social stratification summary essay

Social Stratification: Definition, Types & Examples

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Key Takeaways

• The term social stratification refers to how societies categorize people based on factors such as wealth, income, education, family background, and power.
• Social stratification exists in all societies in some form. However, it is easier to move up socially in some than others. Societies with more vertical social mobility have open stratification systems, and those with low vertical mobility have closed stratification systems.
• The importance of stratification is that those at the top of the hierarchy have greater access to scarce resources than those at the bottom.
• Sociologists have created four main categories of social stratification systems: class systems, caste systems, slavery, and meritocracy. The last of these is a largely hypothetical system.
• Class consistency refers to the variability of one”s social status among many dimensions (such as education and wealth) during one”s lifetime. More open stratification systems tend to encourage lower class consistency than closed stratification systems.
• Social stratification can work along multiple dimensions, such as those of race, gender, sexuality, religion, ethnicity, and so on. Intersectionality is a method for studying systems of social stratification through the lens of multiple identities.

What is Meant by Social Stratification?

Social stratification refers to a society”s categorization of its people into rankings based on factors such as wealth, income, education, family background, and power. Someones” place within a system of social stratification is called their socioeconomic status.

Social stratification is a relatively fixed, hierarchical arrangement in society by which groups have different access to resources, power, and perceived social worth.

Although many people and institutions in Western Societies indicate that they value equality — the belief that everyone has an equal chance at success and that hard work and talent — not inherited wealth, prejudicial treatment, racism, or societal values — determine social mobility , sociologists recognize social stratification as a society-wide system that makes inequalities apparent.

While there are inequalities between individuals, sociologists are interested in large social patterns. That is to say, sociologists look to see if those with similar backgrounds, group memberships, identities, and geographic locations share the same social stratification.

While some cultures may outwardly say that one’s climb and descent in socioeconomic status depends on individual choices, sociologists see how the structure of society affects a person’s social standing and, therefore, is created and supported by society.

Origins Social Stratification

Human social stratification has taken on many forms throughout the course of history. In foraging societies, for example, social status usually depended on hunting and leadership ability, particularly in males (Gurven & von Rueden, 2006).

Those who brought back meat for meals were held in higher status than those who rarely succeeded at hunting.

Meanwhile, in parts of the world where agriculture has replaced hunting and gathering, Anne’s land holdings often form the basis for social stratification. These holdings tend to be transmitted throughout generations.

This intergenerational transfer of wealth gave rise to what is known as estates, which were dominant in medieval Europe (Ertman, 1997).

The rise of agriculture also brought the emergence of cities, each with its own forms of stratification, now centered on one”‘s occupation. As the skills needed for acquiring certain occupational skills grew, so did the intergenerational transmission of status according to one”‘s occupational class.

One example of stratification according to occupational classes are guilds (Gibert, 1986). More rigid occupational classes are called castes, which exist both in and outside India.

Examples of Stratification

The factors that define stratification vary from society to society. In many societies, stratification is an economic system based on wealth, or the net values of the money and assets a person has, and income, their wages or income from investments.

However, there are other important factors that influence social standing. In some cultures, for instance, prestige — be it obtained through going to a prestigious university, working for a prestigious company, or coming from an illustrious family — is valued. In others, social stratification is based on age.

The elderly may be either esteemed or disparaged and ignored. The cultural beliefs of societies often reinforce stratification.

Broadly, these factors define how societies are classified or stratified:

Economic condition: the amount someone earns;

Social class: classification based on, for example, economy and caste;

Social networks: the connections that people have — and the opportunities these allow people in finding jobs, partners, and so on.

One determinant of social standing is one”s parents. Parents tend to pass their social position onto their children, as well as the cultural norms, values, and beliefs that accompany a certain lifestyle. Parents can also transfer a network of friends and family members that provide resources and support.

This is why, in situations where someone who was born into one social status enters the environment of another — such as the child of an uneducated family entering college, the individual may fare worse than others; they lack the resources and support often provided to those whose parents have gone to college (Gutierrez et al., 2022).

A society’s occupational structure can also determine social stratification. For example, societies may consider some jobs — such as teaching, or nursing — to be noble professions, which people should do out of love and the greater good rather than for money.

In contrast, those in other professions, such as athletes and C-suite executives, do not receive this attitude. Thus, those who are highly-educated may receive relatively low pay (Gutierrez et al., 2022).

Types of Stratification

Slavery and indentured servitude are likely the most rigid types of social stratification. Both of these involve people being treated as actual property and are often based on race or ethnicity. The owner of a slave exploits a slave”s labor for economic gain.

Slavery is one of the lowest levels in any stratification system, as they possess virtually no power or wealth of their own.

Slavery is thought to have begun 10,000 years ago, after agricultural societies developed, as people in these societies made prisoners of war work on their farm.

As in other social stratification systems, the status of one”s parents often defines whether or not someone will be put into slavery. However on a historic level, slavery has also been used as a punishment for crimes and as a way of controlling those in invaded or enemy territories.

For example, ancient Roman slaves were in large part from conquered regions (Gutierrez et al., 2022).

Slavery regained its property after the European colonization of the Western Hemisphere in the 1500s. Portuguese and Spanish colonists who settled in Brazil and the Caribbean enslaved native populations, and people from Africa were shipped to the “new world” to carry out various tasks.

Notably, the United State’s early gricultural economy was one intertwined with slavery, a fact that would help lead the Civil War after it won its independence from Britain.

Slavery still exists in many parts of the world.

Modern slaves include those taken as prisoners of war in ethnic conflicts, girls and women captured and kidnapped and used as prostitutes or sex slaves, children sold by their parents to be child laborers, and workers paying off debts who are abused, or even tortured, to the extent that they are unable to leave (Bales, 2007).

Even in societies that have officially outlawed slavery, the practice continues to have wide-ranging repercussions on socioeconomic standing. For example, some observers believe that a caste system existed in the southern part of the United States until the civil rights movement ended legal racial segregation. Rights, such as the right to vote and to a fair trial, were denied in practice, and lynchings were common for many decade (Litwack, 2009).

South Africa, meanwhile, had an official caste system known as apartheid until the 1990s. Although black people constituted the majority of the nation”s population, they had the worst jobs, could not vote, and lived in poor, segregated neighborhoods.

Both systems have, to the consensus of many sociologists, provided those of color with lower intergenerational wealth and higher levels of prejudice than their white counterparts, systematically hampering vertical class mobility.

Caste Systems

Caste systems are closed stratification systems, meaning that people can do very little to change the social standing of their birth. Caste systems determine all aspects of an individual”s life, such as appropriate occupations, marriage partners, and housing.

Those who defy the expectations of their caste may descend to a lower one. Individual talents and interests do not provide opportunities to improve one”s social standing.

The Indian caste system is based on the principles of Hinduism.

Those who are in higher castes are considered to be more spiritually pure, and those in lower castes — most notably, the “untouchable” — are said to be paying remuneration for misbehavior in past lives. In sociological terms, the belief used to support a system of stratification is called an ideology, and underlies the social systems of every culture (Gutierrez et al., 2022).

In caste systems, people are expected to work in an occupation and to enter into a marriage based on their caste. Accepting this social standing is a moral duty, and acceptance of one”s social standing is socialized from childhood.

While the Indian caste system has been dismantled on an official, constitutional level, it is still deeply embedded in Indian society outside of urban areas.

The Class System

Class systems are based on both social factors and individual achievement. Classes consist of sets of people who have similar status based on factors such as wealth, income, education, family background, and occupation.

Class systems, unlike caste systems, are open. This means that people can move to a different level of education or employment status than their parents. A combination of personal choice, opportunity, and one’s beginning status in society each play a role.

Those in class systems can socialize with and marry members of other classes.

In a case where spouses come from different social classes, they form an exogamous marriage. Often, these exogamous marriages focus on values such as love and compatibility.

Though there are social conformities that encourage people to marry those within their own class, people are not prohibited from choosing partners based solely on social ranking (Giddens et al., 1991).

Meritocracy (as an ideal system of stratification)

Meritocracy , meanwhile, is a hypothetical social stratification system in which one’s socioeconomic status is determined by personal effort and merit.

However, sociologists agree that no societies in history have determined social standing solely on merit.

Nonetheless, sociologists see aspects of meritocracies in modern societies when they study the role of academic and job performance and the systems in place intended to evaluate and reward achievement in these areas (Giddens et al., 1991).

Systems of Stratification

Sociologists have distinguished between two systems of stratification: closed and open. Closed systems accommodate for little change in social position.

It is difficult, if not impossible, for people to shift levels and social relationships between levels are largely verboten.

For example, estates, slavery, and caste systems are all closed systems. In contrast, open systems of social stratification are — nominatively, at least — based on achievement and allow for movement and interaction between layers and classes (Giddens et al., 1991).

What is Status Consistency?

The term status consistency describes the consistency — or lack thereof — of an individual”s rank across factors that determine social stratification within a lifetime. For example, a child in a class system may fail to finish high school — a trait of the lower class — and take up a manual job at a store”s warehouse — consistent with the lower or working class.

However, through persistence and favor with their employers, this person may work their way up to managing the store or even joining the corporation”s higher level management – an occupation consistent with the upper-middle class.

The discrepancies between someone’s educational level, occupation, and income represent low status consistency. Caste and closed systems, meanwhile, have high status consistency, as one”‘s birth status tends to control various aspects of one’s life.

The Role of Intersectionality

Intersectionality is an approach to the sociological study of social stratification. Sociologists have preferred it because it does not reduce the complexity of power constructions along a single social division, as has often been the case in stratification theories.

Generally, societies are stratified against one or more lines. These include race and ethnicity, sex and gender, age, religion, disability, and social class. Kimberle Crenshaw introduced the concept of intersectionality as a way of analyzing the intersection of race and gender (2017).

Crenshaw analyzed legal cases involving discrimination experienced by African American roman along the lines of both racism and sexist. The essence of intersectionality, as articulated by the sociologist Patricia Hill Collins (1990), is that sociologists cannot separate the effects of race, social class, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability, and so on in understanding social stratification (Gutierrez et al., 2022).

Bales, K. (2007). What predicts human trafficking?. International journal of comparative and applied criminal justice, 31 (2), 269-279.

Collins, P. H. (1990). Black feminist thought in the matrix of domination. Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment, 138 (1990), 221-238.

Crenshaw, K. W. (2017). On intersectionality: Essential writings. The New Press.

Ertman, T. (1997). Birth of the Leviathan: Building states and regimes in medieval and early modern Europe. Cambridge University Press. Giddens, A., Duneier, M., Appelbaum, R. P., & Carr, D. S. (1991). Introduction to sociology . Norton.

Gilbert, G. N. (1986). Occupational classes and inter-class mobility. British Journal of Sociology , 370-391.

Grusky, D. (2019). Social stratification, class, race, and gender in sociological perspective . Routledge.

Grusky, D. B., & Sørensen, J. B. (1998). Can class analysis be salvaged ?. American journal of Sociology, 103(5), 1187-1234.

