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Psych/Soc 10A: Social Inequality

Stratification drawn as space, as class, and as a health gradient: segregation maps, mobility ladders with honest rung spacing, and outcomes plotted by income.

18 topics · 70 questions

Each topic is a path, not a menu: work down it in order and every question builds on the one above. Click any of them to watch the answer draw itself.

10A. Residential Segregation

  1. How it worksHow did redlining, restrictive covenants, and lending practice sort a city block by block?
  2. Worked exampleFind what a dissimilarity index of 0.70 says about how many people would have to move to even a city out.
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't residential segregation explained by people simply preferring to live near their own group?
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to a segregated city's schools and clinics when school and clinic catchments follow address?
Your turnhard1 of 3
A city has two tracts. Group A numbers 81 thousand in tract 1 and 23 thousand in tract 2; Group B numbers 24 thousand in tract 1 and 70 thousand in tract 2. What is the index of dissimilarity for these two groups, on a 0 to 1 scale?

10A. Neighborhood Safety and Violence

  1. How it worksHow does concentrated disadvantage weaken the collective efficacy that keeps a street safe?
  2. How it worksWalk me through chronic exposure to violence loading onto the body as allostatic load.
  3. Worked exampleFind how a neighborhood's asthma and injury rates shift when vacant lots are cleaned and greened.
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to health when residents avoid outdoor exercise because the streets feel unsafe?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
In a randomised greening trial, vacant lots are cleaned and planted. Injury rates on the treated blocks fall from 26 per 1000 residents a year to 13 per 1000. By what percent did the injury rate fall?

10A. Environmental Justice

  1. How it worksHow does cheap land, weak political voice, and existing zoning route hazards toward poor communities?
  2. Worked exampleFind the exposure difference when one tract holds 4 waste facilities and a wealthier tract holds none.
  3. How it worksWalk me through lead exposure in old housing turning into measurable cognitive outcomes.
  4. Ties togetherHow does environmental justice link spatial inequality directly to a measurable health disparity?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
A tract with 31 thousand residents hosts 6 permitted waste facilities, against a county average of 6 facilities per 100000 residents. How many facilities per 100000 residents does this tract have?

10A. Social Class and Socioeconomic Status

  1. How it worksHow does socioeconomic status combine income, education, and occupational prestige into one position?
  2. How it worksWalk me through a doctoral student and a plumber landing in different places on each component.
  3. Worked exampleFind the socioeconomic position of a teacher, a plumber, and a startup founder on all three components.
  4. Common mistakeWhy isn't social class the same as how much money a person currently earns?
Your turneasy1 of 3
A person sits at the 48th percentile of income, the 86th percentile of education and the 83th percentile of occupational prestige. Taking the three components as equally weighted, what is this person's composite socioeconomic percentile?

10A. Class Consciousness and False Consciousness

  1. How it worksHow does class consciousness convert a statistical category into a group that can act together?
  2. How it worksWalk me through false consciousness keeping a group aligned with interests that are not their own.
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't false consciousness just another word for people being uninformed?
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to a movement when a shared grievance becomes a shared identity?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Of 1079 survey respondents whose household incomes place them in the bottom fifth of the distribution, 595 describe themselves as middle class. What percent of this group describes itself as middle class?

10A. Cultural Capital and Social Capital

  1. How it worksHow does cultural capital operate as knowledge, taste, and credentials that institutions quietly reward?
  2. How it worksWalk me through social capital as the value stored in who a person knows and can call on.
  3. Worked exampleFind which capital is doing the work when a referral, not an application, produces a job offer.
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to a first-generation student who has the grades but not the campus cultural script?
Your turneasy1 of 3
A firm fills 339 positions in a year; 155 of the hires reached the firm through a personal referral rather than an open application. What percent of hires came through referrals?

10A. Social Reproduction

  1. How it worksHow does social reproduction pass class position forward through schools, networks, and inheritance?
  2. How it worksWalk me through one advantage compounding into the next across schooling, internships, and first jobs.
  3. Worked exampleFind the mechanisms transmitting position when an unpaid internship is the entry point to a field.
  4. Common mistakeWhy isn't social reproduction broken by giving everyone access to the same schools?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Entry to a field runs through an unpaid internship of 14 weeks at 36 hours a week. A candidate who must forgo paid work at 24 dollars an hour loses how many dollars of wages to take it?

10A. Power, Privilege, and Prestige

  1. How it worksHow do power, privilege, and prestige name three different currencies of social position?
  2. Worked exampleFind which of the three a respected nurse, a wealthy donor, and a city official each hold most of.
  3. Going furtherWhat happens to an unearned privilege when it is invisible to the person holding it?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Among 182 ranked occupations, nursing sits at position 20 on occupational prestige and position 116 on median earnings, counting from the top. How many places lower is it on earnings than on prestige?

10A. Intersectionality

  1. How it worksHow does intersectionality treat overlapping positions as one compounded location rather than a sum?
  2. How it worksWalk me through two axes of disadvantage drawn as a plane where the corner is its own place.
  3. Worked exampleFind why a policy fixing race gaps and a policy fixing gender gaps can both miss the same group.
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to a study's conclusions when it analyzes race and gender only one at a time?
Your turnhard1 of 3
Unemployment runs at 5 percent for majority-group men, 8 percent for majority-group women, 13 percent for minority-group men and 22 percent for minority-group women. An additive model predicts the last figure from the first three. By how many percentage points does it fall short?

