The bright side of migration: Hedonic,psychological, and social well-being in immigrants in Spain

The aim of this study was to examine the multi-dimensional structure of well-being in immigrant population, as well as to explore the complexity of well-being disparities between immigrants and host nationals. We analyzed hedonic, psychological, and social well-being in a sample of 1250 immigrants from Bolivia, Colombia, Morocco, Romania and Sub-Saharan Africa, together with that of 500 matched host nationals from Spain. Participants were selected by means of probability sampling with stratification by age and sex. Confirmatory factor analyses revealed that the re-specified tripartite model of well-being, including hedonic, psychological, and social components of the individual’s functioning, was the best fitting model, as compared to alternative models. Importantly, after adjustment for perceived friendship and support, marital status, income, sex and age, immigrants presented higher levels of well-being than host nationals. Compared to host nationals, immigrants reported especially higher eudaimonic well-being: social contribution and actualization, personal growth, self-acceptance, and purpose in life, and lower levels of well-being only in terms of positive relations with others and negative affect. These results are discussed in the context of positive psychology.     

垄断劳动力市场、最低工资限制和不平等

关于劳动力垄断市场对于加总经济和社会福利水平的影响,现有主流经济学已经有了很规范的结论,即垄断肯定会造成产出水平和社会福利水平的损失。本论文主要分析劳动力市场的垄断对不平等的影响以及最低工资限制对不平等的作用。本论文的分析表明:首先,同完全竞争的劳动力市场相比,完全垄断市场肯定会加剧不平等;其次,即使在完全竞争劳动力市场下,最低工资限制对不平等的影响也是不一定的,它具体取决于均衡状态劳动需求弹性的大小;最后,在劳动力市场存在买方垄断的情况下,高于完全垄断市场工资水平的最低工资限制肯定会使得失业和不平等同时改善。     

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.     

收入差距和社会公正:拉美国家社会保障体系的发展及其经验

在对拉美社会保障体系的研究中,人们的关注大多集中在其九十年代的以私有化为导向的改革中,而对于其改革成效和晚近发展讨论较少,对这些体系特点以及社会基础的解释也很不充分。拉美国家社会政策发展的教训警示我们:城市化和市场化的发展未必增进社会全体人民的生活状况,而会导致社会两极化或强化社会区隔。拉美国家私有化、民营化的经验在增强福利供给的多样性、给人们更多的选择方面起到很大作用,但其在增进社会保障程度、减少贫困率方面的效应却很弱。这些国际经验对于我们回答中国的社会实践问题可以提供相应的参照系。     

Social mobility in 20 modern societies: The role of economic and political context

It is commonly argued that social mobility rates are influenced by economic and political conditions. Nevertheless, research on this issue has tended to be hindered by two limitations that make it difficult to draw strong conclusions about contextual effects: (1) seldom have country-level and individual-level influences been tested simultaneously, and (2) only rarely have data more recent than the 1970s been employed. We improve on previous research by employing multilevel models fitted to relatively recent survey data collected from 20 modern societies by the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) and national-level characteristics derived from various official sources. Our findings demonstrate systematic cross-national variation in the association between the occupational status of respondents and their fathers. Consistent with the industrialization thesis, this variation is positively associated with per-capita GDP, suggesting that more affluent nations are characterized by more open and fluid stratification structures. Our results also suggest the importance of political regimes and migration for social mobility. In contrast, economic inequality appears to explain very little of the cross-national variation in mobility rates.     

Education, gender, and migration in the context of social change

Although sociologists have identified education as likely determinant of migration, the ways in which education affects migration are unclear and empirical results are disparate. This paper addresses the relationship between educational attainment, enrolment, and migration, focusing on the role of gender and how it changes with evolving social contexts. Using empirical analyses based in Nepal, results indicate that educational attainment has positive effects and enrolment has negative effects on out-migration and including enrolment in the model increases the effect of attainment. In the case of women, with the changing role of gender, increased education and labor force participation, the affect of educational attainment changes drastically over time, from almost no effect, to a strong positive effect. Consideration of enrolment, and the role of gender in education, employment, and marriage may help to explain the disparate results in past research on education and migration.     

Widening the social context of disablement among married older adults: Considering the role of nonmarital relationships for loneliness

Utilizing the stress process and life course perspectives, we investigated the influence of non-spousal social support on the associations between marital quality, physical disability, and loneliness among married older adults. Using data from the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP), we found that the association between physical disability and loneliness was partially accounted for by the fact that physical disability was associated with less supportive nonmarital relationships. While physically-disabled older adults in higher-quality marriages were buffered from loneliness, supportive non-martial relationships did not offset elevated loneliness among those in low-quality marriages. These associations were largely similar for men and women. Thus, although both marital and nonmarital relationships are important for loneliness, when confronted with a stressor such as disablement it is the marital relationship alone that matters.     

