Social stratification — Sociology, 14–17 years
How societies arrange people into layers with unequal access to money, power, status and opportunities.
idea
Social stratification means that people are placed in social layers, and those layers do not receive the same resources or respect. Class, wealth, education, occupation, gender and ethnicity can all affect a person's position. It is about patterns built into society, not simply about one person's effort or personality.
why
Sociologists use this idea to explain why advantages and disadvantages often persist across generations. Early thinkers noticed that industrial societies divided people by ownership, work and income, while later researchers added status, power and other inequalities. Without the idea of layers, unequal outcomes can look like unrelated individual accidents.
worked example
Imagine two pupils with similar marks. One has a quiet room, a laptop and help with homework; the other shares a crowded room, has weak internet and works after school. First, compare their resources, not just their effort. Then ask whether these differences are common for people in their social positions. That turns one story into evidence about stratification.
common trap
A reasonable mistake is to treat stratification as a simple ladder, with every person neatly placed on one rung. Real lives are more mixed: someone may have high income but little public respect, or excellent education but insecure work. Sociologists therefore examine several dimensions and avoid assuming that one label explains a whole life.
where it is used
The idea helps researchers study differences in housing, health, education, voting and access to technology. A city might map home energy costs and discover that poorer households spend a larger share of their income keeping warm. This can guide fairer policy, but it does not predict exactly what any one household will do.
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