Gurven, M., & Von Rueden, C. (2006). Hunting, social status and biological fitness. Social biology, 53(1-2), 81-99.

Gutierrez, E., Hund, J., Johnson, S., Ramos, C., Rodriguez, L., & Tsuhako, J. (2022). Social Stratification and Intersectionality .

Litwack, L. F. (2009). How free is free?: The long death of Jim Crow (Vol. 6). Harvard University Press.

What is social stratification?

Social stratification refers to the way in which society is organized into layers or strata, based on various factors like wealth, occupation, education level, race, or gender.

It’s essentially a kind of social hierarchy where individuals and groups are classified on the basis of esteemed social values and the unequal distribution of resources and power.

What is the main purpose of social stratification?

Ensures Roles are Filled by the Competent: Stratification means that positions are given to those who have the ability and skill to execute the duties of the job. People in higher strata often have higher education and skills.

Maintains Social Order: By establishing a hierarchy and clear societal roles, stratification can contribute to overall societal stability and order.

9.4 Theoretical Perspectives on Social Stratification

Learning objectives.

By the end of this section, you should be able to:

• Apply functionalist, conflict theory, and interactionist perspectives on social stratification

Basketball is one of the highest-paying professional sports and stratification exists even among teams in the NBA. For example, the Toronto Raptors hands out the lowest annual payroll, while the New York Knicks reportedly pays the highest. Stephen Curry, a Golden State Warriors guard, is one of the highest paid athletes in the NBA, earning around $43 million a year (Sports Illustrated 2020), whereas the lowest paid player earns just over $200,000 (ESPN 2021). Even within specific fields, layers are stratified, members are ranked, and inequality exists.

In sociology, even an issue such as NBA salaries can be seen from various points of view. Functionalists will examine the purpose of such high salaries, conflict theorists will study the exorbitant salaries as an unfair distribution of money, and symbolic interactionists will describe how players display that wealth. Social stratification takes on new meanings when it is examined from different sociological perspectives—functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism.

Functionalism

In sociology, the functionalist perspective examines how society’s parts operate. According to functionalism, different aspects of society exist because they serve a vital purpose. What is the function of social stratification?

In 1945, sociologists Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore published the Davis-Moore thesis , which argued that the greater the functional importance of a social role, the greater must be the reward. The theory posits that social stratification represents the inherently unequal value of different work. Certain tasks in society are more valuable than others (for example, doctors or lawyers). Qualified people who fill those positions are rewarded more than others.

According to Davis and Moore, a firefighter’s job is more important than, for instance, a grocery store cashier’s job. The cashier position does not require similar skill and training level as firefighting. Without the incentive of higher pay, better benefits, and increased respect, why would someone be willing to rush into burning buildings? If pay levels were the same, the firefighter might as well work as a grocery store cashier and avoid the risk of firefighting. Davis and Moore believed that rewarding more important work with higher levels of income, prestige, and power encourages people to work harder and longer.

Davis and Moore stated that, in most cases, the degree of skill required for a job determines that job’s importance. They noted that the more skill required for a job, the fewer qualified people there would be to do that job. Certain jobs, such as cleaning hallways or answering phones, do not require much skill. Therefore, most people would be qualified for these positions. Other work, like designing a highway system or delivering a baby, requires immense skill limiting the number of people qualified to take on this type of work.

Many scholars have criticized the Davis-Moore thesis. In 1953, Melvin Tumin argued that it does not explain inequalities in the education system or inequalities due to race or gender. Tumin believed social stratification prevented qualified people from attempting to fill roles (Tumin 1953).

Conflict Theory

Conflict theorists are deeply critical of social stratification, asserting that it benefits only some people, not all of society. For instance, to a conflict theorist, it seems wrong that a basketball player is paid millions for an annual contract while a public school teacher may earn $35,000 a year. Stratification, conflict theorists believe, perpetuates inequality. Conflict theorists try to bring awareness to inequalities, such as how a rich society can have so many poor members.

Many conflict theorists draw on the work of Karl Marx. During the nineteenth-century era of industrialization, Marx believed social stratification resulted from people’s relationship to production. People were divided into two main groups: they either owned factories or worked in them. In Marx’s time, bourgeois capitalists owned high-producing businesses, factories, and land, as they still do today. Proletariats were the workers who performed the manual labor to produce goods. Upper-class capitalists raked in profits and got rich, while working-class proletariats earned skimpy wages and struggled to survive. With such opposing interests, the two groups were divided by differences of wealth and power. Marx believed workers experience deep alienation, isolation and misery resulting from powerless status levels (Marx 1848). Marx argued that proletariats were oppressed by the bourgeoisie.

Today, while working conditions have improved, conflict theorists believe that the strained working relationship between employers and employees still exists. Capitalists own the means of production, and a system is in place to make business owners rich and keep workers poor. According to conflict theorists, the resulting stratification creates class conflict.

Symbolic Interactionism

Symbolic interactionism uses everyday interactions of individuals to explain society as a whole. Symbolic interactionism examines stratification from a micro-level perspective. This analysis strives to explain how people’s social standing affects their everyday interactions.

In most communities, people interact primarily with others who share the same social standing. It is precisely because of social stratification that people tend to live, work, and associate with others like themselves, people who share their same income level, educational background, class traits and even tastes in food, music, and clothing. The built-in system of social stratification groups people together. This is one of the reasons why it was rare for a royal prince like England’s Prince William to marry a commoner.

Symbolic interactionists also note that people’s appearance reflects their perceived social standing. As discussed above, class traits seen through housing, clothing, and transportation indicate social status, as do hairstyles, taste in accessories, and personal style. Symbolic interactionists also analyze how individuals think of themselves or others interpretation of themselves based on these class traits.

To symbolically communicate social standing, people often engage in conspicuous consumption , which is the purchase and use of certain products to make a social statement about status. Carrying pricey but eco-friendly water bottles could indicate a person’s social standing, or what they would like others to believe their social standing is. Some people buy expensive trendy sneakers even though they will never wear them to jog or play sports. A $17,000 car provides transportation as easily as a $100,000 vehicle, but the luxury car makes a social statement that the less expensive car can’t live up to. All these symbols of stratification are worthy of examination by an interactionist.

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Module 7: Stratification and Inequality

Social stratification, social inequality, and global stratification, learning objectives.

• Describe social stratification and social inequality
• Explain global stratification

Social Stratification

Figure 1.  Strata in rock illustrate social stratification. People are sorted, or layered, into social categories. Many factors determine a person’s social standing, such as income, education, occupation, geography, as well as age, race, gender, and even physical abilities. (Photo courtesy of Just a Prairie Boy/flickr)

Social stratification is a system of ranking individuals and groups within societies. It refers to a society’s ranking of its people into socioeconomic tiers based on factors like wealth, income, race, education, and power. You may remember the word “stratification” from geology class. The distinct horizontal layers found in rock, called “strata,” are an illustrative way to visualize social structure. Society’s layers are made of people, and society’s resources are distributed unevenly throughout the layers. Social stratification has been a part of all societies dating from the agricultural revolution, which took place in various parts of the world between 7,000-10,000 BCE. Unlike relatively even strata in rock, though, there are not equal numbers of people in each layer of society. There are typically very few at the top and a great many at the bottom, with some variously populated layers in the middle.

Social Inequality

Social inequality  is the state of unequal distribution of valued goods and opportunities. All societies today have social inequality. Examining social stratification requires a macrosociological perspective in order to view societal systems that make inequalities visible. Although individuals may support or fight inequalities, social stratification is created and supported by society as a whole through values and norms and consistently durable systems of stratification.

Most of us are accustomed to thinking of stratification as economic inequality. For example, we can compare wages in the United States to wages in Mexico. Social inequality, however, is just as harmful as economic discrepancy. Prejudice and discrimination—whether against a certain race, ethnicity, religion, or the like—can become a causal factor by creating and aggravating conditions of economic inequality, both within and between nations.

Gender inequality is another global concern. Consider the controversy surrounding female circumcision (also known as female genital mutilation or FGM). Nations favoring this practice, often through systems of patriarchal authority, defend it as a longstanding cultural tradition among certain tribes and argue that the West shouldn’t interfere. Western nations, however, decry the practice and are working to expose and stop it.

Inequalities based on sexual orientation and gender identity exist around the globe. According to Amnesty International, a range of crimes are commonly committed against individuals who do not conform to traditional gender roles or sexual orientations (however those are culturally defined). From culturally sanctioned rape to state-sanctioned executions, the abuses are serious. These legalized and culturally accepted forms of prejudice, discrimination, and punishment exist everywhere—from the United States to Somalia to Tibet—restricting the freedom of individuals and often putting their lives at risk (Amnesty International 2012).

Watch the selected first few minutes of this video to learn about stratification in general terms. You’ll learn some key principles regarding social stratification, namely that:

• Stratification is universal, but varies between societies;
• It is a characteristic of society and not a matter of individual differences; in other words, we need to use the sociological imagination to understand social stratification and see it as a social issue and not just an individual problem;
• It persists across generations, although it often allows for some degree of social mobility;
• Stratification continues because of beliefs and attitudes about social stratification

Thinking Deeply about Inequality

How do you think wealth should best be distributed in the United States? Check out this  interactive animation on economic inequality from the Economic Policy Institute .

Link to Learning

Imagine that the United States is divided into quintiles (bottom 20%, second 20%, middle 20%, fourth 20%, and top 20%).

• How do you think wealth is distributed in the United States? What percentage would you attribute to each quintile?
• What do you think is the ideal distribution?

Now watch the video “Wealth Inequality in America”  and compare your responses to the actual distribution of wealth. Keep in mind that these numbers are from 2012, but the rates of inequality have not improved since then.

Global Stratification

Figure 2. (a) A family lives in this grass hut in Ethiopia. (b) Another family lives in a single-wide trailer in a trailer park in the United States. Both families are considered poor, or lower class. With such differences in global stratification, what constitutes poverty? (Photo (a) courtesy of Canned Muffins/flickr; Photo (b) courtesy of Herb Neufeld/flickr)

While stratification in the United States refers to the unequal distribution of resources among individuals, global stratification refers to this unequal distribution among nations. There are two dimensions to this stratification: gaps between nations and gaps within nations. When it comes to global inequality, both economic inequality and social inequality may concentrate the burden of poverty among certain segments of the earth’s population (Myrdal 1970).

As mentioned earlier, one way to evaluate stratification is to consider how many people are living in poverty, and particularly extreme poverty, which is often defined as needing to survive on less than $1.90 per day. Fortunately, until the COVID-19 pandemic impacted economies in 2020, the extreme poverty rate had been on a 20-year decline. In 2015, 10.1 percent of the world’s population was living in extreme poverty; in 2017, that number had dropped an entire percentage point to 9.2 percent. While a positive, that 9.2 percent is equivalent to 689 million people living on less than $1.90 a day. The same year, 24.1 percent of the world lived on less than $3.20 per day and 43.6 percent on less than $5.50 per day in 2017 (World Bank 2020). The table below makes the differences in poverty very clear.

