief is functional for society because it encourages people to compete for higher positions, while placing the blame for failure squarely on the individual. 2. As Marx and Weber both noted, social class affects our ideas of life and our proper place in society. At the same time, the dominant ideology often blinds us to these effects in our own lives. Portraying America as a land of limitless economic possibilities, the Horatio Alger myth equates hard work with upward social mobility. It suggests that all people who fail to achieve success in America fail because of their own shortcomings.
Question to the Class:-
Why should such a situation would arise, why cannot one plan things to tackle such issues?