Downward Social Comparison Increases Life-Satisfaction in the Giving and Volunteering Context

Using samples of U.S. residents recruited from an online subject pool, this research confirms that charitable behavior is associated with higher life-satisfaction based on a retrospective survey (Study 1). Adopting experimental manipulation, we also find that participants report higher life-satisfaction after volunteering for a downward comparable target (i.e., the poor) than helping a non-comparable target (i.e., Wikipedia). But the above effect exists only among high social-comparison individuals (Study 2). Moreover, among people high in social comparison, comparing oneself with a downward comparable target without helping can lead to a similar level of life-satisfaction as helping the target. In contrast, participants who are low in social comparison achieve higher life-satisfaction when comparing themselves to rather than helping the target (Study 3). These findings suggest that charitable giving and volunteering contributes to life-satisfaction through allowing for downward social comparison.     

Consequences of Overnight Work Travel for Personal Social Relations: Problems,Promises, and Further Repercussions

Abstract

The article uses survey data from Sweden to examine social consequences of the mobile society. Key questions tackled include the implications of overnight work travel for the travellers’ ability to cultivate locally based and long‐distance friendships and the potential of travel to provide a source of new acquaintances. Data analysis indicates that widening social networks and increasing opportunities to achieve co‐presence with long‐distance friends, as brought by mobility, represent significant consequences of overnight work travel from an individual’s standpoint. This experience was salient even among those respondents who travelled no more than occasionally, while only the most frequent travellers perceived their travel as something impeding with their chances of sustaining local social ties. While the benefits deriving from travel thus seem incontestable, it may therefore not be possible either to entirely discard the prevalent notion of mobile lifestyles as a factor undermining social cohesion and promoting isolation and loneliness.     

Exploring Antecedents of Charitable Giving and Their Impact on Subjective Well-Being in Singapore

There is a declining number of donors and increasing number of charities competing for donations in Singapore. In this study we explore the values and attitudes (i.e. empathy, individualism and materialism) associated with donation behaviour and their consequences on the donor’s subjective well-being among 226 Singaporeans from a cross-section of society. We found individuals who value warm relationships with others are more likely to have an empathetic attitude and donate money to charities. However, we did not find a relationship between individualism and donation behaviour nor materialism and donation behaviour. Moreover, helping those in need (donation behaviour) did not influence the donor’s subjective well-being. The theoretical and managerial implications are discussed and suggestions for future research provided.     

Does intergenerational mobility shape psychological distress? Sorokin revisited

Drawing from Sorokin's hypothesis that socially mobile individuals are at greater risk of experiencing psychological distress than their non-mobile counterparts, we investigate whether intergenerational occupational mobility influences psychological distress, as measured by the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression (CES-D) scale. Using data for men from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) and Sobel's Diagonal Mobility Models, we find little evidence for Sorokin's hypothesis; mobile individuals are no more likely to be psychologically distressed than their non-mobile counterparts. In fact, one group of mobile men - those who left their farming origins - are actually less distressed than the sons who remain as farmers and non-mobile men in higher-ranked social classes. We speculate that this reflects the fact that farming became very arduous during the late 20th century and these mobile sons of farmers appreciate their improved life chances. Our findings suggest that the association between mobility and psychological distress varies across specific class backgrounds and is contingent upon the broader social and economic context.     

Does Relative Risk Aversion explain educational inequality? A dynamic choice approach

The theory of Relative Risk Aversion (RRA) suggests that educational decision making is motivated by the individual's desire to avoid downward social class mobility and, furthermore, that this desire is stronger than the desire to pursue upward mobility. This paper develops a Dynamic Decision Process (DDP) model which tests the two central behavioral assumptions in the RRA theory that (1) individuals maximize utility when making educational decisions and (2) the RRA mechanism comprises an important component in the educational decision-making process. Furthermore, our DDP model allows for class-specific cultural values regarding education. We analyze data from the Danish Youth Longitudinal Study and find strong evidence that RRA affects educational decisions over and above traditional socioeconomic factors.     