Global stratification compares the wealth, economic stability, status, and power of countries across the world, and also highlights worldwide patterns of social inequality within nations.

In the early years of civilization, hunter-gatherer and agrarian societies lived off the earth and rarely interacted with other societies (except during times of war). As civilizations began to grow and emerging cities developed political and economic systems, trade increased, as did military conquest. Explorers went out in search of new land and resources as well as to trade goods, ideas, and customs. They eventually took land, people, and resources from all over the world, building empires and establishing networks of colonies with imperialist policies, foundational religious ideologies, and incredible economic and military power.

In the nineteenth century, the Industrial Revolution created unprecedented wealth in Western Europe and North America. Due to mechanical inventions and new means of production, people began working in factories—not only men, but women and children as well. The Industrial Revolution also saw the rise of vast inequalities between countries that were industrialized and those that were not. As some nations embraced technology and saw increased wealth and goods, others maintained their ways; as the gap widened, the non-industrialized nations fell further behind. Some social researchers, such as Walt Rostow, suggest that the disparity also resulted from power differences. Applying a conflict theory perspective, he asserts that industrializing nations appropriated and took advantage of the resources of traditional nations. As industrialized nations became rich, other nations became poor (Rostow 1960).

Sociologists studying global stratification analyze economic comparisons between nations. Income, purchasing power, and investment and ownership-based wealth are used to calculate global stratification. Global stratification also compares the quality of life that individual citizens and groups within a country’s population can have.

Poverty levels have been shown to vary greatly. The poor in wealthy countries like the United States or Europe are much better off than the poor in less-industrialized countries such as Mali or India. In 2002, the UN implemented the Millennium Project, an attempt to cut poverty worldwide by the year 2015. To reach the project’s goal, planners in 2006 estimated that industrialized nations must set aside 0.7 percent of their gross national income—the total value of the nation’s good and service, plus or minus income received from and sent to other nations—to aid in developing countries (Landler and Sanger, 2009; Millennium Project 2006).

Although some successes have been realized from the Millennium Project , such as cutting the extreme global poverty rate in half, the United Nations has now moved ahead with their program of economic growth and sustainable development in their new project,  Sustainable Development Goals , adopted in September of 2015.

Think It Over

• The wealthiest 300 individuals in the world have more wealth than the poorest 3 billion individuals. Does this surprise you? Why or why not?
• Why has the wealth gap between the wealthiest countries and the poorest countries grown larger? How is this different from dominant narratives in the media?
• What changes could be made to reduce global stratification and inequality?
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• What Is Social Stratification?. Authored by : OpenStax CNX. Located at : https://cnx.org/contents/[email protected]:LYDnfp5S@3/What-Is-Social-Stratification . License : CC BY: Attribution . License Terms : Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/[email protected]
• Global Stratification and Classification. Provided by : OpenStax College. Located at : https://cnx.org/contents/[email protected]:7TCPamHd@3/Global-Stratification-and-Classification . License : CC BY: Attribution . License Terms : Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/[email protected].
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38 What Is Social Stratification?

Learning objectives.

• Differentiate between open and closed stratification systems
• Distinguish between caste and class systems
• Understand meritocracy as an ideal system of stratification

Sociologists use the term social stratification to describe the system of social standing. Social stratification refers to a society’s categorization of its people into rankings of socioeconomic tiers based on factors like wealth, income, race, education, and power.

You may remember the word “stratification” from geology class. The distinct vertical layers found in rock, called stratification, are a good way to visualize social structure. Society’s layers are made of people, and society’s resources are distributed unevenly throughout the layers. The people who have more resources represent the top layer of the social structure of stratification. Other groups of people, with progressively fewer and fewer resources, represent the lower layers of our society.

In the United States, people like to believe everyone has an equal chance at success. To a certain extent, Aaron illustrates the belief that hard work and talent—not prejudicial treatment or societal values—determine social rank. This emphasis on self-effort perpetuates the belief that people control their own social standing.

However, sociologists recognize that social stratification is a society-wide system that makes inequalities apparent. While there are always inequalities between individuals, sociologists are interested in larger social patterns. Stratification is not about individual inequalities, but about systematic inequalities based on group membership, classes, and the like. No individual, rich or poor, can be blamed for social inequalities. The structure of society affects a person’s social standing. Although individuals may support or fight inequalities, social stratification is created and supported by society as a whole.

Factors that define stratification vary in different societies. In most societies, stratification is an economic system, based on wealth , the net value of money and assets a person has, and income , a person’s wages or investment dividends. While people are regularly categorized based on how rich or poor they are, other important factors influence social standing. For example, in some cultures, wisdom and charisma are valued, and people who have them are revered more than those who don’t. In some cultures, the elderly are esteemed; in others, the elderly are disparaged or overlooked. Societies’ cultural beliefs often reinforce the inequalities of stratification.

One key determinant of social standing is the social standing of our parents. Parents tend to pass their social position on to their children. People inherit not only social standing but also the cultural norms that accompany a certain lifestyle. They share these with a network of friends and family members. Social standing becomes a comfort zone, a familiar lifestyle, and an identity. This is one of the reasons first-generation college students do not fare as well as other students.

Other determinants are found in a society’s occupational structure. Teachers, for example, often have high levels of education but receive relatively low pay. Many believe that teaching is a noble profession, so teachers should do their jobs for love of their profession and the good of their students—not for money. Yet no successful executive or entrepreneur would embrace that attitude in the business world, where profits are valued as a driving force. Cultural attitudes and beliefs like these support and perpetuate social inequalities.

Recent Economic Changes and U.S. Stratification

As a result of the Great Recession that rocked our nation’s economy in the last few years, many families and individuals found themselves struggling like never before. The nation fell into a period of prolonged and exceptionally high unemployment. While no one was completely insulated from the recession, perhaps those in the lower classes felt the impact most profoundly. Before the recession, many were living paycheck to paycheck or even had been living comfortably. As the recession hit, they were often among the first to lose their jobs. Unable to find replacement employment, they faced more than loss of income. Their homes were foreclosed, their cars were repossessed, and their ability to afford healthcare was taken away. This put many in the position of deciding whether to put food on the table or fill a needed prescription.

While we’re not completely out of the woods economically, there are several signs that we’re on the road to recovery. Many of those who suffered during the recession are back to work and are busy rebuilding their lives. The Affordable Health Care Act has provided health insurance to millions who lost or never had it.

But the Great Recession, like the Great Depression, has changed social attitudes. Where once it was important to demonstrate wealth by wearing expensive clothing items like Calvin Klein shirts and Louis Vuitton shoes, now there’s a new, thriftier way of thinking. In many circles, it has become hip to be frugal. It’s no longer about how much we spend, but about how much we don’t spend. Think of shows like Extreme Couponing on TLC and songs like Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop.”

Systems of Stratification

Sociologists distinguish between two types of systems of stratification. Closed systems accommodate little change in social position. They do not allow people to shift levels and do not permit social relationships between levels. Open systems, which are based on achievement, allow movement and interaction between layers and classes. Different systems reflect, emphasize, and foster certain cultural values and shape individual beliefs. Stratification systems include class systems and caste systems, as well as meritocracy.

The Caste System

Caste systems are closed stratification systems in which people can do little or nothing to change their social standing. A caste system is one in which people are born into their social standing and will remain in it their whole lives. People are assigned occupations regardless of their talents, interests, or potential. There are virtually no opportunities to improve a person’s social position.

In the Hindu caste tradition, people were expected to work in the occupation of their caste and to enter into marriage according to their caste. Accepting this social standing was considered a moral duty. Cultural values reinforced the system. Caste systems promote beliefs in fate, destiny, and the will of a higher power, rather than promoting individual freedom as a value. A person who lived in a caste society was socialized to accept his or her social standing.

Although the caste system in India has been officially dismantled, its residual presence in Indian society is deeply embedded. In rural areas, aspects of the tradition are more likely to remain, while urban centers show less evidence of this past. In India’s larger cities, people now have more opportunities to choose their own career paths and marriage partners. As a global center of employment, corporations have introduced merit-based hiring and employment to the nation.

The Class System

A class system is based on both social factors and individual achievement. A class consists of a set of people who share similar status with regard to factors like wealth, income, education, and occupation. Unlike caste systems, class systems are open. People are free to gain a different level of education or employment than their parents. They can also socialize with and marry members of other classes, which allows people to move from one class to another.

In a class system, occupation is not fixed at birth. Though family and other societal models help guide a person toward a career, personal choice plays a role.

In class systems, people have the option to form exogamous marriages , unions of spouses from different social categories. Marriage in these circumstances is based on values such as love and compatibility rather than on social standing or economics. Though social conformities still exist that encourage people to choose partners within their own class, people are not as pressured to choose marriage partners based solely on those elements. Marriage to a partner from the same social background is an endogamous union .

Meritocracy

Meritocracy is an ideal system based on the belief that social stratification is the result of personal effort—or merit—that determines social standing. High levels of effort will lead to a high social position, and vice versa. The concept of meritocracy is an ideal—because a society has never existed where social rank was based purely on merit. Because of the complex structure of societies, processes like socialization, and the realities of economic systems, social standing is influenced by multiple factors—not merit alone. Inheritance and pressure to conform to norms, for instance, disrupt the notion of a pure meritocracy. While a meritocracy has never existed, sociologists see aspects of meritocracies in modern societies when they study the role of academic and job performance and the systems in place for evaluating and rewarding achievement in these areas.

Status Consistency

Social stratification systems determine social position based on factors like income, education, and occupation. Sociologists use the term status consistency to describe the consistency, or lack thereof, of an individual’s rank across these factors. Caste systems correlate with high status consistency, whereas the more flexible class system has lower status consistency.

To illustrate, let’s consider Susan. Susan earned her high school degree but did not go to college. That factor is a trait of the lower-middle class. She began doing landscaping work, which, as manual labor, is also a trait of lower-middle class or even lower class. However, over time, Susan started her own company. She hired employees. She won larger contracts. She became a business owner and earned a lot of money. Those traits represent the upper-middle class. There are inconsistencies between Susan’s educational level, her occupation, and her income. In a class system, a person can work hard and have little education and still be in middle or upper class, whereas in a caste system that would not be possible. In a class system, low status consistency correlates with having more choices and opportunities.

On April 29, 2011, in London, England, Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, married Catherine Middleton, a commoner. It is rare, though not unheard of, for a member of the British royal family to marry a commoner. Kate Middleton has an upper-class background, but does not have royal ancestry. Her father was a former flight dispatcher and her mother a former flight attendant and owner of Party Pieces. According to Grace Wong’s 2011 article titled, “Kate Middleton: A family business that built a princess,” “[t]he business grew to the point where [her father] quit his job . . . and it’s evolved from a mom-and-pop outfit run out of a shed . . . into a venture operated out of three converted farm buildings in Berkshire.” Kate and William met when they were both students at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland (Köhler 2010).

