- Ascriptive and achieved status--Ascriptive status is what you are born with--gender, race, ethnicity, age, etc. Achieved status could be CEO, college graduate, GED certificate holder, student, teacher, parent, etc.
- Class--definitions of class can vary. For instance, Marx considered two classes--the owners of capital and land (bourgeois), and those who worked for them (proletariat). We often use loose terms like 'middle,' 'upper' and 'lower' that by proxy refer to income. But class is about more than just income, as people coming from different classes clearly have some general shared traits (in terms of values, use of language, work experience, educational background, etc.). I'm mainly interested in you understanding that social class makes a difference, and there is limited social mobility between classes.
- Poverty--It is both a concept and a process, with urban and rural dimensions
- Human capital--economic capital may refer to money, machinery/equipment, etc.--factors of production. Natural capital might refer to natural resources--timber, minerals, water, etc. Human capital refers to skills that an individual acquires, for instance, you might be bilingual, know how to fix aircraft engines, use various software programs, be familiar with state bureaucracies--these are all part of our skills sets, or human capital.
- Social capital--Social capital is sometimes thought of as a bank of 'favors.' For instance, you have a meeting after class about a term pproject (hint hint ...), you need someone to help out with child care, it may be a relative, friend, etc. Your membership in the rotary club gives you access to business people that helps you figure out what the local business climate is, and make decisions. A support group is another example of social capital. In other words, as opposed to the personal skills you possess, social capital includes the 'social' assets that you can draw on.
- Social mobility--the ability to move from one stratum or class in society to another--it could be up, it could be down, it has more to do with mobility than direction.
- Social inequality: unequal access to valued resources, services and positions--schools, for instance, or even decent voting machines, transportation services. As opposed to income inequality (which would basically be just measuring income differences).
- Social stratification--When inequality becomes rigid, hardened, institutionalized (severely limiting social mobility, for instance).
- Means-tested programs--these one must qualify for (there is a 'means test'). Generally, these programs are more stigmatized than insurance programs (the concept of the able-bodied, 'undeserving').
- Social insurance programs--generally go to the 'deserving' population that has paid into them (unemployment, Social Security, Welfare). We really only talked about Social Security here.
- Welfare-a multi-dimensional concept--I'll let you wrestle with this one.
- Block grant--fixed sum of money usually from the federal to the state government. Because it is not necessarily tied to need, block grants can provide surplus assistance (when income tax collection and the economy is good), or come up far short when the economy is in a downturn.
- cash vs in-kind--Welfare programs may distribute cash (e.g., TANF), or they may provide in-kind services, which may take the form of cash for food (e.g., food stamps, farmers' market vouchers, WIC), or other services (e.g., health care, child care, job training).
- entitlement--generally refers to a welfare program that, if one qualifies, one is entitled to receive. Entitlement programs can be expensive and make budget planning difficult during difficult economic times. However, they offer the guarantee that if one qualifies, the services will be available. The 1996 Welfare Reform changed AFDC from an entitlement program to a block grant.
- Welfare
reform--know what welfare reform tried to do; understand the rationale
behind work and family values enforcement, what sanctioning means, the role of social control and the rules that govern
the welfare reform law PRWORA (from Hays chapters 2-3)
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