SOC 340 Chapter Notes - Chapter 3: Whitehall Study, Lower Middle Class, Upper Middle Class
Document Summary
In the us the poor face substantial barriers in life: typically have worse health than the affluent, are treated within framework of welfare medicine, live in disadvantaged urban and rural locales. Socioeconomic status or social class is the strongest and most consistent predictor of a person"s health and life expectancy across the life course regardless of access to health care delivery system. A social class is a category or group of people who have approximately the same amount of wealth, status and power in a society. Different models exist: five class model used in the us. Europeans tend to focus more on occupational differences as the chief component of class position. American sociologists usually rely on socioeconomic status (ses: influenced by theories of karl marx and max weber, wealth is an important component but weber also included social status and power, measure by there variables. Education appears to be most important component of ses in predicting health outcomes.