Britain’s monarchy arose during the Middle Ages. Its social hierarchy placed royalty at the top and commoners on the bottom. This was generally a closed system, with people born into positions of nobility. Wealth was passed from generation to generation through primogeniture , a law stating that all property would be inherited by the firstborn son. If the family had no son, the land went to the next closest male relation. Women could not inherit property, and their social standing was primarily determined through marriage.

The arrival of the Industrial Revolution changed Britain’s social structure. Commoners moved to cities, got jobs, and made better livings. Gradually, people found new opportunities to increase their wealth and power. Today, the government is a constitutional monarchy with the prime minister and other ministers elected to their positions, and with the royal family’s role being largely ceremonial. The long-ago differences between nobility and commoners have blurred, and the modern class system in Britain is similar to that of the United States (McKee 1996).

Today, the royal family still commands wealth, power, and a great deal of attention. When Queen Elizabeth II retires or passes away, Prince Charles will be first in line to ascend the throne. If he abdicates (chooses not to become king) or dies, the position will go to Prince William. If that happens, Kate Middleton will be called Queen Catherine and hold the position of queen consort. She will be one of the few queens in history to have earned a college degree (Marquand 2011).

There is a great deal of social pressure on her not only to behave as a royal but also to bear children. In fact, Kate and Prince William welcomed their first son, Prince George, on July 22, 2013 and are expecting their second child. The royal family recently changed its succession laws to allow daughters, not just sons, to ascend the throne. Kate’s experience—from commoner to potential queen—demonstrates the fluidity of social position in modern society.

Stratification systems are either closed, meaning they allow little change in social position, or open, meaning they allow movement and interaction between the layers. A caste system is one in which social standing is based on ascribed status or birth. Class systems are open, with achievement playing a role in social position. People fall into classes based on factors like wealth, income, education, and occupation. A meritocracy is a system of social stratification that confers standing based on personal worth, rewarding effort.

Section Quiz

What factor makes caste systems closed?

• They are run by secretive governments.
• People cannot change their social standings.
• Most have been outlawed.
• They exist only in rural areas.

What factor makes class systems open?

• They allow for movement between the classes.
• People are more open-minded.
• People are encouraged to socialize within their class.
• They do not have clearly defined layers.

Which of these systems allows for the most social mobility?

Which person best illustrates opportunities for upward social mobility in the United States?

• First-shift factory worker
• First-generation college student
• Firstborn son who inherits the family business
• First-time interviewee who is hired for a job

Which statement illustrates low status consistency?

• A suburban family lives in a modest ranch home and enjoys a nice vacation each summer.
• A single mother receives food stamps and struggles to find adequate employment.
• A college dropout launches an online company that earns millions in its first year.
• A celebrity actress owns homes in three countries.

Based on meritocracy, a physician’s assistant would:

• receive the same pay as all the other physician’s assistants
• be encouraged to earn a higher degree to seek a better position
• most likely marry a professional at the same level
• earn a pay raise for doing excellent work

Short Answer

Track the social stratification of your family tree. Did the social standing of your parents differ from the social standing of your grandparents and great-grandparents? What social traits were handed down by your forebears? Are there any exogamous marriages in your history? Does your family exhibit status consistencies or inconsistencies?

What defines communities that have low status consistency? What are the ramifications, both positive and negative, of cultures with low status consistency? Try to think of specific examples to support your ideas.

Review the concept of stratification. Now choose a group of people you have observed and been a part of—for example, cousins, high school friends, classmates, sport teammates, or coworkers. How does the structure of the social group you chose adhere to the concept of stratification?

Further Research

The New York Times investigated social stratification in their series of articles called “Class Matters.” The online accompaniment to the series includes an interactive graphic called “How Class Works,” which tallies four factors—occupation, education, income, and wealth—and places an individual within a certain class and percentile. What class describes you? Test your class rank on the interactive site: http://openstax.org/l/NY_Times_how_class_works

Köhler, Nicholas. 2010. “An Uncommon Princess.” Maclean’s , November 22. Retrieved January 9, 2012 ( http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/11/22/an-uncommon-princess/ ).

McKee, Victoria. 1996. “Blue Blood and the Color of Money.” New York Times , June 9.

Marquand, Robert. 2011. “What Kate Middleton’s Wedding to Prince William Could Do for Britain.” Christian Science Monitor , April 15. Retrieved January 9, 2012 ( http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2011/0415/What-Kate-Middleton-s-wedding-to-Prince-William-could-do-for-Britain ).

Wong, Grace. 2011. “Kate Middleton: A Family Business That Built a Princess.” CNN Money . Retrieved December 22, 2014 (http://money.cnn.com/2011/04/14/smallbusiness/kate-middleton-party-pieces/).

Introduction to Sociology 2e Copyright © 2012 by OSCRiceUniversity (Download for free at https://openstax.org/details/books/introduction-sociology-2e) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Since social stratification is the most binding and central concern of sociology, changes in the study of social stratification reflect trends in the entire discipline . The founders of sociology—including Weber—thought that the United States , unlike Europe, was a classless society with a high degree of upward mobility. During the Great Depression , however, Robert and Helen Lynd , in their famous Middletown (1937) studies, documented the deep divide between the working and the business classes in all areas of community life. W. Lloyd Warner and colleagues at Harvard University applied anthropological methods to study the Social Life of a Modern Community (1941) and found six social classes with distinct subcultures: upper upper and lower upper, upper middle and lower middle, and upper lower and lower lower classes. In 1953 Floyd Hunter’s study of Atlanta, Georgia, shifted the emphasis in stratification from status to power; he documented a community power structure that controlled the agenda of urban politics. Likewise, C. Wright Mills in 1956 proposed that a “power elite” dominated the national agenda in Washington, a cabal comprising business, government, and the military.

From the 1960s to the 1980s, research in social stratification was influenced by the attainment model of stratification, initiated at the University of Wisconsin by William H. Sewell. Designed to measure how individuals attain occupational status, this approach assigned each occupation a socioeconomic score and then measured the distance between sons’ and fathers’ scores, also using the educational achievement of fathers to explain intergenerational mobility. Peter M. Blau and Otis Dudley Duncan used this technique in the study published as The American Occupational Structure (1967).

Attempting to build a general theory, Gerhard Lenski shifted attention to whole societies and proposed an evolutionary theory in Power and Privilege (1966) demonstrating that the dominant forms of production (hunting and gathering, horticulture, agriculture, and industry) were consistently associated with particular systems of stratification. This theory was enthusiastically accepted, but only by a minority of sociologists. Addressing the contemporary world, Marion Levy theorized in Modernization and the Structures of Societies (1960) that underdeveloped nations would inevitably develop institutions that paralleled those of the more economically advanced nations , which ultimately would lead to a global convergence of societies. Challenging the theory as a conservative defense of the West, Immanuel Wallerstein ’s The Modern World System (1974) proposed a more pessimistic world-system theory of stratification. Wallerstein averred that advanced industrial nations would develop most rapidly and thereby widen global inequality by holding the developing nations in a permanent state of dependency.

Having been challenged as a male-dominated approach, traditional stratification theory was massively reconstructed in the 1970s to address the institutional gender inequalities found in all societies. Rae Lesser Blumberg, drawing on the work of Lenski and economist Esther Boserup, theorized the basis of persistent inequality in Stratification, Socioeconomic, and Sexual Inequality (1978). Janet Saltzman Chafetz took economic, psychological, and sociological factors into account in Gender Equity: An Integrated Theory of Stability and Change (1990). Traditional theories of racial inequality were challenged and revised by William Julius Wilson in The Truly Disadvantaged (1987). His book uncovered mechanisms that maintained segregation and disorganization in African American communities . Disciplinary specialization, especially in the areas of gender, race, and Marxism, came to dominate sociological inquiry.

For example, Eric Olin Wright, in Classes (1985), introduced a 12-class scheme of occupational stratification based on ownership, supervisory control of work, and monopolistic knowledge. Wright’s book, an attack on the individualistic bias of attainment theory written from a Marxist perspective, drew on the traits of these 12 classes to explain income inequality . The nuanced differences between social groups were further investigated in Divided We Stand (1985) by William Form, whose analysis of labour markets revealed deep permanent fissures within working classes previously thought to be uniform.

Some investigative specializations, however, were short-lived. Despite their earlier popularity, ethnographic studies of communities, such as those by Hunter, Warner, and the Lynds, were increasingly abandoned in the 1960s and virtually forgotten by the 1970s. Intensive case studies of bureaucracies begun in the ’70s followed a similar path. Like economists, sociologists have increasingly turned to large-scale surveys and government data banks as sources for their research. Social stratification theory and research continue to undergo change and have seen substantive reappraisal ever since the breakup of the Soviet system.

The significant growth of sociological inquiry after World War II prompted interest in historical and political sociology. Charles Tilly in From Mobilization to Revolution (1978), Jack Goldstone in Revolutions: Theoretical, Comparative and Historical Studies (1993), and Arthur Stinchcombe in Constructing Social Theories (1987) made comparative studies of revolutions and proposed structural theories to explain the origins and spread of revolution. Sociologists who brought international and historical perspectives to their study of institutions such as education , welfare, religion, the family, and the military were forced to reconsider long-held theories and methodologies . As was the case in almost all areas of specialization, new journals were founded.

Sociological specialties were enriched by contact with other social sciences, especially political science and economics . Political sociology, for example, studied the social basis of party voting and partisan politics, spurring comparison of decision-making processes in city, state, and national governments. Still, sociologists split along ideological lines, much as they had in the functionalist-conflict divide, with some reporting that decisions were made pluralistically and democratically and others insisting that decisions were made by economic and political elites. Eventually, voting and community power studies were abandoned by sociologists, and those areas were left largely to political scientists.

From its inception, the study of social movements looked closely at interpersonal relations formed in the mobilization phase of collective action. Beginning in the 1970s, scholars focused more deeply on the long-term consequences of social movements, especially on evaluating the ways such movements have propelled societal change. The rich area of historical and international research that resulted includes the study of social turmoil’s influence on New Deal legislation; the rise, decline, and resurrection of women’s rights movements; analysis of both failed and successful revolutions; the impact of government and other institutions on social movements; national differences in how social movements spur discontent; the response of nascent movements to political changes; and variations in the rates of growth and decline of movements over time and in different nations. In short, countering the general trend, social movement research became better integrated into other specialties, especially in political and organizational sociology.

Stratification studies and organizational sociology were broadened to include economic phenomena such as labour markets and the behaviour of businesses. Econometric methods were also introduced from economics. Thus, to predict income, sociologists would examine status variables (such as race, ethnicity , or gender) or group affiliations (looking at degree of unionization, whether groups are licensed or unlicensed, and the type of industry, community, or firm involved). Other economic variables tapped by sociologists include human capital (education, training, and experience) and economic segmentation. As a result of his interaction with economists, for example, James S. Coleman was the first sociologist since Parsons to build a comprehensive social theory. Coleman’s Foundations of Social Theory (1990), based on economic models, suggests that the individual makes rational choices in all phases of social life.