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.     

经济结构调整、物价水平波动与农民增收——东部沿海省份面板数据的实证分析

改革开放以来,我国农村人均纯收入增长率远远低于GDP平均增长率.通过对东部沿海经济发达省份1978～2008年Panel Data数据研究,我们发现,经济结构调整是影响农村人均收入的重要因素,对农村人均收入增长率有负面影响.农村物价水平的波动对农民收入增长率也起到负面作用.对此,要积极采取措施对农村中的资源要素流动进行合理引导,在城市化、工业化的进程中要注意反哺农业和农村经济,加大对农业的投入和金融支持.政府需要发挥好宏观调控的作用,防止农产品生产资料和农村消费市场价格的大起大落.     

收入分配、技术进步与经济的持续增长——来自中国的经验

支撑中国经济近30年高增长的主要是要素投入而非技术进步,这种粗放型的增长方式以及这种方式下的经济增长都是不可持续的。中国经济发展正在进入"刘易斯转折区间",这可能为经济增长方式转变为主要依靠技术进步提供条件,也可能使经济进入均衡陷阱。技术进步本身有着内在的逻辑,它源于分工,而分工又具有自发演进的正反馈机制。建设"创新型国家"(或者说大范围的技术进步)难以依靠由政府动员全社会力量集中攻关的"举国体制"来实现,分工的深化才是技术进步,进而是经济持续增长的决定性因素。     

Social support,stress, and maternal postpartum depression: A comparison of supportive relationships

A large body of literature documents the link between social support, stress, and women’s mental health during pregnancy and the postpartum period; however, uncertainty remains as to whether a direct effect or stress mediating pathway best describes the relationship between these factors. Moreover, specific dimensions of social support that may be influential (family type, sources of support) have largely been neglected. Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Well-being Study (N = 4150), we examine the pathway between social support, stress exposure, and postpartum depression in greater detail. Findings reveal that social support is a significant, protective factor for postpartum depression, and the variety of support providers in a woman’s social network is important, especially in the context of family type. Findings also reveal the importance of considering social support and stress exposure as part of a larger causal pathway to postpartum mental health.     

Evaluating Effectively Maintained Inequality: School and post-school transitions,socioeconomic background,academic ability and curricular placement

Effectively Maintained Inequality (EMI) is proposed as an explanation for contemporary socioeconomic inequalities in education. Socioeconomic inequalities are ‘maintained’ by students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds taking less advantageous curricula influencing their post-school destinations. The purpose of this study is to evaluate EMI by addressing several hypotheses derived from the EMI thesis using Australian longitudinal data. It analyses within-school transitions and the transition from school to post-school destinations (elite university, other university, vocational and no post-school study or training). The study also models curricular placement (subject choice). It finds that the transitions within- and post-school are more powerfully influenced by students’ academic ability than by socioeconomic background. Furthermore, subject choice has strong impacts on the transitions. Similarly, Year 12 subject choice is only weakly predicted by socioeconomic background, and more strongly influenced by ability and occupational interests. In turn, occupational interests are largely independent of socioeconomic background. The EMI thesis is not supported.     

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.     

Social control,social learning,and cheating: Evidence from lab and online experiments on dishonesty

Varying the conditions of the decision-making environment we offered participants the opportunity to increase their payoff by undetectable lies. In addition to a baseline treatment, in which subjects rolled a die in private and showed a high extent of dishonest behavior, we increased the degree of social control by a novel treatment in which subjects played in randomly assigned pairs of two. The presence of others proved to substantially, but only temporarily reduce dishonest behavior. Furthermore, one treatment group received feedback on unethical behavior of participants in a similar experiment. Knowing that others betrayed in the experiment facilitated social learning and led to a higher prevalence of cheating. Finally, increasing the degree of anonymity by re-running the experiment online increased the extent of norm transgressions slightly.     

