Sociology Reflective Essay
‘Social Stratification is the division of large numbers of people into layers according to their relative property, power, and prestige; applies to both nations and to people within a nation, society, or other group.’ (Henslin, James,2011) There are basically four systems to socially stratify a family. Social class, as one of the systems will be investigated in the following paragraphs.
(1) Identification of my family’s social class position and explanations of it:
Social class is fundamentally determined by how much wealth you have. Income, education and gender are three major factors that I would consider to determine my family’s social class position. Concisely speaking, I came from a single-parent family which I only live with my mother. My mother is the only person who is officially employed in my family. Her occupation is a salesperson at a beauty centre with unstable income. One other important financial income of our family will be the alimony given from my father who no longer lives with us. Our household income per month is about $10,000. According to the 2006 Population By-census, the median monthly domestic household income (at current prices) was $ 17,250. Although there are only two people in my family, our monthly income is nearly 40% below the median figure in 2006. Individually, my mother does not receive stable income so her monthly income tends to be lower than the median monthly income of an employed individual of $ 10,000. In conclusion, my family’s income is comparably low; especially the data was collected in 2006 which inflation has already been excluded.
Education is counted as an essential factor determining social class as it’s believed that well-educated people can always get well-pay jobs with comfortable working environments. As mentioned in the 2006 Population By-census report, people with higher educational attainment generally have higher income than less educated ones. Also, in the past few decades, only economically
(1) Identification of my family’s social class position and explanations of it:
Social class is fundamentally determined by how much wealth you have. Income, education and gender are three major factors that I would consider to determine my family’s social class position. Concisely speaking, I came from a single-parent family which I only live with my mother. My mother is the only person who is officially employed in my family. Her occupation is a salesperson at a beauty centre with unstable income. One other important financial income of our family will be the alimony given from my father who no longer lives with us. Our household income per month is about $10,000. According to the 2006 Population By-census, the median monthly domestic household income (at current prices) was $ 17,250. Although there are only two people in my family, our monthly income is nearly 40% below the median figure in 2006. Individually, my mother does not receive stable income so her monthly income tends to be lower than the median monthly income of an employed individual of $ 10,000. In conclusion, my family’s income is comparably low; especially the data was collected in 2006 which inflation has already been excluded.
Education is counted as an essential factor determining social class as it’s believed that well-educated people can always get well-pay jobs with comfortable working environments. As mentioned in the 2006 Population By-census report, people with higher educational attainment generally have higher income than less educated ones. Also, in the past few decades, only economically
References: (1) Thematic Report :Household Income Distributionin Hong Kong 2006 Population By-census http://www.statistics.gov.hk/publication/stat_report/population/B11200452006XXXXB0401.pdf (2) Salary Scale of Common Posts in the Non-governmental Organizations w.e.f 1.4.2009 http://www.swd.gov.hk/doc/ngo/Salary%20Scale%20of%20Common%20Posts%20wef%201%204%202009.pdf (3) Sociology: A Down-to-Earth Approach (Henslin, James,2011)