What Is Social Stratification, and Why Does It Matter?

How Sociologists Define and Study This Phenomenon

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Social stratification refers to the way people are ranked and ordered in society. In Western countries, this stratification primarily occurs as a result of socioeconomic status in which a hierarchy determines the groups most likely to gain access to financial resources and forms of privilege. Typically, the upper classes have the most access to these resources while the lower classes may get few or none of them, putting them at a distinct disadvantage.

Key Takeaways: Social Stratification

• Sociologists use the term social stratification to refer to social hierarchies. Those higher in social hierarchies have greater access to power and resources.
• In the United States, social stratification is often based on income and wealth.
• Sociologists emphasize the importance of taking an intersectional approach to understanding social stratification; that is, an approach that acknowledges the influence of racism, sexism, and heterosexism, among other factors.
• Access to education—and barriers to education such as systemic racism—are factors that perpetuate inequality. 

Wealth Stratification

A look at wealth stratification in the U.S. reveals a deeply unequal society in which the top 10% of households control 70% of the nation's riches , according to a 2019 study released by the Federal Reserve. In 1989, they represented just 60%, an indication that class divides are growing rather than closing. The Federal Reserve attributes this trend to the richest Americans acquiring more assets; the financial crisis that devastated the housing market also contributed to the wealth gap.

Social stratification isn't just based on wealth, however. In some societies, tribal affiliations, age, or caste result in stratification. In groups and organizations, stratification may take the form of a distribution of power and authority down the ranks. Think of the different ways that status is determined in the military, schools, clubs, businesses, and even groupings of friends and peers.

Regardless of the form it takes, social stratification can manifest as the ability to make rules, decisions, and establish notions of right and wrong. Additionally, this power can be manifested as the capacity to control the distribution of resources and determine the opportunities, rights, and obligations of others.

The Role of Intersectionality

Sociologists recognize that a variety of factors, including  social class ,  race ,  gender , sexuality, nationality, and sometimes religion, influence stratification. As such, they tend to take an intersectional approach to analyzing the phenomenon. This approach recognizes that systems of oppression intersect to shape people's lives and to sort them into hierarchies. Consequently, sociologists view racism ,  sexism , and heterosexism as playing significant and troubling roles in these processes as well.

In this vein, sociologists recognize that racism and sexism affect one's accrual of wealth and power in society. The relationship between systems of oppression and social stratification is made clear by U.S. Census data that show a long-term gender wage and wealth gap has plagued women for decades , and though it has narrowed a bit over the years, it still thrives today. An intersectional approach reveals that Black and Latina women, who make 61 and 53 cents, respectively, for every dollar earned by a white male , are affected by the gender wage gap more negatively than white women, who earn 77 cents on that dollar , according to a report by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.

Education as a Factor

Social science studies show that one’s level of education is positively correlated with income and wealth. A survey of young adults in the U.S. found that those with at least a college degree are nearly four times as wealthy as the average young person. They also have 8.3 times as much wealth as those who just completed high school. These findings show that education clearly plays a role in social stratification, but race intersects with academic achievement in the U.S. as well.

The Pew Research Center has reported that completion of college is stratified by ethnicity. An estimated 63% of Asian Americans and 41% of whites graduate from college compared to 22% of Blacks and 15% of Latinos. This data reveals that systemic racism shapes access to higher education , which, in turn, affects one's income and wealth. According to the Urban Institute , the average Latino family had just 20.9% of the wealth of the average white family in 2016. During the same timeframe, the average Black family had a mere 15.2% of the wealth of their white counterparts. Ultimately, wealth, education, and race intersect in ways that create a stratified society.

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Brittani Sommer Université libre de Bruxelles Brussel Belgium

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Social Stratification: A review of theories and conclusions

Barkow, J. H. (1992). Beneath new culture is old psychology: Gossip and social stratification.

Cole, J. R., & Cole, S. (1973). Social stratification in science. University of Chicago Press.

Hollingshead, A. B., & Redlich, F. C. (1958). Social class and mental illness: Community study.

Kerbo, H. R. (2006). Social stratification.

Lenski, G. E. (1966). Power and privilege: A theory of social stratification. UNC Press Books.

Parsons, T. (1940). An analytical approach to the theory of social stratification.American Journal of Sociology, 841-862.

Parsons, T. (1953). A revised analytical approach to the theory of social stratification. New York.

Rosen, B. C. (1956). The achievement syndrome: A psychocultural dimension of social stratification. American Sociological Review, 203-211.

Tumin, M. M. (1967). Social stratification (Vol. 5). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

(ISSN: 2455-2267)

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Social Stratification and Its Principals Essay

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The issue of the social stratification is a significant one because it implies that in the society, some groups and individuals are not equal. The present study aims to understand the notion of the social stratification and its principals through the review of Tumin’s work “Some Principle of Stratification: A Critical Analysis.” Tumin’s study is a response to the assumption made by Davis and Moore that the several social positions are more important the others because they lead to more efficient functioning of the society.

The social stratification deals with the idea of a place but not an individual who occupies a particular position. Davis and Moore address two primary questions: why some fields are more attractive and distinguished than the others; and how the individuals acquire these occupations.

The necessity of stratification within the positions originates from the operating principles of these occupation fields. Some spaces require the specific knowledge or talents. For example, a doctor in a hospital is vital in comparison with the administrative or unskilled staff. Thus, these kinds of positions such as doctor or engineer are functionally important, and demand particular expertise and responsibilities from the individual and their duties have to be performed “with the diligence that their importance requires” (Tumin 185).

Society, on the other hand, provides the system of rewards associated with the specific occupations. As an illustration, the individuals who hold the doctor position have some “rights” and privileges such as respect and competitive salary. Since some positions have more significant assets then the others, the social stratification contributes to the creation of inequality. Moreover, the status of a job as functional depends on the deficiency of properly trained and talented personnel. Davis and Moore come to the conclusion that the functional necessity of social stratification is irresistible and leads to positive outcomes for the whole society.

Tumin’s assumption refuses the beneficial effects of the stratification on society. Tumin argues that consideration of some positions as more important than the others is unnecessary. From Tumin’s perspective, the previous example of a doctor is inadequate because the functioning of a hospital as a whole system depends on the administration and maintenance personnel as well. Without organized cleaning, lighting, electric and many other systems, patients are in the equal danger as without doctors.

Considering the issue of the talented individuals who represents the limited number of population, Tumin claims that the system of stratified society blocks the process of finding of many talented individuals. According to the author, the phenomenon can be traced in the societies where the new generation depends on the resources of “the parent generation” (Tumin 188). For example, if the education system is not public or merit based, the significant number of the population does not have a chance to reveal their talents.

The sacrifices for a training period and rewards guaranteed by the certain position to the qualified employees are regarded as irrelevant by Tumin. The author does not recognize a trainee period as a sacrifice, but emphasize the privileges which training and education provides for individuals who are in schools in comparison with their peers who have to work and do not have such an opportunity of self-development.

The prestige and privileges that the society ascribes to the specific jobs and individuals who occupy them derive from the inherently one-sided point of view prevailed in the society. Thus, many other positions that are wrongly considered as less attractive and not functional remain underestimated by the society and individuals as well. Tumin’s response to David and Moore’s assumption highlights the unbalance nature of the social stratification and its harmful outcomes for the society.

Tumin, Melvin M. “Some principles of stratification: A critical analysis.” American Sociological Review 18.4 (1953): 387-393.

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Social Stratification and Inequality in 'The Pursuit of Happyness'

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A global perspective on social stratification in science

• Aliakbar Akbaritabar   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3828-1533 1 ,
• Andrés Felipe Castro Torres 1 , 2 &
• Vincent Larivière 3  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  11 , Article number:  914 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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To study stratification among scientists, we reconstruct the career-long trajectories of 8.2 million scientists worldwide using 12 bibliometric measures of productivity, geographical mobility, collaboration, and research impact. While most previous studies examined these variables in isolation, we study their relationships using Multiple Correspondence and Cluster Analysis. We group authors according to their bibliometric performance and academic age across six macro fields of science, and analyze co-authorship networks and detect collaboration communities of different sizes. We found a stratified structure in terms of academic age and bibliometric classes, with a small top class and large middle and bottom classes in all collaboration communities. Results are robust to community detection algorithms used and do not depend on authors’ gender. These results imply that increased productivity, impact, and collaboration are driven by a relatively small group that accounts for a large share of academic outputs, i.e., the top class. Mobility indicators are the only exception with bottom classes contributing similar or larger shares. We also show that those at the top succeed by collaborating with various authors from other classes and age groups. Nevertheless, they are benefiting disproportionately from these collaborations which may have implications for persisting stratification in academia.

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Introduction.

Science is a social enterprise with inequality among its agents (Chompalov et al. 2002 ; Kozlowski et al. 2022 ; Shrum et al. 2001 , 2007 ). Factors underpinning social stratification include differences within and between countries in institutional capacity and resources available for research (Castro Torres and Alburez-Gutierrez 2022 ), and inequalities among scholars according to gender (Akbaritabar and Squazzoni, 2020 ; Larivière et al. 2013 ), race and ethnicity (Kozlowski et al. 2022 ), migration status (Sanliturk et al. 2023 ; X. Zhao et al. 2023 ), and social class differences in opportunities to access higher education and research (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1979 ; Burris 2004 ; Clauset et al. 2015 ). Such overrepresentation of specific demographics in privileged positions within scientific systems are indicators of stratification (Alper 1993 ; Hofstra et al. 2022 ; Marini and Meschitti 2018 ). Differences in scholars’ strategies in the search for prestige can also influence inequalities in science (Leahey and Cain 2013 ). The durability of stratification depends, among other things, on taken-for-granted ideas about the necessity and benefits of hierarchical order—for example in terms of seniority, impact, or recognition. These taken-for-granted ideas also exist in the broader sphere of social and economic affairs. The belief that a market-oriented organization of the economy without state intervention is optimal legitimizes the existence of socioeconomic inequalities within and between societies (Mazzucato 2018 ; Pikkety 2019 ), which in turn contributes to sustaining social stratification among nations and individuals (Therborn 2013 ). In all likelihood, Science as a subfield of these broader social and economic relations, works analogously. Scientific research also is an inherently competitive endeavor, in which individual-based reputational incentives can undermine the motivation to collaborate (Müller 2012 ; Penman and Goldson 2015 ; van den Besselaar et al. 2012 ).

Inequalities in science are often justified by beliefs regarding the meritocratic nature of science and of academic success and the inherent value of truth. Several indicators, such as the number of publications and citations, help fuel these beliefs. While those are increasingly challenged by scholars from different perspectives (Sugimoto and Larivière 2018 ; Wilsdon et al. 2015 ), bibliometric measures remain used extensively. Moreover, in the context of assesment, those are mostly used in isolation and their interrelations are ignored.

