Identification

• Social stratification refers to the hierarchical arrangement of social classes within a given society. This stratification produces societal inequality.
  
  

History

• The theory of social stratification builds on the work of the 19th-century German sociologist Max Weber, who observed stratification along class and status lines.
  
  

Features

• A consequence of stratification is that people have differing levels of access to social resources, such as education, wealth and political power.
  
  

Geography

• Weber believed that the United States, in contrast to Europe, lacked social-class divisions and had high levels of upward mobility. Later research by other sociologists, however, documented differences between America's labor and business classes.
  
  

Types

• In the early 1940s, Harvard sociologists identified upper, middle and lower classes in American society, each with their own subcultures.
  
  

Effects

• The rigidity of social stratification varies according to a society's level of social mobility. The greater the level of social mobility, the more easily a person can move from a lower social class to a higher one.