Toward macro-social accounting: Measures and scales of racial,sexual, and spatial equality in 243 U.S. SMSA's

This paper develops a set of empirical social indicators of quality between races, sexes, and spatial areas in all U.S. SMSA's. New findings are presented concerning the level of equality by city and region. An eight-step Guttman Scale is developed which suggests a progressive hierarchy of these various of equality. Cities develop higher levels of equality between residents in a patterned building block manner beginning first with favorable levels of spatial equality and culminating in equality between black and white professional employment rates. Finally, a canonical correlation model is hypothesized and empirically estimated to explain variation between these 243 cities in level of inequality. This model linked key economic, demographic and ecological forces to levels of equality in spatial systems.     

Some social indicators for multiple family housing

This research suggests some social indicator candidates for families housed in multiple-family environments. Objective, subjective, and behavioral data sets are all represented in the analysis. This range of social statistics and the utilization of appropriate statistical analysis are viewed as necessary conditions for generating social indicators rather than simply relying on arbitrarily selected social statistics and assume they are indicators. Analysis of 1253 interviews in 88 Alberta subsidized housing projects reveals that subjective data from the tenant category of housing variables rank highest in accounting for present levels of user satisfaction and are viewed therefore as reasonable social indicators with respect to that issue.     

Erratum to: The Measurement of Multidimensional Gender Inequality: Continuing the Debate

The measurement of multidimensional gender inequality is an increasingly important topic that has very relevant policy applications and implications but which has not received much attention from the academic literature. In this paper I make a comprehensive and critical review of the indices proposed in recent years in order to systematise the different underlying ideas. I also present new gender inequality indices that overcome some limitations of the preceding ones. Using United Nations data, empirical results for the new indicators are provided, suggesting that the choice of one indicator or another can make an important difference for the ranking of those countries that have achieved high levels of gender equality.     

The Measurement of Multidimensional Gender Inequality: Continuing the Debate

The measurement of multidimensional gender inequality is an increasingly important topic that has very relevant policy applications and implications but which has not received much attention from the academic literature. In this paper I make a comprehensive and critical review of the indices proposed in recent years in order to systematise the different underlying ideas. I also present new gender inequality indices that overcome some limitations of the preceding ones. Using United Nations data, empirical results for the new indicators are provided, suggesting that the choice of one indicator or another can make an important difference for the ranking of those countries that have achieved high levels of gender equality.     

Policy Preceding Possibility? Examining Headline Composite Sustainability Indicators in the United Kingdom

Environmental equality, social justice and well-being are national headline indicators for the United Kingdom (UK), and community vibrancy is a rural headline indicator. All four of these indicators were designated as headline indicators prior to any robust definition or methodology for their measurement was articulated. Prior to the establishment of social justice and environmental equality as headline indicators, research commissioned by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs indicated that, at least in the foreseeable future, it would not be possible to operationalise these concepts as indicators of sustainable development. Research into well-being and community vibrancy also illustrated significant problems with their measurement, but in terms of these two indicators that research was carried out after their establishment as headline indicators. These findings illustrate problems with dialogue between the government and relevant experts: difficult to measure concepts have been erroneously designated as headline indicators for the UK.     

Is Inequality a Latent Construct? An Assessment of Economic Inequality Indicators and Their Relation with Social Cohesion in Europe