Childhood Family Structure and Intergenerational Income Mobility in the United States

The declining prevalence of two-parent families helped increase income inequality over recent decades. Does family structure also condition how economic (dis)advantages pass from parents to children? If so, shifts in the organization of family life may contribute to enduring inequality between groups defined by childhood family structure. Using National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data, I combine parametric and nonparametric methods to reveal how family structure moderates intergenerational income mobility in the United States. I find that individuals raised outside stable two-parent homes are much more mobile than individuals from stable two-parent families. Mobility increases with the number of family transitions but does not vary with children’s time spent coresiding with both parents or stepparents conditional on a transition. However, this mobility indicates insecurity, not opportunity. Difficulties maintaining middle-class incomes create downward mobility among people raised outside stable two-parent homes. Regardless of parental income, these people are relatively likely to become low-income adults, reflecting a new form of perverse equality. People raised outside stable two-parent families are also less likely to become high-income adults than people from stable two-parent homes. Mobility differences account for about one-quarter of family-structure inequalities in income at the bottom of the income distribution and more than one-third of these inequalities at the top.     

The Impact of Migration on Fertility under China’s Underlying Restrictions: A Comparative Study Between Permanent and Temporary Migrants

Compared with that in other countries, the issue of fertility in China is more complicated because of its restriction policy or system. Several major hypotheses have been proposed to explain and predict the impact of migration on China’s fertility regardless of China’s real situation. Therefore, this paper analyzes the impact of migration on fertility considering China’s underlying restrictions using the data from the Chinese General Social Survey carried out in 2008. The social class in this study was divided into two, namely urban class and rural class. By building the 2 × 2 mobility tables and the diagonal mobility model, the study determined the impact of migration on fertility and analyzed the influence of some restrictions, such as family planning, traditional fertility concept, and household registration system. Results show that migration greatly affects fertility: upward migration (i.e., from rural to urban) may decrease the fertility, whereas downward migration (i.e., from urban to rural) may increase it. The degree of decline on fertility is greater than that of increase. Family planning still plays a role in fertility decline. Traditional concepts on fertility, for example, bringing up sons to take care of parents in their old age and preferring boys to girls, are anchored on the people’s mind, which is detrimental to the stability of the fertility rate. Moreover, the household registration system primarily influences the fertility behavior of temporary migration, with a negative relationship between them.     

Gender, Job Searching, and Employment Outcomes among Mexican Immigrants

Past quantitative research has typically disregarded the effect of gender on the relationship between social capital and immigrant adaptation. However, recent theory and qualitative evidence suggest that gender is a significant factor moderating this association. I use Mexican Migration Project (MMP) data regarding Mexican immigrant experiences in the U.S. to examine quantitatively how the process of job searching, and the effects of network-based job searching, vary by gender. Results show no evidence of overall sex differences in the likelihood of using network (i.e., family-based or friend-based) or individual (i.e., non-network) job search methods, but there are sex differences in the processes affecting job search method used. Settlement increases women’s use of their friend networks to obtain work, while for men, it decreases the use of networks of any kind. Contrary to conventional wisdom, women who use network-based job searches are less likely to obtain formal sector employment than women who find work without network assistance. Conversely, using network-based job searches increases the likelihood that men will find work in the formal sector. Since employment in the formal sector is correlated with wages, as well as nonwage benefits, this suggests that using networks in the job search has markedly different effects on the overall economic well-being of male and female Mexican immigrants in the U.S.     

西北少数民族地区乡村社会流动的经济后果分析——以宁夏固原和甘肃临夏为例

本文以宁夏固原和甘肃临夏地区的田野调查为例．分析了西北少数民族地区目前频繁发生的乡村社会流动所带来的经济后果。研究表明,乡村社会流动推动了民族地区和全国的城市化进程,缓减了农业和农村的压力,改善了流动参与的家庭收入结构,提高了流动参与者参与市场经济的能力。同时,也带来农村经济分化进一步拉大,地方政府崇拜劳务输出,村民经济利益至上及低端的劳动力循环等不利于流出地经济发展和村庄整合的负向后果。     

Social Networking,Mobilities, and the Rise of Liquid Identities

This research focuses on representations of mobilities and their role in social networking on Facebook. Based on an ethnographic research design embedded in a grounded theory approach, the study investigates the mobility patterns of one Generation Y network. The analysis of 50 profiles in this network, including texts, photographs, photo albums and check-ins, suggests that Facebook fosters corporeal as well as imaginative mobility, ultimately leading to the emergence of ‘liquid identities’, i.e. identities modelled on movement. Social media, specifically Facebook, have set in motion complex patterns of competition for network capital and social status based on mobilities.     

Cultural value orientations, internalized homophobia, and accommodation in romantic relationships

In the present study, we examined the impact of cultural value orientations (i.e., the personally oriented value of individualism, and the socially oriented values of collectivism, familism, romanticism, and spiritualism) on accommodation (i.e., voice and loyalty, rather than exit and neglect, responses to partners' anger or criticism) in heterosexual and gay relationships; and we examined the impact of internalized homophobia (i.e., attitudes toward self, other, and disclosure) on accommodation specifically in gay relationships. A total of 262 heterosexuals (102 men and 162 women) and 857 gays (474 men and 383 women) participated in the present study. Consistent with hypotheses, among heterosexuals and gays, socially oriented values were significantly and positively related to accommodation (whereas the personally oriented value of individualism was unrelated to accommodation); and among gays in particular, internalized homophobia was significantly and negatively related to accommodation. Implications for the study of heterosexual and gay relationships are discussed.     

Shared journeys,linked lives: a relational-biographical approach to mobility practices

This paper innovatively extends existing practice-theoretical mobility research by examining biographical aspects of people’s everyday mobility that capture and reflect their social relations. Drawing on nine qualitative interviews with couples who live in/near Vienna without a private car, the paper demonstrates the promising potential of retrospective forms of social research for uncovering the dynamics of mobility practices across the life course. It conceptualises individuals as inherently social and mutually interconnected mobility practitioners whose complex and dynamic interactions with others make up more or less mobile households and families. The paper thus treats social relations as a major connector between the constitutive social and material elements of (mobility) practices, making an explicitly relational contribution to current practice-theoretical debates in mobility research.     

Social Support and Psychological Well-Being Under Social Change in Urban and Rural China

The economic reforms of the past two decades have initiated a major social transition in China, characterized by unprecedented social mobility and stratification. Meanwhile, the privatization of health care has increased costs to the consumer. While such changes would logically affect individuals’ psychological well-being, little attention has been paid to this association. Using data from the Chinese General Social Survey (2005), this paper looks at the relationships between social changes and the psychological well-being of individuals in both urban and rural areas, as well as the role of social support in Chinese society. We find that an increasing health-care burden is significantly associated with individuals’ psychological well-being, especially in rural China. Perceived social status, its change over time and its comparison with perceived status of peers, are also significantly correlated with psychological well-being both in rural and urban China. Social support has a protective function for psychological well-being across different samples, and also compensates for the negative association between increasing health-care burden and psychological well-being, but it strengthens relative deprivation during social change on psychological well-being in rural areas.     

Driven to Care: The Car,Automobility and Social Work

Abstract

Welfare practices are invariably represented in static and sedentary ways and their mobilities ignored. This paper corrects for this by examining the car and auto‐mobility in social work. The car is not just a means to reaching vulnerable children and other service users quickly, and a mobile office, but a space where significant casework goes on and deeply meaningful ‘therapeutic journeys’ happen. The car carries similar emotional meanings and possibilities for workers as a space within which to contain the anxieties and emotions they routinely confront in their work. Drawing on mobile social science and psychoanalytic theory, the paper shows how the power and meanings of auto‐mobility in ‘car therapy’ are products of the design of cars and the distinct rhythms and mobilities they produce in themselves. The car in social work is conceptualised as a ‘fluid container’ for the processing of personal troubles, emotion and key life changes. The theoretical implications of this argument for the social science of mobilities are drawn out.     

Race and exits from white collar jobs: Differences in downward mobility processes among African American, Latino, and White males

Does race affect the route to downward mobility from white collar occupations? Data from Panel Study of Income Dynamics are used to assess the minority vulnerability thesis, which maintains there are race-specific processes of down ward occupational mobility among males from white collar occupations. Findings indicate that, consistent with theory, a racialized continuum exists across six years of the work-career. For Whites, the path to downward mobility is relatively narrow and structured by traditional stratification-based causal factors, namely, human capital, back ground socioeconomic status, and job/labor market characteristics. For African Americans, the route to downward mobility is broad-based and not captured by traditional stratification factors and Latinos occupy an intermediate ground between Whites and African Americans. Further, as predicted by theory, the racial gap in mobility processes between Whites and racial minorities is pronounced at the lower-tier of white collar employment. Finally, implications of the findings for understanding labor market inequalities on the basis of race are discussed.     

