The Ranking Machine
Every society sorts its members into layers with unequal access to money, power, and prestige. Stratification is that layering as a system, a property of the society rather than isolated individuals.
Systems differ in sealed layers. Caste systems fix position at birth, while class systems allow movement, though modern economies feature sticky floors and ceilings.
Weber split rank into three currencies that need not travel together, countering Marx's single economic axis:
| Currency | What it is | Business face |
|---|---|---|
| Class | Market position and assets | Salary, equity |
| Status | Social honor and lifestyle | Title, corner office |
| Party | Organized power | Board seat, network |
Common pitfall: Collapsing all three into income. A judge outranks a crypto trader in status while earning less.
Measuring layers relies on socioeconomic status (SES), combining income, education, and occupational prestige. The Lorenz curve plots population share against cumulative income share. The Gini coefficient compresses that sag into a single score from 0 to 1:
Mobility measures movement between layers across intergenerational, intragenerational, and structural shifts. Stratification shapes who buys what and which talent pools exist.
Reading the Ladder
How open is a society really? Sociologists use a mobility table where rows are parents' class and columns are children's class. Cells on the diagonal show immobility, while off-diagonal cells show movement.
Absolute numbers mislead because offices expanded. Structural mobility is the tide lifting everyone. Relative mobility removes that tide to ask if origins still predict destinations.
Odds ratios are the microscope. They compare the odds of a top-born child reaching the top versus a bottom-born child doing the same:
An odds ratio of 1 means pure fluidity. Real economies run much higher, showing inherited advantage.
The Great Gatsby curve shows that countries with higher Gini coefficients have lower intergenerational mobility. Inequality and stickiness travel together.
Tip: Always split mobility into absolute (how many moved due to economic shifts) and relative (whose chances improved via odds ratios). Societies celebrate the first, but meritocracy requires the second.
Common pitfall: Reading the diagonal as pure unfairness. It shows the pattern, but explaining it requires looking beyond the raw table counts.