Two fascinating stories were in the news recently. The first involved a 41-year-old man who is suing his parents for financial support. Yes, you read that correctly. Faiz Siddiqui, a 41-year old man, wants his parents to financially support him. It is worth noting that he is not without skills or intelligence. In fact, he has a law degree from Oxford University. He has been unemployed since 2011, choosing not to work. In fact, he identifies himself as a “vulnerable grown-up child.” Up until now, Siddiqui’s parents, who live in Dubai, have allowed him to live rent-free in their London flat. They have also paid his bills and given him the equivalent of $555 per week of spending money. After having a family dispute, his parents decided it was time for Siddiqui to be responsible for his own life. Siddiqui feels that his parents should continue to pay for maintaining him at the standard of living to which he has become accustomed. Doing anything less, he says, is a “violation of his human rights.”
The second story is about an economic experiment in Stockton, California. In this experiment, poor Stockton residents received $500 per month for two years to use any way that they wanted. There were no strings attached to the money. After two years, officials found that the recipients used the money to better their lives by paying off debt, buying necessities like food, purchasing clothes and diapers for extended family members in need, and advancing their careers by paying for things like their education toward a real estate license. Across the board, people in the Stockton program did not waste the money on frivolous commodities but used it to better their lives. Researchers also found that the recipients’ mental health improved dramatically because they were not constantly worrying about money. On the face of it, these two stories are very different. However, if we dig a little deeper, we can see that they are both about aspects of social stratification, a system in which categories of people are ranked in a hierarchy. Let’s take a moment to find out more about this important idea.
While the definition of social stratification gives us an overview of the concept, by digging deeper, we find that, among other things, social stratification is about income, wealth, and poverty. Consider, for instance, the first story about Faiz Siddiqui. He is a grown man who comes from wealth, the total of all personal assets including property and investments, but has no income, money earned on a regular basis through work. Arguably, if he put his law degree to work, he would not only earn an income but could potentially accumulate enough resources to qualify as upper class, a category of people who maintain the highest status and resources within a society, without his parents’ help. Siddiqui is a perfect example of someone who has incredible life chances, opportunities, and resources a person has at their disposal to improve their quality of life, but fails to use them.
The financial experiment in Stockton, California, was also about life chances. People in the lower class, the lowest category of people within a social hierarchy, received money for two years to do as they pleased. Truthfully, though, they received more than money. In fact, they received an opportunity to use resources to improve their quality of life. It is worth noting that the recipients of the Stockton money were not living in absolute poverty, a threshold in which an individual does not have enough resources to meet their basic survival needs. More accurately, they were living in relative poverty, a subjective level at which an individual or family experiences a deprived lifestyle. Yet, and still, the money made a huge difference in their lives. In addition to improving their life chances, it also opened up the possibility of upward social mobility, an individual’s or group’s movement up or down the system of stratification in society.
