Sociological Perspectives: Key Structural Features in Society and Their Implications

"Social structures are patterns we find in societal life that reflect the workings of social systems. A simple social structure sketches out the range of the statuses or roles in a system…More complex social structures are built on interrelations among statuses and roles in a social system." (Sociology in Global Perspective, Ch. 1, pg 20)

There are an endless number of social structures in any given society. As our text states, analyzing some of the key social structures in a society can give great insight as to the structure and function of that society as a whole. In the following essay, I will discuss a few examples to illustrate this point by examining how the age structure in a society can have implications in the personal sphere as well as in the spheres of business and public policy planning.

Age structures, in a society, can tell a great deal about what that society values and the way that society approaches certain issues. In, Sociology in Global Perspectives, the age structures of three different countries are outlined using population pyramids. Kenya's pyramid is heaviest in people ranging from birth to age nineteen. The pyramid then tapers off sharply when it reaches people of age fifty and above. There are several things we can learn from this, as the book details. One is that Kenya has a very high mortality rate in older adults. We can also see, when we look at Kenya's medical and technological history that the boom in child population is due to a combination of improved medical care, reducing infant mortality, and the habit of families having many children to offset the previously devastating effects of infant mortality. When we look at the pyramid for the United States, we can see a large bulge in population in the thirty to fifty year-old range which coincides with the Baby Boom around the time of World War II. Because World War II did not affect other countries - such as Sweden - in quite the same way, this bulge is somewhat unique to the American age structure.

But what is the purpose of analyzing the age structure of a society? What importance does it have? For the individual, there is a great deal that can be drawn from the analysis of a society's age structure. For instance, a young person looking for a job would be interested in the analysis of a society's age structure because it will help him or her to determine how difficult it will be to find a job ("There is more competition for jobs among young workers if a large proportion of the population is young." - Ch. 1, pg 22), what kinds of jobs are available and what sort of salaries he or she can expect. The individual would also be interested in age structure to find out how much of their earnings will go to taxes and what their taxes will end up paying for ("A country with a large proportion of old people has greater demands on its health system than others"). All of these issues, which are often of great importance to the individual, are influenced by age structure.

Some of these issues also fall into the realm of business and public policy planning. For instance, the proportion of older people in a society can have massive implications for the variety of services a business is willing to provide. Businesses in societies with high proportions of older people are likely going to provide more products and services geared toward those older people than societies with high proportions of younger people. Businesses will also gear their advertising toward the age group that is most likely to yield the greatest profit.

Age structure is important for public policy planning as well, as it can affect such things as health care needs, government spending, and immigration policy. For instance, societies with higher populations of elderly would likely have more public policy regarding medical aid for the elderly as well as policy set in place to provide income for the elderly when they are no longer able to work. An example of this in American society is Medicare, a government subsidized medical plan to help the elderly pay for their medical needs. Social Security is another example of such public policy. This is a fund to which every working American contributes. Then, when they reach a certain age, they are entitled to payments from this fund to subsidize their living costs. Age structure also affects public policy about how government money is spent. Societies with higher populations of young people and who value higher education may create public policy that provides more government funding for schools and universities. Likewise, populations that are more heavily populated with the elderly may create public policy that funnels more government money into programs like Social Security and health care. Finally, the age structures of societies that border each other may have an impact on the immigration policies of one or both societies. America and Mexico are an example of this sort of impact. "The fact that Mexico has a disproportionately large number of young people is currently having widespread effects on life in the United States…"

When a single social structure can have such wide ranging effects, it is not difficult to see the benefits of analyzing social structures of one's own society as well as other societies all over the world. Not only does learning more about social structures and their effects on the individual, business, and public policy give us a greater understanding of our own society and our place in it, it also helps us better understand our neighbors and how we can more effectively interact with them.

Reference:
Lynn D. Nelson, PhD., "Sociology in Global Perspective."