The structural context of social indicator differentials in Japanese prefectures 1965–75

This comparative analysis of the 45 Japanese prefectures shows that a set of 14 standard social indicators can be reduced, using factor analysis, to two principal factors: affluence and social pathology. Another factor analysis, this time conceptually guided, generated five indices of structural context, urban differentiation, cultural heritage, agricultural development, progressive industrialization, and Communist vote. As hypothesized, these five structural variables predict both social affluence and social pathology, but theoretical considerations required that the components of the social pathology factor be examined individually. Suicide rates were also examined separately, and although the structural dimensions show some capacity to account for the rates, the findings prompt an elaboration of the theory that brings it more closely in line with its Durkheimian antecedents.     

The Association Between Adolescent Life Satisfaction, Family Structure, Family Affluence and Gender Differences in Parent–Child Communication

The study sought to examine young people’s life satisfaction in the context of the family environment, using data from the 2006 HBSC: WHO-collaborative Study in Scotland (N = 5,126). Multilevel linear regression analyses were carried out for 11-, 13- and 15-year old boys and girls, with outcome measure ridit-transformed life satisfaction. The study found there to be a relationship between family structure and life satisfaction for boys and girls aged 13 and 15 years. Family affluence mediated this relationship, however the extent of this mediation depended both on age and gender. For both boys and girls at all ages, life satisfaction was more strongly associated with parent–child communication than with family structure or family affluence. After adjustment for risk/health behaviours and attitudes towards peers and school, family structure remained significant for boys aged 13 years only. Whereas difficult parent–child communication acted as a risk factor of low life satisfaction for boys and girls, easy communication acted as protective factor among girls only.     

Macht Kultur glücklich? Überlegungen und Befunde zum Verhältnis von kultureller Partizipation und Lebenszufriedenheit

The article focuses on the relationship between life satisfaction and participation in “high culture” activities (attendance of opera, theater, classical concerts, and museums). The empirical basis is made up by four mail surveys of the adult population in three German cities. It is shown that life satisfaction is correlated with cultural participation and this also holds when the social background of the respondent—sex, age and education—is taken into consideration. However, when anomie and social contacts are brought into the analysis, the relationship diminishes. Life satisfaction is not result of the aesthetic experience that is tied up with cultural participation, but at best a result of the social involvement linked to the respective life style.     

Appraisal of Lifecolon; ``Area' Versus ``Dimension' Conceptualizations

The aim of the present work was to study the relationship between theresponses given by participants from various age groups and situations toa life appraisal questionnaire constructed from an area (work, spouse,family, friends) x dimension (acceptance, autonomy, mastery, purpose)matrix. When subjected to confirmatory factor analyses, the response datawere more supportive of an ``area' model than of a ``dimension' model. Whensubjected to an exploratory factor analysis, they revealed a seven-factorunderlying structure, which was more easily interpreted in terms of areasthan in terms of dimensions, and the effects of age and gender on thesefactors were the expected ones. When this seven-factor structure waslinked to a global measure of well-being, only factors with a clear ``area'definition could explain a significant part of the variance. These factorswere Love life, Family life, Leisure, and Occupational Life.     

The Relationship Between Social Support, Loneliness, and Subjective Well-Being in a Spanish Sample from a Multidimensional Perspective

The aim of this study was to investigate the association between social support, loneliness and well-being from a multidimensional perspective for which two structural models are proposed. The study included 2042 participants from Malaga City (Spain) who were aged between 18 and 95 years. For the dimensions frequency of support and satisfaction with support, the results show that partner support, family support, and support from friends, respectively, significantly decrease romantic loneliness, family loneliness, and social loneliness. On the other hand, community support has little effect on reducing social loneliness. Of the three types of support analyzed (emotional, informational and instrumental), emotional support was significantly more effective in reducing loneliness (family, romantic and social) and increasing well-being. Loneliness partially acts as a mediator variable, although it is affected by social support, but at the same time decreases the effects of social support on subjective well-being. The three types of loneliness have a strong negative impact on subjective well-being. Implications of these results are discussed.     

