Achieved status

Achieved status is a concept developed by the anthropologist Ralph Linton denoting a social position that a person can acquire on the basis of merit; it is a position that is earned or chosen. It is the opposite of ascribed status. It reflects personal skills, abilities, and efforts. Examples of achieved status are being an Olympic athlete, being a criminal, or being a college professor.

Status is important sociologically because it comes with a set of rights, obligations, behaviors, and duties that people occupying a certain position are expected or encouraged to perform. These expectations are referred to as roles. For instance, the role of a "professor" includes teaching students, answering their questions, being impartial, appropriately.

Cultural capital is a concept, developed by sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, that can refer to both achieved and ascribed characteristics. They are desirable qualities (either material or symbolic) that contribute to one's social status; any advantages a person has which give him/her a higher status in society. It may include high expectations, forms of knowledge, skill, and education, among other things.

Parents provide children with cultural capital, the attitudes and knowledge that make the educational system a comfortable familiar place in which they can succeed easily. There are other types of capital as well; Social capital refers to ones membership in groups, relationships, and networks. It too can have a significant impact on achievement level.

Industrialization has led to a vast increase in the possible standard of living for the average person but also made this increase necessary. For the productivity of the average worker to rise, he or she had to receive far more education and training. This successively made the average worker much less replaceable and therefore more powerful. Hence, it became necessary to satisfy workers’ demands for a larger share.

According to sociologist Rodney Stark, few Americans believe coming from a wealthy family or having political connections is necessary to get ahead. In contrast, many people in other industrialized nations think these factors are necessary for advancement. Americans are more likely than the people in these nations to rate “hard work” as very important for getting ahead. While most nations value hard work, the Italians, for example, are hardly more likely to rate it as very important than they are to think one needs political connections.

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