This paper provides an assessment of stratification across fields of science based on a multivariate analysis of large-scale bibliometric information from 1996 to 2021 and highlights the interrelationships between bibliometric indicators. We argue that these interrelations provide a structural measure of inequalities in the scientific community beyond single variables gaps such as authors’ differences in the number of publications or citations. Because measuring inequalities is only a first step in understanding their potential underlying mechanisms, we make a dataset with country-level measures of scientific stratification publicly available for future research (Akbaritabar and Castro Torres 2024 ).

Existing inequalities in science

Data on scholars’ collaboration, geographical mobility, productivity, and citations suggest that academia is growing in absolute numbers and expanding geographically. There are more coauthored papers in recent years compared to earlier decades (Abramo et al. 2009 ; Melkers and Kiopa 2010 ; Wuchty et al. 2007 ), and more scholars experienced geographical mobility today than in the past (Sanliturk et al. 2023 ; Sugimoto et al. 2017 ; X. Zhao et al. 2023 ). Likewise, studies have shown that the number of scholarly publications has increased and that digitization has made searching and citing easier (Kozlowski et al. 2024 ; Lozano et al. 2012 ). Greater productivity and increased citation capacities enhanced academic works’ visibility and potential impact (Liu et al. 2018 ; Sinatra et al. 2016 ). Some of these analyses have pointed out that these rising trends are accompanied by an increased concentration of academic-success indicators among relatively few scholars (Ioannidis et al. 2018 ) or that increased collaboration and rate of productivity per individual has not increased (Fanelli and Larivière 2016 ).

According to the 28+ million publications indexed by Scopus (1996–2021), 33% of scholars have contributed to only one research paper throughout their careers, and the median number of authors per paper is two. This suggests that a few highly productive researchers may drive rising trends in scholars’ productivity reported in the literature (Fox and Nikivincze 2021 ; Ioannidis et al. 2018 ). Likewise, according to Scopus data, approximately 27.2% of the publications have only one author, and more than 75% are authored by scholars from one country, i.e., strictly national publications. Likewise, most authors (87.5%) have been affiliated with a single country throughout their careers, and 73.5% to a single sub-national region, that therefore experienced little geographical mobility (Akbaritabar et al. 2023 ; Sanliturk et al. 2023 ; X. Zhao et al. 2023 ). Similarly, 36.8% of authors have been actively publishing over only one year. These low shares call for a global investigation into whether claims of increased mobility, collaboration, productivity and impact are widespread phenomena, or remain concentrated among a small group of scholars. Bibliometric research has also shown that academic citations display a skewed distribution where only a very small share of publications, journals, and authors receive disproportionately high citations which has increased recently (Nielsen and Andersen 2021 ). These studies suggest that bibliometric indicators for academic-success are concentrated on a few countries, institutions, and authors.

In light of this evidence, the growth of scientific activities and its geographical expansion require a critical examination of their consequences for inequalities and global stratification. In fact, we know less about the interrelatedness of these trends than we know about them in isolation. Therefore, understanding inequalities in science requires a multidimensional approach. There might be positive or negative correlations, feedback effects, and synergistic connections among bibliometric measures of academic success including individual and collaborative productivity, national and international mobility, and research visibility as measured by citations.

For instance, more collaborations could lead to more citations, which in turn may translate into greater productivity and more opportunities for geographical mobility; greater mobility may expand scholars’ networks, enhancing their potential pool of collaborators. Conversely, mobility and changes of affiliation could also reflect negative conditions such as precarious research contracts and lack of opportunities for a life-long or long-term career. Further, multiple instances of mobility can destabilize one’s network of collaborations (Z. Zhao et al. 2020 ). The absence or lack of success in any of these realms may negatively affect performance in the others, as well as positive outcomes in any of these realms may boost success in others i.e., Matthew effect (Merton 1968 ). Social stratification in science will likely emerge from the confluence of successful (and unsuccessful) academic paths in these interrelated realms: productivity, collaboration, geographical mobility, and citations.

Materials and methods

We use 28.5 million articles and review publications indexed in Elsevier’s Scopus between 1996 and 2021. A proper disambiguation of author names is crucial for analysis such as ours that reconstructs publication trajectories over one’s career. Scopus identification numbers (Baas et al. 2020 ) are one of the few reliable options available (Aman 2018 ) and were used here to assign papers to authors and to identify groups of authors who publish together in the global network of co-authorship. We limit these publications to all of those written by the authors having identification numbers in Scopus and declared as “disambiguated” by Elsevier which has a 98.3% precision and a 90.6% recall (Baas et al. 2020 ). In addition to the evaluations by Elsevier (Baas et al. 2020 ), others have previously shown that Scopus author identification numbers are reliable in comparison to other sources (Aman 2018 ). We further disambiguate the academic affiliation of authors in this set of publications using the Research Organization Registry’s (ROR) Application Programming Interface (API) and geocode organizations’ addresses to subnational units (Akbaritabar 2021 ). This reduces our coverage of publications down from 33 to 28.5 million publications by 8.2 million disambiguated authors.

Author level variables and career-long measurement

To categorize scientists into specific groups and identify stratification processes, we reviewed the literature and selected the 12 most-widely used academic performance indicators. The list of indicators is as comprehensive as possible given existing data and it avoids, as much as possible, redundancy across measures. Together, these indicators provide a robust measure of individual-level academic performance. These are the most widely used measures in previous studies which have implemented them mostly in isolation without considering their interrelation.

While our analytical sample includes 8.2 million authors with at least one publication in the Scopus database, we excluded 41,278 authors (0.5%) because their publications have missing metadata. The list below provides each bibliometric indicator’s name and category: productivity, collaboration, mobility, and visibility. These indicators are computed at the author level and comprise all individual publications indexed by Scopus between 1996 and 2021; covering authors’ careers from one up to 25 years.

The number of coauthored papers, Num. coauthored pubs . ( collaboration/internationalization )

The average number of coauthors per paper in career, Avg. collaborations (as a measure for collaboration/internationalization )

The number of internationally coauthored publications, Num. intl. pubs ( collaboration/internationalization )

The number of nationally coauthored publications, Num. national pubs . ( collaboration/internationalization )

The number of international changes in academic affiliation, Num. intl. moves ( mobility )

The number of national changes in academic affiliation, Num nat. moves ( mobility )

The number of affiliated organizations, Num. organizations ( mobility )

The total number of citations, Total citations ( impact/visibility )

The average number of citations per paper in career, Avg. citations ( impact/visibility )

The fractional count of publications, Fractional pubs . ( productivity )

The number of publications, Total publications ( productivity )

The number of first-author publications, First author publications ( productivity )

To favor comparability among scholars, we standardize most indicators by authors’ academic age (age hereafter), measured as the years since their first publication in our database. However, the average number of coauthors per paper and the average number of citations per paper are not normalized by career age but, rather, the number of papers an author publishes throughout their career. Our goal with these two average measures, used in combination with the other 9 variables, is to further identify the effect of outliers in one’s career, such as highly cited papers or highly collaborative ones. To account for differences across disciplines in publication practices, we categorized researchers separately for each of the six macro fields of science according to the OECD classification by using the field where highest share of their publications appeared: Agricultural Sciences, Natural Sciences, Humanities, Medical and Health Sciences, Engineering and Technology, and Social Sciences.

By default, scholars with only one publication display lower variability across these 12 indicators compared to other groups. Because they published only one article, other measures such as national and international mobility, and the number of organizations are bound to zero and one, respectively. The number of citations, co-authors, and fractional count of papers are also limited to the information of the only published paper. Similarly, scholars who have publications in only one year in our data have lower bounds in these indicators. This limited heterogeneity reduces the influence of this group in our analysis despite their relatively high shares, ranging from 31% in the Natural Sciences to 47% in Engineering and Technology. In the Supplementary information (SI), we show separate figures for scholars with only one year of publication activity (Fig. S3 presents the share of one-year old authors). Instead of excluding this group from the analysis, as the usual practice in the literature, we decided for categorizing them under a specific age group to study the specificities of this understudied group.

Bibliometric variables are extremely skewed and the usual practice in the literature is to exclude outliers. As an example, publications with the highest number of authors are sometimes excluded (Nogrady 2023 ; Singh Chawla 2019 ). Here, to better capture non-linear relations across these indicators, and to reduce the influence of outliers, while keeping them in the analysis, all the indicators were categorized into the maximum possible number of categories ensuring relative frequencies of at least 2% in all categories. This categorization method maintains the essential characteristics of the continuous variables while mitigating the impact of outliers on correlation measures. This is achieved by grouping outliers into the lower- and bottom-end categories. This approach to variable coding is beneficial in the context of highly-skewed variables with heavy tails (see Fig. S2 ), as it allows us to: (i) include extreme values in the analysis, (ii) capture potential non-linear relationships among variables, (iii) preserve the distributional characteristics of each indicator, and (iv) avoids potential biases in correlational analyses due to outlier observations. The resulting number of categories across variables ranges from three for the number of international changes in academic affiliation in Agricultural Sciences (i.e., 95% of authors do not experience international mobility) to ten for the total number of citations in the Natural Sciences and Medical and Health Sciences (i.e., the 10th, 20th, …, 100th percentiles).

A multidimensional measure of social stratification within scientific communities

We run a Multiple Correspondence Analysis (Le Roux and Rouanet 2004 ) on the 12 categorized indicators for each macro field of science. Based on the Singular Value Decomposition of the matrix representing the 12 indicators, MCA yields individual-level numerical variables termed factorial axes. These factorial axes summarize the 12 indicators according to their multivariate correlations and relative importance. Due to the high number of categories of the 12 variables, our field-specific MCAs yield more than 50 factorial axes, most of which have very little informational value. We focus on the first three axes because their associated eigenvalues are significantly larger than the others, and therefore capture the most salient differences among scholars’ bibliometric performances (see Fig. S4 ).

Despite our age standardization, the first factorial axis of all MCAs came out as strongly correlated with scholars’ age and indicators of productivity, visibility, and collaboration. This result is partially due to the specificities of the one-year old group (e.g., reduced heterogeneity and very distinct profiles compared to older scholars), but also underscores the cumulative aspect of academic achievements with age. There is a clear age gradient in the first factorial axis for all age groups, not only the one year old, indicating that the incremental improvements in academic productivity, visibility, and collaboration grow as individuals progress in seniority.

Considering the significance of age in our study, and with the aim of improving comparability, we performed cluster analyses independently for six age groups: One-year-old, two to five, six to nine, 10 to 14, 15 to 20, and 21 to 25. Hence, we conducted 36 hierarchical clustering analyses (six macro fields of science multiplied by six age groups) based on the Ward method followed by a cluster consolidation via the K-means algorithms. Neighboring solutions with five, six, seven, and eight clusters were assessed using the ratio of between to total variance. These assessments led us to focus on a six-cluster solution (see SI). We term these clustering bibliometric classes and we use positional words to label them: bottom , low , mid-low , mid-high , high , and top . The marginal distribution of scholars across bibliometric classes measures the social stratification of science in each field. The differences between bibliometric classes in academic performance indicators capture the extent of hierarchies. We visualize these differences using factorial axes where distance implies differences and proximity implies similarity.

