Social inequality

Soc

How resources, opportunity, and health are unequally distributed — across space, across social class, and in health outcomes.

Depth

Full detail

Filters

Spatial inequality

term Soc low-yield

Inequality mapped onto place: residential segregation, unequal neighborhood resources, environmental justice, and global core–periphery inequality.

Residential segregation concentrates advantage or disadvantage by geography; neighborhoods differ in schools, safety, food access (food deserts), and pollution exposure (environmental justice addresses the unequal environmental burden on poor and minority communities). Globally, world-systems framing describes inequality between nations — wealthy core, dependent periphery, and semi-periphery between.

Social class & social mobility

Soc med-yield

Stratification by class, measured by SES, reproduced across generations, and (sometimes) escaped through social mobility.

Stratification systems range from closed (caste) to open (class). Socioeconomic status (SES) combines income, education, and occupation; Weber argued stratification is multidimensional — economic class, social prestige (status), and power (party). Inequality persists through social reproduction — the transmission of advantage via cultural capital (knowledge, tastes, credentials) and social capital (networks). Intersectionality describes how overlapping identities (class, race, gender) compound disadvantage. Poverty: absolute (below subsistence) vs. relative (below the societal standard); the culture of poverty debate and social exclusion. Social mobility: intergenerational (vs. parents) vs. intragenerational (within a lifetime), vertical vs. horizontal, and the contested ideal of meritocracy.

Don't confuse

Intergenerational (across generations) vs. intragenerational (within one person's lifetime) mobility; cultural capital (non-financial assets like knowledge/style) vs. social capital (the value of your networks).

Health disparities

Soc med-yield

Health and healthcare access differ systematically by class, race/ethnicity, and gender — the payoff concept linking stratification to well-being.

The SES gradient in health: lower SES predicts worse health at nearly every level, via access to care, environmental exposures, stress, and health behaviors. Disparities also fall along race/ethnicity and gender lines. Connect this back to social epidemiology and medicalization (9A) and to the structural/social causes of disease — the throughline that stratification (FC10) drives well-being (the section's closing theme).

Worked question

A first-generation college student notices that her wealthier classmates navigate office hours, professional networking, and unwritten academic norms with an ease she had to learn from scratch. Her classmates' advantage is best described as: