Is happiness inequality immune to income inequality? New evidence through instrument-effect-corrected standard deviations

Previous research has found that a nation’s income inequality does not affect its happiness inequality. This article questions the appropriateness of the standard deviation as measure of happiness inequality used in these studies. Our main criticism concerns structural dependency, i.e. the technical dependency of the standard deviation on a nation’s mean happiness which is induced by measuring happiness with limited rating scales. To overcome this drawback, two new measures are proposed which adjust for the effects of limited instruments. Applying these new measures to the most recent World Values Survey data demonstrates that some countries change their ranking in the league table of happiness inequality considerably. Moreover, income inequality does affect corrected happiness inequality, a finding which has significant public policy implications.     

Political democracy,economic liberalization,and macro-sociological models of intergenerational mobility

Building on the previously investigated macro-sociological models which analyze the consequences of economic development, income inequality, and international migration on social mobility, this article studies the specific contextual covariates of intergenerational reproduction of occupational status in post-communist societies. It is theorized that social mobility is higher in societies with democratic political regimes and less liberalized economies. The outlined hypotheses are tested by using micro- and macro-level datasets for 21 post-communist societies which are fitted into multilevel mixed-effects linear regressions. The derived findings suggest that factors specific to transition societies, conventional macro-level variables, and the legacy of the Soviet Union explain variation in intergenerational social mobility, but the results vary depending which birth cohorts survey participants belong to and whether or not they stem from advantaged or disadvantaged social origins. These findings are robust to various alternative data, sample, and method specifications.     

收入分配不平等对刑事犯罪的影响问题研究

我国当前收入分配的不平等所造成的不仅是收入群体之间的收入差距过大,更重要的是在这种社会条件下的收入差距过大所导致的刑事犯罪率的上升和犯罪程度的加剧,通过对造成收入分配的不平等原因的分析以及对收入分配不平等对刑事犯罪率和刑事犯罪程度的影响机理分析,提出减少收入分配不平等和缩小收入差距的对策,从而减少收入分配问题所可能引致的刑事犯罪。     

Economic performance and public concerns about social class in twentieth-century books

What is the association between macroeconomic conditions and public perceptions of social class? Applying a novel approach based on the Google Books N-gram corpus, this study addresses the relationship between public concerns about social class and economic conditions throughout the twentieth century. The usage of class-related words/phrases, or “literary references to class,” in American English-language books is related to US economic performance and income inequality. The findings of this study demonstrate that economic conditions play a significant role in literary references to class throughout the century, whereas income inequality does not. Similar results are obtained from further analyses using alternative measures of class concerns as well as different corpora of English Fiction and the New York Times. We add to the social class literature by showing that the long-term temporal dynamics of an economy can be exhibited by aggregate class concerns. The application of massive culture-wide content analysis using data of unprecedented size also represents a contribution to the literature.     

Moral opinion polarization and the erosion of trust

Since Puntam's seminal work on declining levels of social capital, the question of how social trust is formed has reached unprecedented heights of critical enquiry. While most of the current research concentrates on ethnic diversity and income inequality as the main influences driving down generalized trust, we focus on opinion polarization as another potential impact factor on trust. In more detail, we investigate the extent to which polarization over morally charged issues such as homsexuality, abortion and euthanasia affects individuals' likelihood to trust others. We hypothesize that moral issues have a natural tendency to divide societies' opinions into opposing poles and, thus, to challenge social cohesion in modern civil societies. Based on hierarchical analyses of the fifth wave of the World Values Survey (WVS) — comprising a sample of 39 countries — our results reveal that individuals living in countries characterized by more opinion polarization tend to have less trust in other people.     

Re-thinking the decline in trust: A comparison of black and white Americans

Generalized trust in other Americans has never been so low. Explanations of this decline draw attention to the role of generational replacement and to period effects stemming from macro-level economic and political changes. In this paper, I consider generational and period trends in trust for black and for white Americans. Although race is considered one of the most important predictors of levels of trust, few studies have analyzed how race relates to larger generational and period trends of decline. General Social Survey data is used to test whether the decline thesis applies equally to black and to white Americans’ trust levels. I consider both the widely used index of generalized trust and the individual items comprising this index. The results show that although the war baby generation (1935-1944) of white Americans was more trusting than other generations, there has been no corresponding variability across generations for black Americans. At the period level, while there has been a decline in generalized trust and each of its sub-components for white Americans, the period-based trends for black Americans are more variable across measures. The use of a general index to study trends for black Americans masks important period-based trends. The decline in trust is related to race and what is missing from most accounts of the race gap in trust is a discussion of structural forces that advantage white Americans and hence inflate their trust levels.     

The environmental efficiency of well-being: A cross-national analysis

Recent research has conceptualized sustainability as the environmental efficiency of well-being (EWEB). This concept takes into account the benefits societies are able to produce from their demands on the environment. Research along these lines indicates that countries vary widely in the efficiency with which they transform the Earth’s resources into well-being. Here, we take up this finding as a puzzle to be explained. We construct a new measure of EWEB using the ecological footprint per capita (a measure of environmental consumption) and average life satisfaction (a measure of subjective well-being). We draw hypotheses from political economy, modernization, and sustainable consumption theories in the environmental social sciences. Using full information maximum likelihood estimation, we test the effects of climate, political, economic, and social factors on EWEB with a sample of 105 countries. Key findings include a negative quadratic effect of economic development on EWEB, a negative effect of income inequality, and a positive effect of social capital.     

