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.     

Adolescent girls’ race/ethnic status, identities, and drive for thinness

Using data from 7272 adolescent US girls, we explore how girls’ race/ethnic group status affects their bodyweight, perceptions of overweight, and weight control practices. We hypothesize that a girl’s race/ethnic status influences her basic identity which in turn prompts her to adopt or reject a “drive for thinness.” After controlling for family and peer support, school engagement, family SES, maturation, and family structure, we find that girls’ race/ethnic status influences their susceptibility to the thinness ideals of mainstream culture. African American girls weigh more than Asian, Hispanic, or White girls, but at any given weight they perceive themselves as overweight and attempt to control their weight less. Asian American and White girls invest most in thinness dynamics. Some evidence also suggests girls from lower SES families are less driven to be thin. Our results affirm the utility of viewing material bodies as “situations” that are experienced and interpreted in accord with identity group relations and dynamics.     

Explanations of changes in church attendance between 1970 and 2009

We deduce hypotheses from theories on religious change to explain changes in church attendance rates. Using a new dataset with 51 countries across a long period we apply panel regression models, which enable us to test well-known theories in a more strict and dynamic fashion than do cross-sectional studies.Our results provide new evidence for a few old ideas, but also show striking lack of evidence for ideas that appear well-accepted. Tertiary education proved to be a strong predictor of changes in church attendance. Theories about individualization were also supported. The evidence of existential insecurity as a cause of change was ambiguous: economic development and life expectancy showed significant effects but income inequality did not. We found no support for theories on social globalization and social benefit policy. Finally, we found that income inequality and urbanization were driving forces of change during the 70s and 80s, but not since 1990.     

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.     

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.     

Income inequality,distributive fairness and political trust in Latin America

In the wake of rising levels of income inequality during the past two decades, widespread concerns emerged about the social and political consequences of the widening gap between the poor and the rich that can be observed in many established democracies. Several empirical studies substantiate the link between macro-level income inequality and political attitudes and behavior, pointing at its broad and negative implications for political equality. Accordingly, these implications are expected to be accentuated in contexts of high inequality, as is the case in Latin America. Despite these general concerns about the consequences of income inequality, few studies have accounted for the importance of individual perceptions of distributive fairness in regard to trust in political institutions. Even less is known about the extent to which distributive fairness perceptions co-vary with objective indicators of inequality. Moreover, the research in this area has traditionally focused on OECD countries, which have lower indexes of inequality than the rest of the world. This study aims at filling this gap by focusing on the relevance of distributive fairness perceptions and macro-level inequality for political trust and on how these two levels interact in Latin American countries. The analyses are based on the Latinobarometer survey 2011, which consists of 18 countries. Multilevel estimations suggest that both dimensions of inequality are negatively associated with political trust but that higher levels of macro-level inequality attenuate rather than increase the strength of the negative association between distributive fairness perceptions and political trust.     

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.     

近代中国社会军事化略议

中国社会自晚清以降,社会军事化与近代社会转型如影随形。以近代社会政治史的视角研判,社会转型期的军事权威主义在后发展国家具有普遍意义,内忧外患与衰朽王朝的社会政治结构,导致社会转型过程中军事权威的错位和失范,研究近代中国的社会军事化现象,解读军事权威的离异与回归,对于解读近代社会变迁具有重要意义。     

Bribery or just desserts? Evidence on the influence of Congressional reproductive policy voting patterns on PAC contributions from exogenous variation in the sex mix of legislator offspring

Evidence on the relationship between political contributions and legislators’ voting behavior is marred by concerns about endogeneity in the estimation process. Using a legislator’s offspring sex mix as a truly exogenous variable, we employ an instrumental variable estimation procedure to predict the effect of voting behavior on political contributions. Following previous research, we find that a legislator’s proportion daughters has a significant effect on voting behavior for women’s issues, as measured by score in the “Congressional Record on Choice” issued by NARAL Pro-Choice America. In the second stage, we make a unique contribution by demonstrating a significant impact of exogenous voting behavior on PAC contributions, lending further credibility to the hypothesis that Political Action Committees respond to legislators’ voting patterns by “rewarding” political candidates that vote in line with the positions of the PAC, rather than affecting those same votes - at least in this high-profile policy domain.     

基尼系数的局限性及其补充:中国经验

使用国际上通用的基尼系数分析收入差距,是有一定的适用范围和条件的,而且基尼系数自身也存在一定的局限性。目前在全国范围内计算的基尼系数,忽略了中国作为一个发展中大国存在空间、地域等异质性因素,如果直接套用“0．4的国际警戒线”,会在政策的制订上带有一定的盲目性。基尼系数在中国的适用过程中,必须充分考虑到大规模人口流动因素对城乡收入差距、地区收入差距扩大的抑制效应甚至缓解作用。只有将经济增长标准、收入流动性标准、社会承受力标准以及收入差距预警系统建设等这些指标和工具作为对基尼系数分析的有效补充,才能够确保对中国收入差距的判断和度量更加科学、有效。     

城乡收入差距和城镇化对城镇居民收入不平等的影响——兼析市场化程度和对外开放水平的调节作用

构建包含农村劳动力流动和城镇化冲击的城镇要素收入分配理论模型,分析城乡收入差距和城镇化对城镇居民收入不平等的影响,并采用中国省级面板数据进行实证检验,结果表明:城乡收入差距扩大加剧了城镇居民收入不平等,城镇化发展则有助于减轻城镇居民收入不平等;上述效应由于受到市场化程度和对外开放水平的调节而具有明显的地区差异,市场化程度和对外开放水平较低地区的城镇劳动需求弹性较小,城乡收入差距和城镇化对城镇居民收入不平等的影响也较大.因此,要降低城镇居民收入不平等,一方面,应努力缩小城乡收入差距并加快新型城镇化发展,减轻城镇就业压力;另一方面,应积极推动市场化进程和扩大对外开放,打破要素市场分割,使城镇非农部门的劳动需求更加富有弹性.     

Choosing race: Multiracial ancestry and identification

Social scientists have become increasingly interested in the racial identification choices of multiracial individuals, partly as a result of the federal government’s new “check all that apply” method of racial identification. However, the majority of work to date has narrowly defined the population of multiracial individuals as the “biracial” children of single-race parents. In this article, we use the open-ended ancestry questions on the 1990 and 2000 5% samples of the US Census to identify a multiracial population that is potentially broader in its understanding of multiraciality. Relative to other studies, we find stronger historical continuity in the patterns of hypodescent and hyperdescent for part-black and part-American Indian ancestry individuals respectively, while we find that multiple-race identification is the modal category for those of part-Asian ancestry. We interpret this as evidence of a new, more flexible classification regime for groups rooted in more recent immigration. Our results suggest that future work on multiracial identification must pay closer attention to the varied histories of specific multiracial ancestry groups.     

Joining up: Did military service in the early all volunteer era affect subsequent civilian income?

Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth, we examine the long-term implications of military service for men’s income. We show strong variations in the effect of military service according to race and education. We do so while considering the effect of military service on the income trajectories of men and including a series of controls for selectivity. We find that while serving in the military, young men from disadvantaged backgrounds earn more than their civilian counterparts. Upon discharge, however, the income premium associated with military service tends to dissipate, and for White veterans with at least a high school degree, an income deficit results.     

Non-intact families and diverging educational destinies: A decomposition analysis for Germany,Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States

We examine whether the presence of non-intact families in society is related to increased inequality in educational attainment according to social background, as suggested by the ‘diverging destinies’ thesis. We analyze four countries, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States, that differ in the prevalence of non-intact families and in the strength of the negative association between growing up in a non-intact family and children's educational attainment. We use a Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition approach to calculate a ‘counterfactual’ estimate of differences in educational attainment between socioeconomically advantaged and disadvantaged children in the hypothetical absence of non-intact families. Contrary to the diverging destinies thesis, we find little differences between actual and ‘counterfactual’ levels of inequality in educational attainment in all four countries. Whereas growing-up in a non-intact family affects the individual chances of educational attainment, the overall contribution of non-intact families to aggregate levels of social background inequality appears minimal.     

The myth of the glass ceiling: Evidence from a stock-flow analysis of authority attainment

It is apparent to even a casual observer of American society that women and minorities are underrepresented among managers, especially among top-level executives. Past studies, however, have failed to find a consistent pattern of female and minority disadvantages in actual promotions and hiring decisions to account for this underrepresentation. This study aims to resolve this incongruity. Drawing on panel data from a nationally representative sample of scientists and engineers, I analyzed transitions across authority levels for men and women of three broad racial groups: whites, Asian Americans, and underrepresented minorities. There are two main findings. First, downward mobility plays an important role in authority inequality, especially for Asian men and underrepresented minority men and women. Second, while women and minorities face lower rates of upward mobility than white men, their disadvantages are concentrated in the bottom to middle-level transitions. This pattern is inconsistent with the popular notion of a “glass ceiling,” which implies that women and minorities encounter an unbreakable obstacle in accessing top positions after they have made their way into mid-level management.     

Income inequality and participation: A comparison of 24 European countries

Previous research suggests that when there is a high level of inequality, there is a low rate of participation. Two arguments are generally offered: First, inequality depresses participation because people from different status groups have fewer opportunities to share common goals. Second, people may participate more in civic and social life when they have more resources. However, until now, these explanations have not been separated empirically. Using EU-SILC data for 24 European countries, we analyze how income inequality is related to civic and social participation. Our results indicate that the main effects of inequality manifest via resources at the individual and societal level. However, independent of these resources, higher inequality is associated with lower civic participation. Furthermore, inequality magnifies the relationship between income and participation. This finding is in line with the view that inter-individual processes explain why inequality diminishes participation.     

Tract- and county-level income inequality and individual risk of obesity in the United States

ObjectivesWe tested three alternative hypotheses regarding the relationship between income inequality and individual risk of obesity at two geographical scales: U.S. Census tract and county.MethodsIncome inequality was measured by Gini coefficients, created from the 2000 U.S. Census. Obesity was clinically measured in the 2003–2008 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). The individual measures and area measures were geo-linked to estimate three sets of multi-level models: tract only, county only, and tract and county simultaneously. Gender was tested as a moderator.ResultsAt both the tract and county levels, higher income inequality was associated with lower individual risk of obesity. The size of the coefficient was larger for county-level Gini than for tract-level Gini; and controlling income inequality at one level did not reduce the impact of income inequality at the other level. Gender was not a significant moderator for the obesity-income inequality association.ConclusionsHigher tract and county income inequality was associated with lower individual risk of obesity, indicating that at least at the tract and county levels and in the context of cross-sectional data, the public health goal of reducing the rate of obesity is in line with anti-poverty policies of addressing poverty through mixed-income development where neighborhood income inequality is likely higher than homogeneous neighborhoods.     

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。     

Financial satisfaction and perceived income through a demographic lens: Do different race/gender pairs reap different returns to income?

The subjective assessment of personal income, insofar as it reflects or sheds light upon the (potentially different) economic incentive structures facing workers of different demographic groups, has far-reaching implications for public policy and private decision-making alike. This paper explores the impact of personal income on financial satisfaction and on perceived income, focusing on demographic differences across the following groups: white males, black males, white females and black females. The results indicate that different race/gender pairs do respond to income differently. For both financial satisfaction and perceived relative income, white females, black females and black males all have lower returns to personal income than do white males. White males, in other words, appear to reap more “bang for the buck” in terms of both of the outcome variables, even after a host of control variables are introduced. The possibility that social comparison among (racial and gender) ingroups is driving the observed demographic differences is discussed.     

和谐社会视角下收入分配调整的财政对策

以社会主义和谐社会建设中收入分配调整为切入点,本文全面陈述了我国社会存在的收入分配不均、财富差距过大的现状,指出收入差距过大造成社会的不和谐。国家财政对收入分配的调整具有不可替代的优势和责无旁贷的责任,充分发挥财政职能,使社会收入形态逐步向“橄榄球”型转变。