Parenthood and Quality of Life in Old Age: The Role of Individual Resources,the Welfare State and the Economy

Although the notion of ‘Social Europe’ can refer to different principles and policy options, most research narrows down attitudes towards Social Europe to a unidimensional construct. In this study, we instead propose a multi-dimensional approach, and contribute to the literature in three ways. First, we elaborate the notion of ‘Social Europe’ conceptually, and distinguish between the decision-making level for social policy, European social citizenship, harmonization, member-state solidarity and interpersonal solidarity. Second, analysing the 2014 Belgian National Election Study by means of confirmatory factor analysis we evidence that citizens indeed have distinct attitudes towards the policy principles and instruments of Social Europe. Although these attitudinal dimensions are interrelated, they cannot be reduced to a single Social Europe factor, meaning that citizens differentiate in their attitudes between various aspects of Social Europe. In addition, our research indicates that member-state solidarity is the primary aspect of Social Europe in public opinion, whereas the feature that has received most scholarly attention in empirical research to date—the preferred decision-making level for social policy—cannot be considered as a key component of attitudes towards Social Europe. Third, we investigate whether citizens with different educational levels conceptualize Social Europe similarly using multigroup confirmatory factor analysis. Results indicate that the attitudinal factor structure of Social Europe is largely equivalent among lower and higher-educated citizens.     

山东省三峡外迁移民社会适应状况的分析

目的：探讨山东三峡外迁移民社会适应状况及其问题,为促进移民的社会融合提供参考。方法：单因素分析应用χ^2检验、非参数检验;多因素分析应用因子分析。结果：把因子负荷值大于0.7的共7个指标作为分析的典型指标,归纳为经济适应、生活适应和社会交往适应3个方面。结论：山东三峡外迁移民适应状况中,最好的为社会交往适应,最差的是经济适应。因此,增强移民社会适应性的关键是提高其经济适应能力。     

From Childhood Deprivation to Adult Social Exclusion: Evidence from the 1970 British Cohort Study

This paper analyses the common trajectories leading to adult social exclusion that children from disadvantaged backgrounds experience during their life courses. Moreover, it provides an assessment of whether education is effective in breaking the vicious circle of disadvantages both across and within generations. Using data from the 1970 British Cohort Study, this empirical analysis is based on structural equation modelling techniques and proceeds in three steps. The measurement model is first tested to validate three groups of theoretical constructs (childhood disadvantages, adolescent deprivations and a multi-dimensional measure of social exclusion) and their indicators. Next, a path analysis is conducted for describing the trajectories linking childhood disadvantages to social exclusion. In the third step, the multi-faceted role of education is established by measuring the extent to which deprivations in the educational domain directly or indirectly affect all the relevant social exclusion dimensions.     

Methods and strategies in evaluating equity research

The thesis of this paper is that evaluation methods are strongly correlated to strategies employed in equity programming and research. Without attempting to settle the issue of specific advantages that might accrue to any particular approach, the paper nonetheless does aim to demonstrate that ends-in-view often determine choices in methods selected. A series of such broad-gauged methods are examined: evaluation research; cost-benefit analysis; quality of life measures; substitution strategies; microanalytic simulation; and in each instance evidence is adduced that the methods and procedures of research adopted — sometimes through scholarly initiatives, other times through government directives — serve quite specific epistemological and valuational premises of the researchers and agencies involved. One might say that the basic purpose of this exploratory study is to link problems in social policy to the style of analysis pioneered by the sociology of knowledge.     

Determinanten der Lebensqualität psychisch kranker Personen

Not only chronic mental disease, but also psycho-social factors limit the quality of life (QoL) of mentally ill persons. From three theoretical explanation models of QoL — the medical model, labeling theory, and stress process model — we deduced three hypotheses. To test our hypotheses, we re-analysed data from the study “Social integration and quality of life of mentally ill people”. Data were derived from structured interviews with 305 in-patients in psychiatric institutions in the Canton of Zurich (Switzerland), and completed with few informations from their doctors’ files. Various QoL dimensions entered the statistical analyses as dependent variables. Results indicate varied explanation power of the models under investigation depending on the dimension of QoL: psychic symptoms highly influence the health-related QoL, but have only small effects on social and material QoL. Social as well as material QoL are strongly influenced by social support as well as, though to a lesser extent, by life stress events. Chronification of mental illness and perceived discrimination because of the mental disease indirectly affect QoL through reduced social support and increased psychic symptoms. From our results we conclude that social integration and rehabilitation of mentally ill people require a bio-psycho-social treatment approach.     

