Theory of National Development and Societal Stratification

It has long been conjectured, in one form or another, that development tends to de-stratify a nation: that the higher its level of development, the less stratified-- less unequal--it is. Recent findings on the factor structure of indicators of National Development (ND) indicate that it consists of two dimensions, Domestic Development (DD) and International Authority (IA), not merely the single one, DD, that ND is commonly believed to be. Building on this finding and on current societal stratification theory, the paper examines the main sociological conjectures concerning the effects of development on the multidimensional structure of stratification, and proposes a set of hypotheses predicting the effects of each ND dimension on each dimension of stratification systems.