Explaining the subjective well-being of urban and rural Chinese: Income,personal concerns,and societal evaluations

This study makes an integrated investigation of how subjective well-being is associated with income, personal concerns, and societal evaluations and how these social and psychological correlates of subjective well-being are contextualized within a country. Data used for the empirical analysis come from a nationally representative sample survey conducted in China in 2009. It is found that subjective well-being is independently linked to income, personal concerns, and societal evaluations. Comparisons of urban and rural Chinese further reveal that income, structural attributions of inequality, and evaluations of governance are related to subjective well-being among both groups. Nevertheless, different sets of other evaluative correlates of subjective well-being between urban and rural people stand out, which is conjectured to be related to the long-time institutional, economic, and social segmentation of the two groups. This study has contributed to both the subjective well-being theories and the understanding of the consequences of social inequality.     

The “new” military and income inequality: A cross national analysis

Military expenditures have escalated over the last three decades in both developed and less developed countries, without a corresponding expansion of military personnel. Spending has instead been directed towards hi-tech weaponry, what we refer to as the “new” military. We hypothesize that this new, increasingly capital-intensive military is no longer a pathway of upward mobility or employer of last resort for many uneducated, unskilled, or unemployed people, with significant consequences for those individuals and society as a whole. One such consequence, we argue, is an increase in income inequality. We test this hypothesis with cross-national panel models, estimated for 82 developed and less developed countries from 1970 to 2000. Findings indicate that military capital-intensiveness, as measured by military expenditures per soldier, exacerbates income inequality net of control variables. Neither total military expenditures/GDP nor military participation has a significant effect. It appears from these findings that today’s “new” military establishment is abrogating its historical role as an equalizing force in society, with important policy implications.     

Gender,justice and work: A distributive approach to perceptions of housework fairness

Most women and men report that the division of domestic labor in their household is fair, despite women undertaking approximately seventy percent of housework. This raises questions about how fairness is evaluated within partnerships. We explore how parenthood and relationship transitions affect perceptions of housework fairness using panel data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey and panel regression models. Our results indicate that net of actual housework divisions, socio-demographic factors, time availability and relative resources, the transition to parenthood increases women’s perceptions of housework fairness immediately following the birth of a child, but decreases them in the long run. Relationship transitions have no independent effects. Our findings suggest that parenthood transitions are associated with changes in women’s identity, cognitive evaluations of fairness and feelings of entitlement, as indicated by distributive justice theory.     

中国三大区域间收入不平等影响因素的实证研究:1952-2008

区域收入不平等的持续增大,对个人与群体的尊严、国家经济的可持续性发展形成严峻挑战。以往研究局限于经济学视角,只关心某一或某几种因素对收入不平等影响,过于碎片化。本文利用1952-2008年国家统计数据,基于结构主义视角,通过随机效应模型考察了区域间收入不平等背后的因果机制。研究发现:经济增长与区域间收入不平等存在微弱倒"U"关系;结构因素是构筑区域收入不平等的主要力量,解释比例达到69.7%。本文认为,"非均衡发展"是中国经济转型与发展过程中必然的路径选择,区域收入不平等不可避免,并将长期存在。     

收入不平等与公平分配:对转型时期中国城镇居民公平观的一项实证分析

通过分析2005年中国城镇居民的调查数据发现,教育的启蒙性质能够使人超越狭隘的利己主义,从而对不平等持更加批判的态度;国有部门就业者和老年人所认可的不平等程度较低,体现了平均主义价值观的影响;地区实际的不平等程度越大,人们对不平等的认可程度越低。本研究既指出人们在减少收入不平等程度方面的普遍共识,又分析了人们认可的收入不平等程度的差异模式,从而有助于进一步理解民众如何感知和评价当前中国社会面临的日益严峻的收入不平等问题。     

Societal projection: Beliefs concerning the relationship between development and inequality in China

We examine how the relationship between development and inequality at the societal level is perceived and evaluated by ordinary Chinese people. We hypothesize that because the Chinese have recently experienced rapid increases in both economic growth and social inequality, they tend to view economic development as a driving force of social inequality. To address this question, we conducted a social survey in 2006 in six Chinese provinces (n = 4898). The survey data reveal that a large proportion of Chinese people have internalized a causal model in which they project high levels of inequality onto countries they view as more developed and low levels of inequality onto countries they see as less developed. However, results also show that a smaller proportion of Chinese believe in a negative relationship between development and inequality. Hence, the study reveals heterogeneity among ordinary Chinese in their perceptions of the causal relationship between development and inequality. Surprisingly, socioeconomic and demographic characteristics provide no explanatory power in explaining this heterogeneity.     