In this article, we analyse the relation between different economic inequality indicators and social cohesion. Previous research usually narrows down economic inequality to income inequality, or distinguishes several types of economic inequality. Little attention has until now been given to how different aspects of economic inequality might be related to each other and can have an effect on social cohesion. This article analyses several indicators of economic inequality and makes a distinction between indicators measuring income inequality, poverty, economic strain and unequal distributions of wealth. Arguing that these indicators represent different aspects of inequality, we hypothesise that they cannot be reduced to one latent concept of inequality and have specific relations with social cohesion. In order to test this hypothesis, we conducted an exploratory factor analysis. This resulted in two different factors: one associated with economic hardship, and one associated with imbalances in market outcomes. This would imply that inequality indicators can be classified into two underlying concepts. Secondly, we related the factor scores of the two latent concepts to the social cohesion indicators via regression analyses. This paper focuses on European countries and uses pooled data from the European Social Survey (period 2006–2012), in combination with macro-level data drawn from the OECD, Eurostat and the World Bank. The results demonstrate that the strength of the link between inequality and citizens’ attitudes depends on the type of inequality indicator we analyse: only the factor economic deprivation can be significantly linked to social cohesion.     

Role relationships: lesbian perspectives

This questionnaire study of 140 lesbians, 70 couples who have lived together for one or more years, explores equality and role relationships. We predicted that lesbians would achieve partnerships characterized by equality and freedom from traditional butch-femme role playing. Financial sharing and decision-making were found to be characterized by high degrees of equality. Household responsibilities tended to be performed individually, but no role-playing was evident. Sexual intimacy items indicated less perceived equality than other areas. And overall, some partners were viewed as unequal. The variables of age, income, education, occupation, assets, and years living together did not explain the inequality observed.     

Racial equity or racial equality

This study examines the relationship between racial equity in labor market processes and racial equality in future labor market rewards. In particular, a regression standardization procedure is used to project the degree of racial inequality in earnings that would exist among men at various future points in time based on three different sets of assumptions about attainment processes in labor market and educational institutions. The most important results suggest that even if racial discrimination were eliminated immediately in labor market and educational institutions, it would take almost 50 years for the black-white earnings ratio to reach .95. This incompatibility between equity and equality needs to be considered more explicitly both by those who advocate a color-blind labor market and those who advocate preferential treatment for blacks.     

CONSTRUCTING A HEALTH AND SOCIAL INDICATOR FRAMEWORK FOR INDIGENOUS COMMUNITY HEALTH RESEARCH

Health and social indicators that capture the distinct historical, social, and cultural contexts of Indigenous communities can play an important role in informing the planning and delivery of community interventions. There is currently considerable interest in cataloguing and vetting meaningful community-level health and social indicators that could be applied to research and health promotion activities in Indigenous communities in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, inclusive of conventional indicators as well as measures developed specifically for use in or with Indigenous communities. To avoid haphazard selection of indicators, and to assure the comprehensiveness and relevance of any given set of indicators, a framework that can accommodate and conceptually classify indicators representing a full range of domains is required. We report here on the development of a conceptual framework, by which Indigenous community indicators, and more general community-level social indicators, can be sorted, catalogued, and systematically classified within four hierarchical levels. The indicator framework was developed across Canada, Australia and New Zealand in consultation with academic researchers and Indigenous community stakeholders, building from established health and social indicator systems. The Indigenous indicator framework permits Indigenous communities, public health researchers, and funding agencies to compare and select the most appropriate indicators for application in specific contexts from the multitude of existing indicators.     

Basic Needs and Wealth as Independent Determinants of Happiness: An Illustration from Thailand

Thailand has been a global economic success story, transforming from one of the poorest countries in Southeast Asia in the 1960s, to a modern and dynamic nation, and all within the lifetime of the current generation. However, growth has been accompanied by marked increases in economic inequality both at the regional and individual levels. In this context studying how relatively poor people appraise their situation (‘subjective wellbeing’) and how this relates to traditional ‘objective’ measures of wellbeing such as wealth and basic needs is particularly relevant. This paper investigates the relationship between basic needs as defined by the Theory of Human needs (THN, Doyal and Gough 1991), material wealth and happiness. Specifically, we intend to answer the following research question: Are wealth and basic needs indicators always interchangeable when analyzing happiness determinants in low income settings? The paper focuses on seven communities in the South and North-east of Thailand with contrasting levels of access to markets and services. It challenges the common assumption that at low economic levels, wealth or income matter for people’s happiness because they increase satisfaction of basic needs, arguing instead that wealth might contribute to happiness for personal or symbolic reasons, which are not related to the use of goods as basic needs satisfiers. Thus, it suggests that indicators of wealth and basic needs should not be used interchangeably when studying happiness determinants in low income settings.     