Network analysis of intra- and inter-class collaboration

To investigate whether members of identified bibliometric classes collaborate “within” their own class or with members of other classes and age groups, we construct global bipartite networks of co-authorship among the 8.2 million authors, identify its largest connected (giant) component and detect communities of densely collaborating scientists. In other words, we group authors into scientific communities according to their degrees of proximity in collaboration networks. Scholars that coauthor papers are maximally close, whereas authors without any coauthor in common are maximal distal. To identify communities, we use the Constant Potts Model (CPM) (Reichardt and Bornholdt 2004 ) and its extension to bipartite networks (Akbaritabar 2021 ; Akbaritabar and Barbato 2021 ; Traag et al. 2011 ) with a varying range of 18 resolution parameters. For robustness checks, we use three additional community detection algorithms from NetworKit (default algorithm, parallel Louvain, and parallel Label Propagation) and cross-check the identified communities. Additionally, we projected the bipartite network to a one-mode one, despite criticisms on such a projection and information loss it brings (Akbaritabar 2021 ; Akbaritabar and Barbato 2021 ), to use Leiden algorithm and results were robust and our storyline did not change (see SI).

We examine authors’ distribution across bibliometric classes within these identified scientific communities. For this analysis, we pooled all academic-age groups and compared the distribution of authors within each scientific community according to their academic age and bibliometric class. A side-by-side comparison of the bibliometric classes and academic-age distributions within scientific communities and entropy measures for these two distributions allows for assessing the nature and strength of stratification across scientific communities. Figure S1 presents the steps described above.

We represent social stratification in science and bibliometric classes using the first two MCA axes. We interpret these axes according to the variables’ percentage contribution to the variance, as displayed in Fig. 1 . A vertical line is drawn at the mean percentage contribution, i.e., 8.3%. Markers at the right of this vertical line indicate variables with above-average contributions to the axes’ variance. Different markers are used for each macro field of science.

The panels correspond to the first three factorial axes. The X-axis shows the variables' contribution to the axes' inertia. Markers' colors and shapes distinguish the OECD macro field of sciences. The vertical dashed line indicates the average percentage point contribution (100%/12 = 8%).

The variables that contribute the most to the first factorial axis are total publications, number of organizations, number of coauthored publications, average collaborations, and first-authored publications. Field differences are evident in the contribution of these variables to the first axis. For instance, in the Humanities (filled square), “Num. coauthored pubs.” and “Avg. collaborations” have a much lower contribution than “First author publications”, which can be explained by the fact that they are generally a non-collaborative field. The reverse is observed for the Social Sciences (filled diamond), where coauthored papers have a higher contribution to the first axis than first-author publications.

The first factorial axis correlates positively with academic age. This is a somewhat unexpected result given that we use indicators standardized by age. In all macro fields of science, there is an age-gradient in the first axis, and the mean coordinate of first and last age-groups are more than one standard deviation apart. There is no age gradient in any of the other axes. Therefore, when considering total publications, the number of organizations, coauthored publications, average collaborations, and first-author publications per year of age, senior scholars surpass their junior counterparts. In other words, the positive correlation between academic age and the first axis suggests that academic success accumulates with age, leading to progressively greater marginal gains. Thus, we labeled the first MCA axis as “Academic age, number of organizations, and individual productivity” despite the fact that age has not been used as an input in the MCA. A large coordinate in this axis represents older academic age, a relatively high number of organizations, and an above-average number of publications, as first-author in collaborations.

The variables that contribute the most to the second factorial axis are total, fractional (for some fields), and coauthored publications. In addition, the total number of citations and the number of national publications also contribute significantly to the second axis. We labeled the second axis as: “Total productivity, visibility, and collaborations.” Finally, the variables that contribute the most to the third factorial axis are first-authored publications, total publications, fractional publications, number of coauthored publications, and average collaborations. There is a large variety among fields of science in variables’ contributions to the third axis, yet, productivity and collaboration measures excel for their large contributions, particularly for the Humanities.

Hence, the organization of scholars according to their bibliometric indicators revolves around two main dimensions: “academic age, number of organizations, and individual productivity” on the one side, and “total productivity, visibility, and collaborations,” on the other. Scholars’ productivity is distinctly comprised in both dimensions. In the first dimension, productivity goes along with age and first-author publication. In the second dimension, productivity is less dependent on age and is associated with collaborations and citations. Interestingly, none of the mobility measures contribute significantly to the first three MCA axes that could stem from the very small share of mobile authors (about 8% in international and 12% in national moves).

Figure 2 displays authors’ distribution by fields of science according to the above-described main dimensions and the bibliometric classes detected via cluster analysis. Existing differences in academic practices (e.g., publication, collaboration, mobility, and citation) across fields of science require axes’ scales be free and prevent scaled comparisons across them. Authors with identical bibliometric measures are grouped and represented as circles to reduce overplotting. Circles’ size is proportional to the number of authors with identical bibliometric profiles. Although we conduct the analysis for all ages and find similar results across those (gray background circles), Fig. 2 highlights the bibliometric stratification of 15 to 20 year old scholars. The top group comprises the most successful authors based on combining our 12 bibliometric measures. The bottom-left includes those at the bottom of academic achievement indicators’ distributions.

Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) results using the 12 most widely used bibliometric variables allowed identifying six classes of scientists from Bottom, Low, Middle low, Middle high, High, to Top. In all six fields of science and five-year career groups from a minimum of 1 to a maximum of 25 years of publication career indexed in Scopus, we see the same stratified structure appearing. A minority of the top class is identified which consists of less or about 10% (in most fields) of the most successful scientists indicated with dark red colors in the figure. See figures in Supplementary Information (SI) for other academic age groups and disaggregated analysis based on gender of authors to males and females which did not show a change in the reported trends.

The clustering of authors according to their academic achievement is a measure of existing inequalities in these fields of science. Despite disciplinary differences in size and scientific practices, the commonalities in the stratification of authors are notable. In all six fields of science, the top class comprises a minority whose share ranges from a minimum of 6% in Humanities to a maximum of 19% in Natural Sciences. The bottom class ranges from a minimum of 22% in Natural Sciences to a maximum of 32% in Engineering and Technology. On the contrary, the middle- and bottom classes unanimously position towards the bottom left quadrant, meaning they are always worse off in terms of 12 bibliometric measures investigated here.

This structure replicates among other academic-age groups (refer to figures in SI) with the exception of the one-year old. Scholars’ bibliometric stratification is most pronounced within the oldest age group (i.e., 21-to-25 years old) with bibliometric classes comprising more similar shares compared to bibliometric classes among 15-to-20-year-old scholars (refer to Fig. S10 ). This greater uniformity in the size of bibliometric classes indicates a possible cumulative effect of bibliometric performance over time. The 21-to-25 years old group represents scholars who have been actively publishing in Scopus-indexed journals for over 20 years. Thus, they are likely committed to the principles of scientific production, or at least, to the norms governing publication systems, including their penalties and rewards.

In contrast, a strong pyramidal structure (i.e., very small shares at the top classes) appears among scholars with shorter durations in the publishing system, such as those aged one year or two to five years. This strong pyramidal pattern may stem from their limited exposure to publication systems, hindering the establishment of distinct patterns. Consequently, the correlations, feedback mechanisms, and synergistic effects among bibliometric indicators are yet to manifest fully among these younger scholars.

This multivariate approach to academic performance and bibliometric classes challenges the so-called 20/80 rule, showing that it does not apply to all cases. To illustrate this point, Fig. 3 compares the bottom and top classes’ contribution to the total output in 10 metrics among 15 to 20-year-old scholars. The vertical axes represent the outcome share coming from each class, and the numbers at the top indicate class’ sizes. For example, the bottom class in Agricultural Sciences comprises 28% of the authors in our sample. These scholars contribute less than 5% of the total international publications. The scholars who are in the top class, 18%, instead, contribute more than 55%.

A multivariate approach to academic performance shows that the assumption that 80% of outputs are produced by the top 20% contributors (the so-called 20/80 rule) does not hold for bibliometric variables. The top classes in all macro fields of science account for less than 80% of the total outputs across 10 indicators. Bottom classes’ contributions are meager highlighting the extreme heterogeneity across academic careers. Both, top and bottom classes display similar contributions to geographical and institutional mobility.

Figure 3 shows that bottom classes comprise one fourth of authors in all macro fields and contribute less than 5% of the total in seven out of 10 indicators. The three exceptions are the number of organizations, and national and international moves which are measures of mobility. In fact, the share contribution of the bottom classes to these three outcomes is similar to that of the top class, except in the Humanities where bottom class scholars contribute much larger shares. These similarities indicate that mobility, both geographical and institutional, is associated with both success and failure in bibliometric performance. This is coherent with the literature highlighting positive and negative implications for mobility such as higher impact and less stable network of collaborations (Sugimoto et al. 2017 ; Z. Zhao et al. 2020 ).

In contrast, the top classes, between 6% and 19% of authors, lead the contributions to international publications in all macro fields of science. However, even in the Natural Sciences, where their share contribution is the highest, they are far from contributing 80%, meaning that the 20/80 rule does not hold under a multivariate approach to academic performance. The top classes also excel by their contribution to national publications, Coauthored papers, and total citations. Share contributions to other outcomes by the top class are generally lower, particularly for outcomes that imply some mobility or change of institutional affiliation as highlighted above. Figure S5 in the SI displays the shared contribution of all classes for the 10 outcomes.

Another aspect of these bibliometric classes is whether authors from different classes belong to the same research communities identified in the co-authorship network. Figure 4 shows the distribution of authors according to bibliometric classes (Panel A) and academic age groups (Panel B) across 19,970 scientific communities with at least 20 authors (99% of authors and 42.7% of communities). These communities are identified from the collaboration networks measured through co-authorship of publications (see more information in methods section). In panels A and B, scientific communities are represented by horizontal lines sorted from largest (on the top) to smallest and the deciles of the community-size distribution are indicated in the vertical axis. According to these panels, bibliometric-based stratification is similar to stratification based on age, suggesting that collaboration networks comprise authors of all ages and from all bibliometric classes. This similarity of bibliometric-class and academic age compositions is confirmed by Panel C, which displays the empirical density of the community-level entropy of authors’ distribution by bibliometric classes and age groups. We display results for three community detection scenarios out of 18 that were assessed, to maintain the figure’s clarity (see further robustness results including evaluation of authors’ country of affiliation and gender in SI). The fact that all density curves are strongly skewed towards high entropy values (max entropy = 1) confirms our visual assessment of Panels A and B and suggests our results are robust to different community detection scenarios and algorithms.