10A. The Socioeconomic Gradient in Health

  1. How it worksHow does a gradient differ from a threshold when outcomes are plotted across income deciles?
  2. How it worksWalk me through chronic stress, control at work, and access each contributing a slice of the gradient.
  3. Worked exampleFind what the Whitehall studies showed about mortality across employment grades in the same workforce.
  4. Common mistakeWhy isn't the gradient explained by poor people simply having worse health behaviors?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Age-adjusted mortality runs at 18 deaths per 1000 per year in the lowest income decile and 5 per 1000 in the highest. How many times the top decile's rate is the bottom decile's?

10A. Global Inequalities

  1. How it worksHow do the same stratification mechanisms operate between countries rather than inside one?
  2. Worked exampleFind the life expectancy gap between two countries with 20 and 4000 dollars of health spending per person.
  3. Going furtherWhat happens to global health inequality when trained clinicians migrate toward richer countries?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Country A spends 48 dollars per person a year on health and records a life expectancy of 58 years. Country B spends 5797 dollars per person and records 80 years. How many years is the life expectancy gap?

10A. Intergenerational and Intragenerational Mobility

  1. How it worksHow does intergenerational mobility compare a person to their parents while intragenerational tracks one career?
  2. Worked exampleFind the real odds of reaching the top fifth for a child born in the bottom fifth.
  3. How it worksWalk me through a mobility ladder drawn with rungs spaced by the actual probability of climbing them.
  4. Common mistakeWhy isn't a rising national income the same thing as rising social mobility?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Of 1109 children born into households in the bottom fifth of the income distribution, 92 reach the top fifth as adults. What percent of them reach the top fifth?

10A. Vertical and Horizontal Mobility

  1. How it worksHow does vertical mobility change class position while horizontal mobility slides along one level?
  2. Worked exampleFind whether a nurse becoming a hospital administrator moved vertically or horizontally.
  3. Going furtherWhat happens to a family's position during structural mobility when a whole industry rises or collapses?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Over 20 years an industry's employment in one region falls from 595 thousand jobs to 251 thousand. How many thousand jobs disappeared?

10A. Meritocracy

  1. How it worksHow does measured merit absorb the head start that cultural and economic capital provide?
  2. Worked exampleFind how much of a test score gap survives after tutoring hours and school funding are equalized.
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't an equal opportunity rule enough to make outcomes reflect merit?
  4. Ties togetherHow does meritocracy work as an ideology that makes stratification feel deserved?
Your turneasy1 of 3
A test score gap of 95 points separates two groups of students. After tutoring hours and per-student school funding are equalised, the gap falls to 44 points. How many points of the gap did those two resources account for?

10A. Absolute and Relative Poverty

  1. How it worksHow does an absolute poverty line differ from a relative one drawn against a country's median?
  2. Worked exampleFind who counts as poor under a fixed line and under a line set at half of median income.
  3. Going furtherWhat happens to measured poverty during a recession under each of the two definitions?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
A country's median household income is 71 thousand dollars. Its absolute poverty line is fixed at 17 thousand dollars, and its relative line is set at half the median. How many thousand dollars higher is the relative line than the absolute one?

10A. Social Exclusion

  1. How it worksHow does social exclusion isolate a group from work, services, and participation at the same time?
  2. How it worksWalk me through segregation and isolation compounding until a group's networks stop reaching resources.
  3. Worked exampleFind which resources a person loses when their only bank branch, clinic, and bus route all close.
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to health when exclusion removes both the services and the social ties at once?
Your turneasy1 of 3
A neighbourhood had 14 local services within walking distance: a bank branch, a clinic, shops and a bus stop among them. 6 of them close in one year. What percent of the local services remain?

10A. Health Disparities by Class, Gender, and Race

  1. How it worksHow do material conditions, chronic stress, and discrimination each write themselves into a disease rate?
  2. Worked exampleFind the disparity in a maternal mortality rate of 12 per 100000 in one group and 41 in another.
  3. How it worksWalk me through the weathering hypothesis aging a body faster under sustained social stress.
  4. Common mistakeWhy isn't a racial disparity in a disease rate evidence of a genetic difference between groups?
  5. Going furtherWhat happens to a disparity when income is held constant and the gap does not close?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Maternal mortality runs at 14 deaths per 100000 live births in one group and 52 per 100000 in another. How many times the first group's rate is the second group's?

10A. Health Care Disparities by Class, Gender, and Race

  1. How it worksHow does a disparity in care differ from a disparity in health outcomes?
  2. How it worksWalk me through provider bias, insurance status, and clinic distribution each cutting into access.
  3. Worked exampleFind where care breaks down for an uninsured patient whose nearest clinic is a 90-minute bus ride away.
  4. Common mistakeWhy isn't equal treatment of every patient the same as equitable care?
  5. Ties togetherHow do residential segregation, insurance design, and provider bias combine into one health care disparity?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
Of 439 patients in each of two groups presenting to an emergency department with identical recorded pain scores, 221 in one group and 126 in the other receive an analgesic. How many percentage points separate the two treatment rates?

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