Monday's reading

Social inequality is an everyday issue in the United States. The inequality is created by various factors such as unequal levels of social mobility, which includes aspects of society such as income, wealth, and occupation. Also, bias against certain minority groups leads to more seriously integrated social inequality. Emily Beller and Michael Hout, the authors of “Intergenerational Social Mobility: The United States in Comparative Perspective,” explained the trends of social mobility in the United States. From this article, it is noticeable that economic growth leads to effective growth of mobility. The authors depict that “social mobility from one generation to the next is the difference between a person’s current income, wealth, or occupation and that of the family that raised her” (20). Intergenerational social mobility is powerful in the United States because the children are mostly influenced economically and politically by their parents. One of the most interesting points about the U.S. social mobility that the authors Beller and Hout made in this article is that the mobility of wealth, occupation, and income resemble one another: the immobility is highest among the top and bottom classes. In order to achieve more advanced social equality among different levels of class entities and higher mobility, the education of children should be emphasized. “Educational opportunity promotes social mobility not only by distributing human capital in many ways that are independent of social origins, but also loosening the ties between occupational and income origins and destinations among college graduates” (31).

In the United States, race is also important factor which is used to identify the social inequality. In Oliver and Shapiro’s writing, “Black wealth, white wealth: a new perspective on racial inequality,” the authors illustrate about the African American’s unequal and slow social and economic transformations throughout the history. Especially in the chapter of “Race, Wealth, and Equality,” they focus on the racial discrimination: “blacks were unable to enter the housing market on the same terms as other groups before them” (15). Although there were many wealth African Americans who hoped to have homeownerships, many time they were discouraged by higher loan-rejection rates and “exorbitant and pawnshop-style interest rates with unfavorable conditions” (21). From the 1960s, there was progressive development of the conditions of African Americans through increasing participation in political parties, and achieving professional and technological occupational positions. However, the “persistent dimensions of racial inequality” did not disappear completely until today. The unequal distribution of wealth explains the structured inequalities for racial groups.

Because of various obstacles in U.S. society, the accumulation of wealth is difficult for Americans who are positioned in the lower classes. Also, those few millionaire groups that are positioned in the highest class obtain wealth that is inherited. Social inequality in the United States is inherited from a long history. Many current things such as high social immobility, unequally-distributed wealth, and disadvantaged minority groups are still unresolved problems in U.S. society.