Private versus public old-age security

We directly compare two institutions, a family compact—a parent makes a transfer to her parent in anticipation of a possible future gift from her children—with a pay-as-you-go, public pension system, in a life cycle model with endogenous fertility wherein children are valued both as consumption and investment goods. Absent intragenerational heterogeneity, we show that a benevolent government has no welfare justification for introducing public pensions alongside thriving family compacts since the former is associated with inefficiently low fertility. This result hinges critically on a fiscal externality—the inability of middle age agents to internalize the impact of their fertility decisions on old-age transfers under a public pension system. With homogeneous agents, a strong-enough negative aggregate shock to middle-age incomes destroys all family compacts, and in such a setting, an optimal public pension system cannot enter. This suggests the raison d’être for social security must lie outside of its function as a pension system—specifically its redistributive function which emerges with heterogeneous agents. In a simple modification of our benchmark model—one that allows for idiosyncratic frictions to compact formation such as differences in infertility/mating status—a welfare-enhancing role for a public pension system emerges; such systems may flourish even when family compacts cannot.     

The social consequences of economic cycles on nineteenth-century households and family life

This article investigates the consequences of rapid economic changes on the lives of the nineteenth-century people of Moncton Parish. First of all, the impact of changing economic conditions on critical socio-demographic variables is illustrated by changes in the composition of the foreigh-born population, the tendency to postpone marriage, and most dramatically, the postponement and limiting of child-birth. Secondly, a detailed examination of household and family structure further illustrates the effects of these major economic fluctuations on people's lives. In particular, the malleability of the boundaries of the household as it responds to the demands of the larger economy demonstrates that adaptation to these economic forces is necessary even at the most basic of social institutions — the household and family. For the people of Moncton Parish, the volatility of the economic life of the larger community fundamentally affected their personal lives.     

Apparent Quality-of-Life in Nations: How Long and Happy People Live

Quality-of-life in nations can be measured by how long and happy people live. This is assessed by combining data on life expectancy drawn from civil registration with survey data on subjective enjoyment of life as a whole. This measure of ‘apparent’ quality-of-life is a good alternative to current indexes of ‘assumed’ quality-of-life such as the Human Development Index. Data are available for 67 nations in the 1990s. The number of Happy-Life-Years varies considerably across nations. Switzerland is at the top with 63.0 years and Moldavia at the bottom with 20.5 years. China is in the middle with an average of 46.7. Happy lifetime has risen considerably in advanced nations over the last decade.People live longer and happier in nations characterised by economic affluence, freedom and justice. Together these three societal qualities explain 66% of the cross-national variance in Happy-Life-Years. Income equality and generous social security do not appear to be required for a long and happy life.     

National indicators for health for all

This paper examines available international data relevant to the World Health Organization model of health status. It explores the possibility of constructing useful measures of health status, health policy, social and economic status, and provision of health care based on these data. A five-factor model is developed and tested empirically using World Bank statistical data from 123 countries. Two factors representing dimensions of country affluence and population density are found to explain 78 percent of the variations in the health status indicator. The countries with health status indicator levels worse than those predicted by the model are predominantly third-world countries; a majority are African. Countries with health status indicator levels better than predicted are mainly in Asia, Latin America, and Europe. Some generally accepted causal relationships were not supported by the findings in this analysis.     

