SOCA 101 WVU- BREWSTER QUIZ 4
TEST QUESTIONS WITH 100%
CORRECT ANSWERS 2026-2027
UPDATED.
Social inequality - Answer a disparity in income, wealth, power, prestige, and other valued
resources
Social stratification - Answer the systematic ranking of different groups of people in a
hierarchy of inequality
--A hierarchical ranking of people who have different access to valued resources
--Property, prestige, power, and status
Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore - Answer -Structural Functionalist
-Most functionally important positions require more skill, talent, and training than others and
suffer from scarcity of personnel.
-Society offers rewards such as money, prestige, and leisure to ensure most important jobs are
filled conscientiously by most competent people.
Meritocracy - Answer -Structural Functionalist
-society where personal success is based on talent and individual effort
Herbert Gans - Answer -Structural Functionalist
-Explanation for inequality and poverty
--Laborers to do society's "dirty work"
--Creates jobs for people who help the poor
--Market for goods/services otherwise unused
--Serve as scapegoats for society's problems
----Those who are better off in society are not motivated to comprehensively fight poverty
because its existence is demonstrably functional for them.
Social Conflict Perspective - Answer -Those who have power use stratification to create
economic, political, or social conditions that favor them and their children, even if they are
detrimental to the lower classes or exploitative.
Karl Marx - Answer -conflict exists between workers, who must sell their labor to survive, and
capitalists, who own the means of production.
, --Majority of new jobs are in service sector
---Low wages, few benefits, poor hours
Achieved status - Answer -linked to acquisition of socially valued credentials or skills
Ascribed status - Answer -linked to characteristics that cannot be altered (race, gender)
Stratified Societies - Answer -Hierarchical positions of social categories tend to change slowly
over time
Stratification in a Caste Society - Answer -Social levels are closed, individuals remain at the
social level of their birth throughout life
--Based on personal characteristics present at birth: race, ethnicity, parental religion, parental
caste
--Mobility virtually impossible
--Ascribed rather than achieved characteristics
--U.S. slavery and segregation era
--India's historical legacy of a caste hierarchy
-Social mobility allows someone to change their socioeconomic position
--Class position determined by economic status (whether earned or inherited) rather than by
religion or tradition
Relatively fluid - Answer -boundaries between classes can be crossed
Achieved status rather than ascribed - Answer -status given not by birth but by merit or
achievement in areas such as education and occupation
Income - Answer -the amount of money a person or household earns in a given period of time
--Job salary, investments, social security, disability
--Food, clothing, shelter, health care, and other costs of daily living
--Median U.S. household income constantly fluctuating
---Projecting another drop in census
--Average CEO makes 320 times average worker
---Growing nearly 940% in the last 40 years
--Average college graduate earns about $20.85 an hour (even when they earn a salary)
--Average high school graduate earns about $10.66 an hour
TEST QUESTIONS WITH 100%
CORRECT ANSWERS 2026-2027
UPDATED.
Social inequality - Answer a disparity in income, wealth, power, prestige, and other valued
resources
Social stratification - Answer the systematic ranking of different groups of people in a
hierarchy of inequality
--A hierarchical ranking of people who have different access to valued resources
--Property, prestige, power, and status
Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore - Answer -Structural Functionalist
-Most functionally important positions require more skill, talent, and training than others and
suffer from scarcity of personnel.
-Society offers rewards such as money, prestige, and leisure to ensure most important jobs are
filled conscientiously by most competent people.
Meritocracy - Answer -Structural Functionalist
-society where personal success is based on talent and individual effort
Herbert Gans - Answer -Structural Functionalist
-Explanation for inequality and poverty
--Laborers to do society's "dirty work"
--Creates jobs for people who help the poor
--Market for goods/services otherwise unused
--Serve as scapegoats for society's problems
----Those who are better off in society are not motivated to comprehensively fight poverty
because its existence is demonstrably functional for them.
Social Conflict Perspective - Answer -Those who have power use stratification to create
economic, political, or social conditions that favor them and their children, even if they are
detrimental to the lower classes or exploitative.
Karl Marx - Answer -conflict exists between workers, who must sell their labor to survive, and
capitalists, who own the means of production.
, --Majority of new jobs are in service sector
---Low wages, few benefits, poor hours
Achieved status - Answer -linked to acquisition of socially valued credentials or skills
Ascribed status - Answer -linked to characteristics that cannot be altered (race, gender)
Stratified Societies - Answer -Hierarchical positions of social categories tend to change slowly
over time
Stratification in a Caste Society - Answer -Social levels are closed, individuals remain at the
social level of their birth throughout life
--Based on personal characteristics present at birth: race, ethnicity, parental religion, parental
caste
--Mobility virtually impossible
--Ascribed rather than achieved characteristics
--U.S. slavery and segregation era
--India's historical legacy of a caste hierarchy
-Social mobility allows someone to change their socioeconomic position
--Class position determined by economic status (whether earned or inherited) rather than by
religion or tradition
Relatively fluid - Answer -boundaries between classes can be crossed
Achieved status rather than ascribed - Answer -status given not by birth but by merit or
achievement in areas such as education and occupation
Income - Answer -the amount of money a person or household earns in a given period of time
--Job salary, investments, social security, disability
--Food, clothing, shelter, health care, and other costs of daily living
--Median U.S. household income constantly fluctuating
---Projecting another drop in census
--Average CEO makes 320 times average worker
---Growing nearly 940% in the last 40 years
--Average college graduate earns about $20.85 an hour (even when they earn a salary)
--Average high school graduate earns about $10.66 an hour