Alcohol outlets,social disorganization,and robberies: Accounting for neighborhood characteristics and alcohol outlet types

We estimated spatially lagged regression and spatial regime models to determine if the variation in total, on-premise, and off-premise alcohol outlet¹ density is related to robbery density, while controlling for direct and moderating effects of social disorganization.² Results suggest that the relationship between alcohol outlet density and robbery density is sensitive to the measurement of social disorganization levels. Total alcohol outlet density and off-premise alcohol outlet density were significantly associated with robbery density when social disorganization variables were included separately in the models. However, when social disorganization levels were captured as a four item index, only the association between off-premise alcohol outlets and robbery density remained significant. More work is warranted in identifying the role of off-premise alcohol outlets and their characteristics in robbery incidents.     

School suspension and social selection: Labeling,network change,and adolescent,academic achievement

The growing body of research detailing the pronounced effects of criminal stigma on inequality in the US underscores the importance of labeling theory. In spite of the renewed interest in labeling, little research has evaluated the theoretical mechanisms underlying the theory. Drawing on the labeling perspective, this article evaluates mechanisms underlying the relationship between school punishment and reductions in adolescent academic achievement. It uses recent innovations in longitudinal network analysis to examine the consequences of school punishment as a dynamic interplay of labeling, network selection, and group influence. Results indicate that school punishment facilitates selection into academically underperforming peer networks and that this change in network composition is largely responsible for the association between school punishment and reductions in adolescent academic achievement.     

Secularization versus religious revival in Eastern Europe: Church institutional resilience,state repression and divergent paths

Despite continuing for over two decades, the debate about the nature of the trends in religiosity in post-Communist Eastern Europe remains unresolved: some arguing that these countries are undergoing the same process of secularization as the West, while others insist that the entire region is experiencing a religious revival. Using national sample surveys from the early 1990s to 2007 to examine the change in demographic predictors of religiosity, we show that Catholic and Orthodox countries are experiencing different trends, the first group displaying evidence of secularization and the second of revival, and that these two different trends are likely to derive from the legacies of state repression and the differing abilities of the churches to resist such repression. We argue that the current literature has thus taken a mistakenly general approach, and that the post-Communist region consists of at least two distinct groups of societies with different trends in religiosity.     

Imagining class: A study into material social class position,subjective identification,and voting behavior across Europe

The traditional approach to class voting has largely ignored the question whether material class positions coincide with subjective class identification. Following Sosnaud et al. (2013), this study evaluates party preferences when Europeans’ material and subjective social class do not coincide. Seminal studies on voting behavior have suggested that members of lower classes are more likely to vote for the economic left and cultural right and that higher classes demonstrate the opposite pattern. Yet, these studies have on the one hand overlooked the possibility that there is a mismatch between the material class people can be classified in and the class they think they are part of, and on the other hand the consequences of this discordant class identification on voting behavior. Analyzing the 2009 wave of the European Elections Study, we find that the majority of the Europeans discordantly identify with the middle class, whereas only a minority of the lower and higher classes concordantly identify with their material social class. Further, material class only seems to predict economic voting behavior when it coincides with subjective class; for instance, individuals who have an inflated class identification are more likely to vote for the economic left, even when they materially can be classified as middle or high class. We conclude this paper with a discussion on scholarly debates concerning class and politics.     

Leaving my religion: Understanding the relationship between religious disaffiliation,health, and well-being

Religious disaffiliation—leaving the religious tradition in which one was raised for no religious affiliation in adulthood—has become more common in recent years, though few studies have examined its consequences for the health and well-being of individuals. We use an innovative approach, comparing the health and subjective well-being of religious disaffiliates to those who remain affiliated using pooled General Social Survey samples from 1973 through 2012. We find that religious disaffiliates experience poorer health and lower well-being than those consistently affiliated and those who are consistently unaffiliated. We also demonstrate that the disadvantage for those who leave religious traditions is completely mediated by the frequency of church attendance, as disaffiliates attend church less often. Our results point to the importance of the social processes surrounding religious disaffiliation and emphasize the role of dynamics in the relationship between religious affiliation and health.     

Understanding selection bias,time-lags and measurement bias in secondary data sources: Putting the Encyclopedia of Associations database in broader context

Secondary data gathered for purposes other than research play an important role in the social sciences. A recent data release has made an important source of publicly available data on associational interests, the Encyclopedia of Associations (EA), readily accessible to scholars (www.policyagendas.org). In this paper we introduce these new data and systematically investigate issues of lag between events and subsequent reporting in the EA, as these have important but under-appreciated effects on time-series statistical models. We further analyze the accuracy and coverage of the database in numerous ways. Our study serves as a guide to potential users of this database, but we also reflect upon a number of issues that should concern all researchers who use secondary data such as newspaper records, IRS reports and FBI Uniform Crime Reports.