One country,three populations: Trust in police among migrants,villagers, and urbanites in China

While the past decade has witnessed the burgeoning of research on public assessments of the police in China, marginalized social groups have rarely been considered in this line of inquiry. Using data collected from migrant workers, rural villagers, and urban dwellers, this study assesses whether Chinese perceptions of the police are distinguishable along procedural-based trust and outcome-based trust and whether expressive concerns and instrumental concerns are predictive of trust in the police. Findings show that Chinese citizens tend to conflate procedural-based trust and outcome-based trust. Expressive concerns play a more important role than instrumental concerns, with such expressive variables as trust in neighborhood residents committee, perceived law and order, and quality of life influencing trust in the police. Public perceptions of police trustworthiness are also significantly linked to media influence. Directions for future research are discussed.     

Ethnicity,inequality, and perceived electoral fairness

Establishing electoral legitimacy across the population is vital for democratic stability, yet in contrast to other measures of political support, perceived electoral fairness has received scant scholarly attention. Moreover, while research into other measures of political support has shown that they differ by both ethnicity and socio-economic status, no study examines both at once, potentially overlooking important interrelationships between the two variables. This paper combines data from the Ethnic Power Relations project and the World Value Survey to examine respondents’ perceptions of electoral fairness according to their ethnic group’s access to power, their individual socio-economic status, and the intersection of these two. It finds that one’s ethnic group’s political status does affect perceived fairness, but that the effect interacts strongly with one’s socio-economic status. Poorer members of non-represented ethnic groups have significantly lower perceptions of fairness, while richer members’ perceptions do not differ from those of represented groups. The results suggest a levelling effect of socio-economic status on ethnic inequalities.     

京津冀协同发展背景下河北省基本教育公共服务均等化的策略研究

河北省基本教育公共服务均等化是在京津冀协同发展战略下一种重要的价值追求和政治安排，是实现教育公平的重要举措，体现了党中央、国务院对三地均等发展的政治关切，河北省基本教育公共服务均等化实现必将填补彼此发展的空白，填补彼此的差距，形成良好的区域合作和共享格局.     

Societal Inequality and individual subjective well-being: Results from 68 societies and over 200,000 individuals, 1981–2008

Income inequality has been contentious for millennia, a source of political conflict for centuries, and is now widely feared as a pernicious “side effect” of economic progress. But equality is only a means to an end and so must be evaluated by its consequences. The fundamental question is: What effect does a country's level of income inequality have on its citizens' quality of life, their subjective well-being? We show that in developing nations inequality is certainly not harmful but probably beneficial, increasing well-being by about 8 points out of 100. This may well be Kuznets's inverted “U”: In the earliest stages of development some are able to move out of the (poorly paying) subsistence economy into the (better paying) modern economy; their higher pay increases their well-being while simultaneously increasing inequality. In advanced nations, income inequality on average neither helps nor harms. Estimates are from random-intercept fixed-effects multi-level models, confirmed by over four dozen sensitivity tests. Data are from the pooled World Values/European Values Surveys, Waves 1 to 5 with 169 representative national samples in 68 nations, 1981 to 2009, and over 200,000 respondents, replicated and extended in the European Quality of Life Surveys.     

"十二五"期间社会政策体系的完善

现行社会政策体系存在着制度碎片化、落实难、不公平的现象以及财政投入不足和监督评估不力的问题。十二五期间,应分类实施六有目标。在措施上,应大幅度缩小我国财政与同等收入国家在基本公共服务和社会保障投入上的差距,且将新增财政投入主要用于缩小地区间、人群间的差距;应改善民生指标的设计,且提高它们在政绩考核体系中的权重;应为普通劳动者均等享受基本服务和保障提供可及性强的阶梯。     

洛阳城乡二元结构的现状＼成因及改进路径

洛阳市城乡二元结构现象显著。从工业发展、经济发展、居民收入、社会公共事业等方面分析洛阳市城乡二元结构现状,探析我国城乡差距的原因,结合拉美国家城市化的相关经验教训,提出我国在城镇化建设中应该注意的问题及建议。     

Revisiting convergence: A research note

A number of recent studies show that income inequality is declining between countries. In this research note, I question the significance of this trend by examining the role of initial conditions in producing convergence. An important (but neglected) property of inequality dynamics is the tendency for extreme distributions to become more moderate. When income disparities are large, the subsequent trend is biased toward convergence. Conversely, when initial conditions approach parity, divergence becomes the more likely long-term outcome. I apply this principle to trends in GDP PC across 127 countries during the 1980–2010 period. Using counterfactual analysis, I manipulate the initial level of inequality in GDP PC while holding constant each country’s observed growth rate during the sample period. I find that the growth dynamics of GDP PC produce either convergence or divergence based simply on the initial distribution of income. The point of transition occurs at a moderate level of inequality, whether using population weights (Gini = .365) or not (Gini = .377). I conclude that the recent convergence observed in GDP PC is primarily a function of large income gaps between countries and would not have materialized at more moderate levels of initial inequality. By contrast, an examination of the pre-1950 period reveals divergent growth patterns that are not sensitive to initial conditions.