Development of the conception of economic inequality: II. Explanations, justifications, and concepts of social mobility and change.

Abstract

Children and adolescents from four social classes were interviewed about their concepts of economic inequality. Adolescents were more likely than children to explain and justify inequality by referring to equity and were more fatalistic in their conceptions of change and in justifying wealth and poverty. Younger children were more likely than adolescents to claim that individual mobility and social change could be achieved through others giving money and less likely to say that social change could be achieved by changing the social structure. Upper-middleclass subjects were more likely than others to claim that poverty cannot be changed and that poverty is due to equity or wasting money arid less likely than lowerclass subjects to claim that the poor should not suffer. Lower class 17-year-olds were more likely than any other group to claim that the rich would resist social change. Blacks were less likely than whites to claim that poverty is due to bad luck or is fated. The findings are discussed in terms of cognitive-developmental trends, functionalist effects, and conflict theory. Numerous psychologists and sociologists from widely divergent perspectives have argued that social class has a considerable effect in the lives of individuals (Deutsch, Katz, Jensen, 1968; Jencks, 1972; Marx, 1844/ 1966; Parsons, 1960; Weber, 1946). Despite the emphasis on the importance of social class, however, little is known of how individuals come to conceptualize social class systems. The few studies of adults and children have been concerned with the criteria that people use in placing others into classes or their knowledge of which occupations or possessions are associated with different social classes (Centers, 1949; Simmons & Rosenberg, 1971; Tudor, 1971). However, theorists of stratificatio n (e.g., Marx, Parsons, and Weber) claim that an essential focus of