Social class

Social class is the sociological term for the layering or stratification of society from high to low.

Poverty

Brady (2003) reviews the shortcomings of the official U.S. measure of poverty. Iy was invented in the 1960s and based on the cost of food, which accounted for a third of the budget of poor people at that time, but much less today. Brady examines several theoretical and methodological advances in poverty measurement. He argues that ideal measures of poverty should: (1) measure comparative historical variation effectively; (2) be relative rather than absolute; (3) conceptualize poverty as social exclusion; (4) assess the impact of taxes, transfers, and state benefits; and (5) integrate the depth of poverty and the inequality among the poor. His article evaluates sociological studies published since 1990 for their consideration of these criteria. Brady advocates three alternative poverty indices: the interval measure, the ordinal measure, and the sum of ordinals measure. Finally, using the Luxembourg Income Study, he examines the empirical patterns with these three measures, across advanced capitalist democracies from 1967 to 1997. He provides estimates of these poverty indices.

Rural poverty

Bibliography

• Louise Archer et al. Higher Education and Social Class: Issues of Exclusion and Inclusion , 2003
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• Daniel Bertaux and Paul Thompson; Pathways to Social Class: A Qualitative Approach to Social Mobility, (1997) online edition
• Thomas N. Bisson; Cultures of Power: Lordship, Status, and Process in Twelfth-Century Europe 1995
• Peter Blau and Otis D. Duncan, The American Occupational Structure (1967) classic study of structure and mobility
• Brady, David "Rethinking the Sociological Measurement of Poverty" Social Forces 81#3 2003, pp. 715-751; in Project Muse. * Leonard Broom and F. Lancaster Jones, Opportunity and Attainment in Australia (1977)
• Lizabeth Cohen. Consumer's Republic, (2003), Historical analysis of the expression through consumer goods of class in the United States.
• Gary Day, Class (2001)
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• David B Grusky. Social Stratification in Sociological Perspective: Class, Race, and Gender, (2007)
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• Michael Marmot. The Status Syndrome: How Social Standing Affects Our Health and Longevity 2004
• Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Communist Manifesto, (1848). (A famous statement of class conflict as the driver of historical change.)
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• Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb, The Hidden Injuries of Class, (1972) (classic study of the subjective experience of class)
• Lewis H. Siegelbaum and Ronald Grigor Suny, eds. Making Workers Soviet: Power, Class, and Identity. 1994. Russia 1870 - 1940
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• W. Lloyd Warner et al. Social Class in America: A Manual of Procedure for the Measurement of Social Status 1949. online edition
• Max Weber, "Class, Status and Party", in Hans Gerth, and C. Wright Mills, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, 1958. (Weber's key statement of the multiple nature of stratification.)
• Wouters; Cas. "The Integration of Social Classes." Journal of Social History. 29#1 1995. pp 107+. on social manners online edition
• Erik Olin Wright The Debate on Classes (1990), neo-Marxist
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• Christine Zmroczek and Pat Mahony, eds. Women and Social Class: International Feminist Perspectives. 1999 online edition

See Also

• ethnic group
• race