Mobility,Space and Social Structuration in the Second Modernity and Beyond

The recent social structuration theories speak about liquefaction. However, these liquid models fail to deliver satisfactory explanation of contemporary sociation; the thesis of this article is that this is due to insufficient reflection on space‐time. Three points are to be discussed: the questionable distinction between social and geographical space, which these models use to diagnose current patterns of social structuration as resulting from new time–space experience; the certainty of periodization, which privileges time over space; and the persistence of a ‘container’ understanding of space. It is necessary to work out a better understanding of the current time–space relations on the one hand, and to develop a method to grasp conceptually the meta‐change on the other. The second can be achieved with the help of the theory of reflexive modernization. This theory, however, does not offer much insight into the exact time–space relations, thus the first postulate requires further empirical research. This article, based on a study of mobile transnational professionals, attempts to fulfill both postulates and to work out its own theoretical frameworks for researching mobility, spatialization and social structuration.     

Ethnic identity, majority norms, and the native–immigrant employment gap

Earlier studies do not agree on whether ethnic identity, i.e., immigrants’ attachment to the home country and the host country, can explain lower employment outcomes among immigrants. This study investigates the relationship between employment and ethnic identity and complements the literature by capturing a novel dimension of ethnic identity: openness to majority norms. Reproducing measures from earlier studies, I find that immigrants’ employment outcomes do not systematically associate with their ethnic identity. However, immigrants who share social norms with the majority experience significantly better employment outcomes, particularly first-generation immigrant women. Furthermore, I show that interethnic differentials in majority norms could account for up to 20 % of the explained part of the employment gap between natives and first-generation immigrants. Those results shed more light on the interethnic employment gap and aspects of immigrants’ identity relevant to economic integration.     

Ways that Social Change Predicts Personal Quality of Life

A notable way that social change affects personal quality of life would rely on the person’s experience with social change. This experience may influence societal quality of life and quality of work life, which may in turn affect personal quality of life. Additionally, the experience of social change is possibly less detrimental to personal quality of life later in the presence of higher existing personal quality of life. These influences over time become transparent through a three-wave panel study of 531 working people in Hong Kong, China. Findings show that although social change experienced did not generally impair subsequent quality of life, it tended to be more detrimental to the person with lower quality of life before. In addition, social change experienced tended to erode societal quality of life and quality of work life experienced, which appeared to be predictors of personal quality of life. Hence, there are possible ways for social change to predict personal quality of life.     

Social Economic Accounts System (SEAS): Toward a comprehensive,community-level assessment procedure

While most research on social and economic indicators has been developed from the national perspective, this article presents a comprehensive community-level Social Economic Accounts System (SEAS). The system is designed to enable social scientists, program developers, and public policy officials to better understand the effects of various types of public investments upon the quality of life of individuals, the relative social position of groups of people, and the social well-being of the community. In order to be useful for such diverse purposes as development of community theory, program evaluation, and policy formulation, the SEAS is: community-wide, covering most aspects of community life which may influence or be influenced by investment projects; systematic in its approach to causal factors behind the patterns of stability and change in key variables; sensitive to distinguishing features of communities which indicate special needs and which may affect the operation and success of investment projects; applicable to time series analyses for recording and evaluating change; and, oriented toward the comparison of communities receiving investment projects and to other communities and norms. The SEAS builds upon community social and economic theory, the program perspectives of federal and state categorical programs (e.g. health care, education), and the public policy orientations of community and national development. Data have been specified for 15 sectors of community life (e.g. education, economic base, health), and organized under three generic sets of items: state variables (i.e., data describing the lives of people in the community), system variables (i.e., data describing the operations of institutions which affect people's lives), and relevant condition variables (i.e., data describing system external variables which have an effect upon the state and system characteristics). More than 400 items are included in the SEAS.     

Paternal Incarceration and Adolescent Social Network Disadvantage

Previous research has suggested that adolescent peers influence behavior and provide social support during a critical developmental period, but few studies have addressed the antecedents of adolescent social networks. Research on the collateral consequences of incarceration has explored the implications of parental incarceration for children’s behavioral problems, academic achievement, health, and housing stability, but not their social networks. Using network data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, I find that adolescents with recently incarcerated fathers are in socially marginal positions in their schools and befriend more-marginal peers than other adolescents: their friends are less advantaged, less academically successful, and more delinquent than other adolescents’ friends. Differences in network outcomes are robust to a variety of specifications and are consistent across race and gender subgroups. This study advances the social networks literature by exploring how familial characteristics can shape adolescent social networks and contributes to the collateral consequences of incarceration literature by using network analysis to consider how mass incarceration may promote intergenerational social marginalization.