Materialism and Quality of Life

An attempt is made in this paper to establish a foundation for a theory of materialism and quality of life. The theory posits that overall life satisfaction (quality of life) is partly determined by satisfaction with standard of living. Satisfaction with standard of living, in turn, is determined by evaluations of one's actual standard of living compared to a set goal. Materialists experience greater dissatisfaction with their standard of living than nonmaterialists, which in turn spills over to overall life causing dissatisfaction with life in general. Materialists experience dissatisfaction with their standard of living because they set standard of living goals that are inflated and unrealistically high. These goals set by materialists are more influenced by affective-based expectations (such as ideal, deserved, and need-based expectations) than cognitive-based ones (such as predictive, past, and ability based expectations). Materialists' ideal standard-of-living expectations are influenced by social comparisons involving remote referents, more so than comparisons involving standards that are situationally imposed. Examples of situationally-imposed standards are perceptions of wealth, income, and material possessions of family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, and so on. In contrast, examples of standards based on remote sources are perceptions of standard of living of others in one's community, town, state, country, other countries; perceptions of standard of living of others based on gender, age, education, ethnicity, occupation, and social class. This tendency to use remote referents in social comparisons may account for materialists' inflated and value-laden expectations of their standard of living. Materialists' deserved standard-of-living expectations are influenced by the tendency to engage in equity comparisons involving income and work. Thus, materialists compare themselves with others that seem to have more income and worked no harder. These equity comparisons generate feelings of inequity, injustice, anger, or envy. These emotions may also account for materialists' inflated and value-laden expectations of their standard of living. Materialists' standard-of-living expectations based on minimum needs are influenced by the tendency to spend more than generate income. This proclivity to overconsume and underproduce may be partly responsible for materialists' inflated and value-laden expectations of their standard of living.     

Multidimensional Analysis of Regional Inequality: The case of Hungary

Hungary has been in a transition process since the fall of the IronCurtain. This process has resulted in important developments in regionalpolicy. The introduction of a western style policy system seems,however, not to have affected regional inequality to any noticeableextent as measured by income per captia. There are still largedisparities between the richest counties and the remaining counties interms of this indicator. However, single indicator approaches toregional inequality have been criticised. Therefore in this paper weadopt a multidimensional approach to analyse regional inequality. Forthe counties of Hungary the multidimensionality of inequality is takeninto account by using a multiple of social and economic indicators thatare combined into a composite index. Theil's second measure ofmultidimensional inequality and principal component analysis are used toconstruct the composite index. The results thus obtained are used toidentify the least-favoured and the most-favoured regions. We find thatthere are substantial differences between the single indicator approachbased on per capita income and the multidimensional approach. Moreover,we argue that the EU Phare Programmes for Hungary have helped theeconomic development in developed regions situated on the EU border butat the same time have stimulated disparities within Hungary.     

A Cross-National Analysis of Lifespan Inequality, 1950–2015: Examining the Distribution of Mortality Within Countries

Cross-national health research devotes considerable attention to lifespan and survival rate disparities that are found between countries. However, the distribution of mortality across the world is shaped mostly by what happens within countries. We address this striking gap in the literature by modeling length-of-life inequality for individual nation-states. We use life tables from the United Nation’s (2015) World Population Prospects to estimate inequality levels for 200 countries across 13 waves between 1950 and 2015. We find that lifespan inequality is steadily declining across the world, but that each country’s level of inequality, and the rate at which it declines, vary considerably. Our models account for more than 90% of the longitudinal and cross-sectional variation in country-level lifespan inequality during the 1990–2015 period. Maternal mortality is the strongest predictor in our model, while disease prevalence, access to safe water, and health interventions figure prominently, as well. Gross domestic product per capita shows the expected curvilinear association with lifespan inequality, while primary education (both overall enrollment and gender equity in enrollment), external debt, and migration also play critical roles in shaping health outcomes. By contrast, the distribution of political and economic resources (i.e., democracy and income inequality) is less important.

