This definitive volume has been fully revised with additional readings and newly commissioned pieces, all from top scholars in the field to reflect the most recent changes in social stratification today.

The study of poverty and inequality has been thrust into the foreground as scholars, politicians and policymakers respond to the spectacular increase in economic inequality and the slowing, stalling out, or even reversal of long-standing downward trends in other forms of inequality. Social Stratification which has been the mainstay of the field for well over a decade, has now been heavily updated and revised to reflect ongoing changes in the structure of inequality and in the tools and concepts that scholars have used to understand these changes.

In this new, third edition the history of the field unfolds in systematic fashion, with the introductory articles in each section providing examples of the classical work that laid the conceptual or methodological foundation, and the remaining chapters introducing students to the cutting-edge work that builds on that foundation and moves forward. The resulting collection is comprehensive, interdisciplinary and methodologically diverse. Although it is the classic primary text for courses on poverty, inequality or gender, race and class, it is also increasingly used as a supplementary text for sophisticated introductory sociology courses with an emphasis on issues of inequality.