A Complexity Approach to Psychological Well-Being in Adolescence: Major Strengths and Methodological Issues

Psychological well-being in adolescence is an increasing field of study. Deepening in its knowledge during this period of life can be of a lot of help to the designing of more adjusted prevention programs aimed to avoid or reduce the problems adolescents might be experiencing. Complexity theories can be a productive alternative to the important limitations explanations about psychological well-being in adolescence have nowadays. Answers to a questionnaire have been obtained from a sample of 968 Catalan adolescents from 12 to 16 years old including 29 psychological well-being indicators measuring 8 dimensions related to satisfaction with specific life domains, self-esteem, perceived social support, perception of control and values.A structural equation modelling approach to complexity that focuses on the non-linearity property has been followed. Given the large number of dimensions, the model has been estimated in two steps. First, a confirmatory factor analysis model has been fitted to the 29 indicators and appropriate factor scores have been saved. Then all possible products and squared terms of the factor scores have been computed and have been used as predictors of the dependent variable using an ordered logit model.The results show that a non-linear model including interaction effects among the 8 dimensions, age and gender, has a higher explanatory power to predict satisfaction with life as a whole, compared to a linear model estimated from those same indicators.This work must be understood as a first step, basically a methodological one, to the future elaboration of new models of psychological well-being in adolescence to be based on the principles defended by complexity theories.     

我国生育率转变的微观经济分析

生育率转变,即生育率下降是经济、政治、社会、文化等多种因素综合作用的结果。影响我国生育率转变的微观经济因素主要有家庭收入、家庭经济类型、家庭消费模式和生活质量等。     

All in the Family: How Do Social Capital and Material Wellbeing Affect Relational Wellbeing?

We use a unique dataset from Italy to investigate the impact of socioeconomic characteristics and social capital on family wellbeing and satisfaction. We assess wellbeing using four dimensions of satisfaction with family life: satisfaction with decision making processes, with relationships with partner and children, and with time spent with children. Social capital is measured through information about membership in organizations, trust, and interactions with others. We find that while socioeconomic characteristics in general do not have strong effects on family wellbeing, social capital matters for family life satisfaction.

     

The affluence line

The concept of the poverty line has lately gained general acceptance in the discussion of distribution and development problems. For a complete clarification of these problems the poverty line is, however, not enough. We need also an affluence line which will determine the level above which consumption need not and should not rise. The main reasons for introducing the concept of the affluence line are: (1) Scarcities which constitute limits to development, (2) Social justice, (3) Societal deterioration which is brought about by affluence. On the other hand the arguments against curbing affluence do not seem to be convincing. There may be several ways in which affluence can be conceived: as subjective and objective, as relative and absolute. Consequently there are various ways of measuring affluence and of determining the affluence line. The methodology of that operation is explained and the policy implications of the affluence line concept are discussed.     

The age of extremes: Concentrated affluence and poverty in the twenty-first century

Urbanization, rising income inequality, and increasing class segregation have produced a geographic concentration of affluence and poverty throughout the world, creating a radical change in the geographic basis of human society. As the density of poverty rises in the environment of the world’s poor, so will their exposure to crime, disease, violence. and family disruption. Meanwhile the spatial concentration of affluence will enhance the benefits and privileges of the rich. In the twenty-first century the advantages and disadvantages of one’s class position will be compounded and reinforced through ecological mechanisms made possible by the geographic concentration of affluence and poverty, creating a deeply divided and increasingly violent social world.     

Modeling urbanism: Economic,social and environmental stress in cities

The time has come for urban social indicator research to converge with the basic substantive efforts of urban researchers. Such a convergence may propel both basic and applied researchers toward more fruitful outcomes. This paper argues that the traditional model of urbanism provides the medium for the convergence. When urbanism is conceptualized to be multidimensional, seemingly discreet indicators of demographic, economic, social, and environmental conditions in cities may be incorporated into a more general model of urban structure and change. Specifically, using social indicators for 195 cities from ZPG's Children's Stress Index and the 1990 U.S. Census, we show empirically: (1) Urbanism is a complex factor with four distinct dimensions: demographic scale, economic stress, social stress, and environmental stress. (2) These four dimensions of urbanism may be reliably measured with standard composite variables used in today's social indicator research. (3) Within the Urbanism factor there are causal connections among the separate dimensions, the most basic of which is that asserted by arguments from the traditional theory of urbanism; specifically, that population size, density, and social heterogeneity are causally linked to stress in economic, social, and environmental systems of the city.