     

Wealth Accumulation Inequality: Does Investment Risk Tolerance and Equity Ownership Drive Wealth Accumulation?

This study examined the savings aspect of wealth accumulation by estimating differences in financial risk tolerance and equity ownership among individual investors. Data were obtained from a proprietary dataset that collected over 15,000 risk-tolerance attitude responses between late 2007 and early 2013. Two research methodologies were utilized: cluster analysis and ANCOVA. The cluster analysis identified four investor profiles: (a) young lower-income women, (b) young unmarried men, (c) young college-educated men, and (d) older men with high income and education. Results from the ANCOVA test indicated that each cluster had significantly different levels of equity ownership, controlling for financial risk tolerance. Results provide a framework and methodology for future research on issues related to wealth inequality, investment behavior, and risk attitudes. The ability to group individuals similarly can be an important tool for researchers, policy makers, social activists, financial advisers, financial counselors, and educators when analyzing the household and macroeconomic wealth profile of United States residents.     

Indicators of Social Isolation: A Comparison Based on Survey Data from Germany

The paper presents a data-based comparison of three indicators of social isolation that are frequently used in contemporary social research: (a) low frequency of social contact with friends, relatives, and neighbors (social contact indicator); (b) absence of a discussion network (discussion network indicator); (c) absence of social support (support indicator). All three indicators are in line with an understanding of social isolation as the absence of close personal relationships. However, as shown in this paper, they are correlated only weakly to each other and lead to different results concerning the overall share of social isolation, age disparities, and gender differences of social isolation. Against this background, the paper proceeds with considerations on the content validity and criterion validity of the three indicators. Different versions of each indicator are scrutinized to gain insights on content validity. Conclusions on criterion validity are drawn from an examination of the correlations between the indicators and health, poverty, satisfaction with family life, and satisfaction with social life. Findings suggest a higher validity of the social contact indicator compared to the other two indicators. Data source is the German Socio-Economic Panel. Discussions of content validity are additionally based on analyses using the German Family Survey and the German Aging Survey.     

Poverty,Inequality and Deprivation in South Africa: An Analysis of the 1993 SALDRU Survey

This paper analyses poverty and inequality in South Africa based on data from a comprehensive multi-purpose household survey undertaken in 1993 to provide baseline statistics on poverty and its determinants to the new government. The paper shows that South Africa has among the highest levels of income inequality in the world and compares poorly in most social indicators to countries with similar income levels. Much of the poverty in the country is a direct result of apartheid policies that denied equal access to education, employment, services, and resources to the black population of the country. As a result, poverty has a very strong racial dimension with poverty concentrated among the African population. In addition, poverty is much higher in rural areas, and particularly high in the former homelands. Poverty among female-headed households and among children is also higher than average. Moreover, poverty is closely related to poor education and lack of employment. The poor suffer from lack of access to education, quality health care, basic infrastructure, transport, are heavily indebted, have little access to productive resources, and are heavily dependent on remittances and social transfers, particularly social pensions and disability grants. The paper uses an income-based definition of poverty for most of the analysis. In addition, it develops a broad-based index of deprivation including income, employment, wealth, access to services, health, education, and perceptions of satisfaction as its components. While on average the two indicators correspond fairly closely, the income poverty measure misses a considerable number of people who are severely deprived in many of the non-income measures of well-being. This group of severely deprived not identified by the income poverty measure consists predominantly of Africans living in rural areas, concentrated particularly in the province of KwaZulu/Natal.     