To investigate the trends shown in Fig. 2 further and control the collaboration structure among the classes, we turned to co-authorship networks of the studied 28 million publications. Networks of collaboration in terms of co-authoring scientific publications among 8.2 million authors worldwide allowed us to identify communities of collaboration. We used the Constant Potts Model (CPM) and its extension for bipartite networks with a varying range of 18 thresholds for the resolution parameter to detect communities. In all these detected communities (only 3 shown in the figure to preserve clarity), we investigated the class ( A ) and age ( B ) composition of members. Independent from the threshold used, all these communities have a heterogeneous composition of classes and age groups and analysis of entropies of this stratification ( C ) indicates an inter-class and inter-age collaboration structure among the most and least prolific, collaborative/internationalized, and mobile scientists. SI includes figures with further robustness analysis using three other community detection algorithms, one-mode projection of the network and results using Leiden (Traag et al. 2019 ) algorithm, and also disaggregated analysis based on gender of authors to males and females which did not show a change in the reported trends.

This paper provided a quantitative assessment of the global inequalities in science using bibliometric data across fields of science and research communities. Our results show that a stratified system in terms of bibliometric performance exists in all macro fields of science, and it is as strong as fields’ stratification by academic age. As scholars age (i.e., progress to more senior academic career stages) and maintain consistent participation in publication systems, their positioning within the bibliometric-based academic hierarchy becomes clearer. This clarity evolves potentially due to increased exposure and experience in publishing, highlighting the role of time and continued scholarly activity in shaping bibliometric classes. In addition, we evaluated collaboration ties among classes and whether specific age groups dominate it. We provide the aggregated data to enable future research on the causes and consequences of this stratification (Akbaritabar and Castro Torres 2024 ).

Our multivariate assessment of bibliometric classes is grounded in the assumption that scholars’ prestige within their respective fields does not rely solely on a single indicator, such as the number of citations or publications. Instead, we assume that scholars’ standing and prestige is based on their performance across multiple indicators. Consequently, the top class includes authors who may not necessarily rank at the highest levels in every individual indicator but possess the most favorable overall academic profiles. Similarly, the middle and lower classes encompass authors with varying degrees of less favorable academic profiles. This conceptualization of academic performance introduces nuances to the conventional 20/80 rule, demonstrating that it does not necessarily apply universally. It emphasizes that individual contributions to a particular output are more intricate than the notion that the top 20% contribute 80% of the outcome. We found that top classes, defined multidimensionally, contribute less than 80% in most of the cases. Bottom classes’ contributions are minimal suggesting the existence of very distinct academic careers. While the causes and implications of these disparities are yet to be examined, we speculate that differential access to resources and additional labor (Zhang et al. 2022 ) that could be higher among the top class and be perpetuated through additional funding and new resources allocated to them in performance-based funding schemes (Akbaritabar et al. 2021 ; Zacharewicz et al. 2019 ) could drive the persisting trends. The positive age pattern of bibliometric stratification suggest that these are no unlikely speculations. Greater exposure to publication systems and continued publishing activities likely serve as reinforcing mechanisms, contributing to the observed patterns of bibliometric stratification advancement over academic age.

Science is transmitted from established scholars to new generations through a mentorship relationship that affects mentees’ future success (Ke et al. 2022 ; Liénard et al. 2018 ; Ma et al. 2020 ). Such supervisor-supervisee relationships inherently have an age component. Hence, we expect that a share of observed scientific collaborations will be among junior and senior scholars. Nevertheless, our results show that the proportion of scholars who exit the system after only one paper amounts to 25% or more of the members of identified communities, which cannot be solely representing the age structure of academia and could be driven by the performance measures described and the hierarchical structure inherent in them that drives a high proportion to exit the system. We emphasize that not all graduate students continue the career paths in research leading to continued publication activity. Nonetheless, the probability of having higher impact and citations in the science system is disproportionately distributed and highly stratified (Nielsen and Andersen 2021 ).

Our study has a descriptive nature, despite the comprehensive inclusion of all most widely used bibliometric variables, their relationships, while considering academic age differences and fields of science. With the current descriptive setup, it is not possible to evaluate if the observed quantitative stratification signals inequality in access to resources such as research assistants and junior collaborators (Zhang et al. 2022 ). We do not know much about the type of contracts or positions these studied researchers hold; we only know their academic age. Similarly, the prestige of these academic institutions is not covered in our analysis, as well as the national policies that might affect the resources one accesses. These differences in resources and environment affect the type of research one can do and could lead to a different position on observational data i.e., bibliometric indicators. While our study sheds light on the stratifications because of its elaborated and comprehensive use of all relevant bibliometric variables, we did not have a causal setup and cannot evaluate the underlying causes leading to the reported stratifications and presented arguments on potential causes are based on our speculations.

Bibliometric indicators are widely used in national research assessment exercises (Akbaritabar et al. 2021 ; Zacharewicz et al. 2019 ) to determine who should be hired and promoted and whose research should be funded (Sugimoto and Larivière 2018 ). Based on our analysis, which was possible by adopting a global, multivariate, and multi-method framework to debunk the widely-spread myths about increased productivity, collaboration, internationalization, mobility, and impact among scientists, we call for a further elaborated investigation of these trends. We propose considering academic age, career cohorts and composition of a multitude of bibliometric variables instead of solely relying on one-indicator explanations which might be appealing to attract policy-makers’ attention, but might be detrimental to our understanding of the science system, its social structure, and its inherent stratification and intersectional inequalities (Kozlowski et al. 2022 ).

Data availability

All data to replicate presented results are publicly accessible under: Aliakbar Akbaritabar, & Castro Torres, A. F. (2024). Replication data for: A global perspective on social stratification in science (1.0). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12527944 .

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Acknowledgements

We thank Cassidy R. Sugimoto for helpful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. This study has received access to the bibliometric data through the project “Kompetenznetzwerk Bibliometrie” and we acknowledge their funder Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (grant number 16WIK2101A). AFCT received support from the Catalonian Goverment (grant number 2021 BP 00027). Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.

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Akbaritabar, A., Castro Torres, A.F. & Larivière, V. A global perspective on social stratification in science. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 11 , 914 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-03402-w

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A Deep Dive into Erikson’s Eight Stages of Human Development

This essay about Erik Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development explains eight distinct stages that occur throughout a person’s life. Each stage presents unique challenges that must be resolved for healthy psychological growth and the acquisition of essential virtues. From infancy’s trust versus mistrust to late adulthood’s integrity versus despair, the essay emphasizes the importance of successfully navigating these stages to achieve overall well-being and fulfill developmental potential. Caregivers, educators, and mental health professionals play a crucial role in supporting individuals through these stages, promoting healthier and more fulfilling lives.

How it works

Erik Erikson, visible figure in an experience psychology, developed an all-round theory, what is described by eight expressive phases of psychosocjologicznego development, then takes place during life of person. Every phase presented an unique conflict or call that individuals must decide, to develop a healthy person and acquire substantial virtues. This essay provides, deep look at these phases, doing an accent on their value and influence on human development.

First phase, Trust against Mistrust, intervals of age approximately to 18 months. During this critical period, babies consist fully in them caregivers for a feed and comfort.

Successive and loving the results of caring in foundational sense of trust in the world. From other side, the inconsistent or inattentive caring encourages a mistrust, potentially preventing to form ability of child safe mutual relations later in life.

Second phase, Autonomy against Shame and Doubt, takes place between 18 months and three years. As children, that begins walks begin to declare their independence through tasks like motion, speaking, and toilet studies, they develop sense of autonomy. However, superfluously critical or managing caregivers can instil feelings of shame and to doubt about the capabilities of child, bothering their confidence.

From centuries three to five, children inculcate Initiative against phase of Guilt. During this phase, they become anymore assertive and accepted game and second activity. Encouragement from parents and teachers encourages sense of initiative, while embarrassment or excessive criticism can take to guilt and unwillingness, to pursue their aims. Fourth phase, Industry against anymore subzero Statute, takes place from six centuries to eleven. To attain Children of School age of strive to the competense in academic and social habits. Positive strengthening from parents, teachers, and peers brings up sense of industry and trust to their ability. From other side, repeated a refuse or absence of encouragement can take to feelings anymore subzero position and deserving diminished for itself.

Youth, from centuries 12 to 18, characterizes Identity against phase of Confusion of Role. Teenagers investigate different roles, values, and faith, to form the personal identity. Successfully, translating this phase takes to strong sense itself and direction, while a refuse takes to confusion of role and uncertainty about the place in the world. Sixth phase, Closeness against Isolation, takes place during young adult life (makes old 19 to 40). For this time, individuals aim to form deeply, meaningful mutual relations with the second. Successfully, setting these cleating takes to the strong mutual relations and sense of commonunication. Refuse so can do to take to loneliness and isolation.

From centuries 40 to 65, individuals experience Generativity against phase of Stagnation. Grew to in this phase of center on a help to society from work, public bringing in, and lifting children. Sense of generativity is the result of sense, productive and creations of positive action in the world. In a difference from that, feelings of stagnation take place, when individuals feel unproductive or od??czonym from their society and next generation.

The final stage, Integrity vs. Despair, begins around age 65 and lasts until death. In this stage, individuals reflect on their lives and accomplishments. A sense of integrity emerges when they view their lives as fulfilling and meaningful, leading to feelings of contentment and wisdom. Conversely, if they perceive their lives as wasted or full of regrets, they may experience despair and dissatisfaction.

Erikson’s theory highlights the sequential nature of these stages, emphasizing that each stage builds upon the previous ones. Successfully resolving conflicts at each stage is crucial for overall psychological well-being. This developmental framework offers valuable insights into understanding human behavior and guiding individuals through various life challenges. By recognizing the importance of these stages, caregivers, educators, and mental health professionals can better support individuals’ growth and development, promoting healthier and more fulfilling lives.

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The role of tide and wind in modulating density stratification in the pearl river estuary during the dry season, 1. introduction, 2. regional settings, 3.1. numerical model, 3.2. model setup, 3.3. model calibration, 4.1. water exchage, 4.2. intra-tidal variation in stratification, 4.3. transverse distribution of stratification, 5. discussion, 5.1. wind modulation on water transport, 5.2. controlling factors in stratification, 5.3. conceptual diagram and comparisons with other estuaries, 6. conclusions, author contributions, informed consent statement, data availability statement, conflicts of interest.

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Zhu, L.; Sheng, J.; Pang, L. The Role of Tide and Wind in Modulating Density Stratification in the Pearl River Estuary during the Dry Season. J. Mar. Sci. Eng. 2024 , 12 , 1241. https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse12081241

Zhu L, Sheng J, Pang L. The Role of Tide and Wind in Modulating Density Stratification in the Pearl River Estuary during the Dry Season. Journal of Marine Science and Engineering . 2024; 12(8):1241. https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse12081241

Zhu, Lei, Jiangchuan Sheng, and Liwen Pang. 2024. "The Role of Tide and Wind in Modulating Density Stratification in the Pearl River Estuary during the Dry Season" Journal of Marine Science and Engineering 12, no. 8: 1241. https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse12081241

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