Research Of The Social Stratification Affecting Social Welfare

Social stratification and social welfare are the research topics of sociology, social policy and social security. From the perspective of welfare sociology, this paper focuses on whether and how social stratification affects social welfare. Under the guidance of the positive methodology, the paper descriptive the social stratification and the social welfare system in the city and inspects social stratification’s effect of social welfare separately from welfare supply and welfare demand, based on 800 questionnaires and some cases in the south city of China.Three parts are included in this paper. Chapter one, two and three compose part one which through literature review indicates the key points of social stratification and social welfare after definite the core concepts. The second part involves chapter four, five and six. Firstly based on the data of the survey, the structure of social stratification and situation of social welfare in Haikou are descriptived, which in one aspect lays the foundation for later analysis and in another aspect answers the question of "what is the current welfare system and what problem exists does the system has" though reviewing the welfare system in Hainan province. Secondly, the effect of social stratification is studied from welfare supply and welfare demand, then the mode is probed through the analysis of data. The third part(chapter seven) which concludes the whole paper, summarizes in theory about the mode of social stratification on social welfare, discusses in policy about reliving the negative effects of social stratification and then reflects to the disadvantages and potential contents.The research finds that Haikou’s social stratification manifested in a lager proportion in social middle class and small proportion in upper and lower class. Meanwhile, the middle-upper class and middle-middle class possess small proportion, while the middle-lower class’s proportion is higher. These features of social stratification connect with Haikou’s special industrial and employment-al structures. Moreover, five classes are different in resources of Hukou, economy, culture and politic, which the resources’ distribution matches with social stratification. Within the classes, there are some differences:various sub-classes possess different resources.In addition, Haikou’s social security system is same to other cities. Through establishment and development, Haikou formed social security system which includes social assistance aiming poverty and social insurance aiming risk. Theses national welfare system is the focus of the government. However, because people are divided into different system, the system is inadequate in fragmentation. At the same time, supplementary social insurances are developed progressively, such as pension and medical benefits. Meanwhile, market welfare is introduced gradually. But they are both slower than national welfare.From the highlights, social stratification echoes social welfare allocation:upper class holds the most and best welfare resources while lower class is disadvantage in welfare. Moreover, in the existing welfare system, social stratification affects welfare acquisition and chance through economy, power and organizational resource. From the economic aspect, stratum’s’payment ability is different and so they get different welfare. From the power and organizational resource, stratum’s chance to acquire special welfare, such as civil service pension insurance, is also different. Furthermore, social stratification affects welfare demand. Although social upper class, middle-middle class, middle-lower class and lower class have no difference in welfare goods demand, social middle-upper class has less welfare goods demands. Meanwhile, the class evaluates the supplementary social insurances more positively. Social middle-lower class is the same as social lower class in goods’demand, however, the middle-lower class negatively evaluates the basic social security and the total welfare policy because they are excluded by the city welfare system. So the class shows a stronger demand tendency to welfare policy.This empirical research shows that now our welfare resources appear accumulation tendency, which is welfare gap between stratum and middle-lower, lower class less welfare resources. Although welfare accumulation doesn’t result in crack, it is a double-edged sword which realized the market welfare’s efficacy and prohibited the basic social security’s function. So fragmented welfare system should be breaked and welfare based on the citizenship should be established.