Social indicators of racial parity

Using the U.S. Census' Social Indicators III (73 indicators) and the OECD List of Social Indicators (33 indicators), a modified Delphi panel was surveyed in two rounds to rank 106 items and 19 “areas of major social concerns” as to how “essential” or “unnecessary” each indicator was in measuring racial parity in the U.S. A hypothesis about how much consensus was reached overall between the first- and second-round responses and hypotheses about comparative views among Academics, minority Advocates and Government researchers-administrators were tested (See Table I). From the second-round returns, the top 15 indicators (selected by the panel) and the 19 major areas of social concerns were analyzed. Secondary data were gathered and built into a Dissimilarity Index. Comparisons were analyzed statistically in increments of 5 indicators (quintiles), and overall to determine how much parity, or equality, between Afro-Americans and Whites had been obtained between the “early 1980s” and the “early 1990s”.     

Second Births and the Second Shift: A Research Note on Gender Equity and Fertility

In a set of propositions on fertility transition, Peter McDonald recently proposed that the decline from replacement‐level fertility to low fertility is associated with a combination of high levels of gender equity in individual‐oriented institutions, such as education and market employment, and low levels of gender equity in the family and family‐oriented institutions. Similarly, the “second shift,” or the share of domestic work performed by formally employed women, forms a critical piece of current cross‐national explanations for low fertility. Building on this scholarship, the authors explore whether there is empirical evidence at the individual level for a relationship between gender equity at home, as indicated by the division of housework among working couples with one child, and the transition to a second birth. Results, based on a sample of US couples, indicate a U‐shaped relationship between gender equity and fertility. Both the most modern and the most traditional housework arrangements are positively associated with fertility. This empirical test elaborates the family‐fertility relationship and underscores the need to incorporate family context, including gender equity, into explanations for fertility change.     

Gender Differences in Subjective Well-Being: Comparing Societies with Respect to Gender Equality

These analyses explore the relationship between gender inequality and subjective well-being. The hypothesis was tested as to whether societal gender inequality is related to the size of gender differences in subjective well-being in various societies. Results come from comparative data sets (World Values Survey, involving 57 countries; OASIS project, involving Norway, England, Germany, Spain and Israel). The size of gender differences varied with the extent of societal gender inequality and the cultural attitudes regarding gender equality in different countries. Including individual resources like education and income in the analyses reduced the size of gender and country differences. Gender differences in subjective well-being could therefore be related to gender specific access to goal relevant resources.     

The Impact of Social and Economic Indicators on Maternal and Child Health

As early as 1985, Rosenfield and Maine began to look at what is called the maternal child field (MCH). More than two decades later, maternal and infant mortality is still among the worst performing health indicator in resource-poor countries and regions, and it has barely changed since 1990. Although three of the eight United Nations Millennium Development Goals aim at reducing child mortality, maternal mortality, and promoting gender equality, most literature in the field is either clinical or exclusively deals with women’s health problems. In this study, I proposed an empirical model that tests the impact of gender equality, women’s human rights, and maternity care on MCH with economic and political development as background factors. The proposed model was tested by using structural equation analysis. Data were obtained from 137 developing countries. The proposed model is partially supported by the data. Empirical findings demonstrate that gender equality has a pivotal role to play in the promotion of MCH. The relationship between MCH and maternity care is found to be strong and statistically significant. This finding may permit a probable verification given the current social conditions in some developing countries, particularly the neglect of many of women’s health needs and the assignment of their primary responsibilities in childrearing. The women’s human rights hypothesis is not supported by the data. It is perhaps that human rights instruments provide a legal discourse for political functions and social welfare issues, but that the legal approach alone does not necessarily provide a moral and social foundation to ensure the implementation of social welfare and human well-being, particularly maternal and child health in developing countries. The findings also indicate the importance of economic development in predicting maternity care. Finally, a positive and statistically significant relationship is found between economic development and gender equality. Implications and limitations of the study are discussed.