Societal Inequality and individual subjective well-being: Results from 68 societies and over 200,000 individuals, 1981–2008

Income inequality has been contentious for millennia, a source of political conflict for centuries, and is now widely feared as a pernicious “side effect” of economic progress. But equality is only a means to an end and so must be evaluated by its consequences. The fundamental question is: What effect does a country's level of income inequality have on its citizens' quality of life, their subjective well-being? We show that in developing nations inequality is certainly not harmful but probably beneficial, increasing well-being by about 8 points out of 100. This may well be Kuznets's inverted “U”: In the earliest stages of development some are able to move out of the (poorly paying) subsistence economy into the (better paying) modern economy; their higher pay increases their well-being while simultaneously increasing inequality. In advanced nations, income inequality on average neither helps nor harms. Estimates are from random-intercept fixed-effects multi-level models, confirmed by over four dozen sensitivity tests. Data are from the pooled World Values/European Values Surveys, Waves 1 to 5 with 169 representative national samples in 68 nations, 1981 to 2009, and over 200,000 respondents, replicated and extended in the European Quality of Life Surveys.     

The medicine is worse than the disease: Comment on Delhey and Kohler’s proposal to measure inequality in happiness using ‘instrument-effect-corrected’ standard deviations

Inequality of happiness in nations can be measured using the standard deviation of responses to surveys questions. The standard-deviation is not quite independent of the mean, being zero when everybody is maximally happy or unhappy while the possible value of the standard deviation is highest when the mean is in the middle of the response scale. Delhey and Kohler see this intrinsic dependency as a problem and propose two ways to compute ‘corrected’ standard deviations. I advise against this medicine. One reason is that there is no real disease, since the presumed problem does not occur with commonly used numerical rating scales of 10 or more steps. The second reason is that one of Delhey and Kohler’s medicines have side effects, their first correction affects the mean and their second correction is based on implausible assumptions. A third reason is that there are better ways to estimate the effect happiness-inequality net happiness-level. Partialling out mean happiness did not affect the non-correlation between inequality of income and inequality of happiness in an analysis of 116 nations.     

Inequality and inequity

Kelley and Evans (2017) found that income inequality (measured at the societal level) did not affect individual well-being in advanced societies but increased individual well-being in developing societies. This paper discusses how this empirical patterning of the inequality-well-being relationship may arise from mechanisms related to the relationship of inequality with economic development (at the macro-sociological level) and to the evolution of emotional reactions to inequality (at the individual-psychological level).     

Is happiness inequality immune to income inequality? New evidence through instrument-effect-corrected standard deviations

Previous research has found that a nation’s income inequality does not affect its happiness inequality. This article questions the appropriateness of the standard deviation as measure of happiness inequality used in these studies. Our main criticism concerns structural dependency, i.e. the technical dependency of the standard deviation on a nation’s mean happiness which is induced by measuring happiness with limited rating scales. To overcome this drawback, two new measures are proposed which adjust for the effects of limited instruments. Applying these new measures to the most recent World Values Survey data demonstrates that some countries change their ranking in the league table of happiness inequality considerably. Moreover, income inequality does affect corrected happiness inequality, a finding which has significant public policy implications.     

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.     

Specialization and happiness in marriage: A U.S.–Japan comparison

This paper examines the relationship between specialization and happiness in marriage in the U.S. and Japan. Our findings, based on the General Social Surveys in the U.S. and Japan, indicate both similarities and differences in the determinants of marital happiness in the two countries. In the U.S., the findings are mixed. Women’s reported marital happiness in the U.S. is more likely to follow the predictions of the bargaining model where their happiness is determined by their own income. Men’s marital happiness in the U.S. follows the predictions of the specialization model; they are happier if their wives are not working or, alternatively, if they are financially dependent on their wives. In Japan, we find support for the specialization model, particularly in the case of women; they are happier if they are specialized in the household and they have a higher household income. Our research highlights how marital quality is affected by the institutional context and the normative environment.     

Economic performance and public concerns about social class in twentieth-century books

What is the association between macroeconomic conditions and public perceptions of social class? Applying a novel approach based on the Google Books N-gram corpus, this study addresses the relationship between public concerns about social class and economic conditions throughout the twentieth century. The usage of class-related words/phrases, or “literary references to class,” in American English-language books is related to US economic performance and income inequality. The findings of this study demonstrate that economic conditions play a significant role in literary references to class throughout the century, whereas income inequality does not. Similar results are obtained from further analyses using alternative measures of class concerns as well as different corpora of English Fiction and the New York Times. We add to the social class literature by showing that the long-term temporal dynamics of an economy can be exhibited by aggregate class concerns. The application of massive culture-wide content analysis using data of unprecedented size also represents a contribution to the literature.     

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.     

大学生主观幸福感及培养

追求幸福是人类永恒不变的主题之一,随着人们对自身生活质量要求的提高,幸福成为人们日益关心的话题。在心理学界伴随着积极心理学的兴起与发展,主观幸福感逐渐成为心理学家关注的课题,研究主观幸福感有助于改善与增进人类的生活质量。文章旨在通过大学生主观幸福的归因及影响大学生幸福感的因素探讨,为今后进一步深入研究大学生主观幸福感的培养提供必要的参考。     

收入与居民幸福感关系的中国验证——基于绝对收入与相对收入的分析

本文基于中国综合社会调查2006年的数据,引入了绝对收入和相对收入变量,运用有序概率估计法,实证地研究了收入和幸福感之间的关系。研究显示:不管是否考虑相对收入,绝对收入对幸福感的影响作用都很大,考虑相对收入后,绝对收入的这种影响作用有所减弱。相比较而言,以平均收入衡量的相对收入对幸福感的影响要强于绝对收入。收入的相对变化情况以及对未来收入情况的预期会显著影响人们的幸福感水平。     

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.     

Societies consuming nature: A panel study of the ecological footprints of nations, 1960-2003

Sociology is poised to greatly enhance our collective understanding of the various sustainability challenges facing the world today. To contribute to this endeavor, the authors conduct panel analyses of the per capita ecological footprints of nations to evaluate multiple theoretical traditions within environmental sociology and its sister approaches. Findings indicate that the consumption-based environmental impacts of nations are tied to economic development, urban population, militarization, and the structure of international trade. Ecological conditions in the context of climate and biogeography also prove to partially shape the environmental harms of human activities. Ultimately, this research suggests that political-economic factors, ecological milieu, and structural associations between nations all influence society/nature relationships. Considering the globally unsustainable levels of resource consumption and concomitant increases in pollution for a growing number of nations throughout the world, the authors contend that theoretically inclusive and methodologically rigorous investigations on such topics should be more central to the discipline.     

收入不平等与公平分配:对转型时期中国城镇居民公平观的一项实证分析

通过分析2005年中国城镇居民的调查数据发现,教育的启蒙性质能够使人超越狭隘的利己主义,从而对不平等持更加批判的态度;国有部门就业者和老年人所认可的不平等程度较低,体现了平均主义价值观的影响;地区实际的不平等程度越大,人们对不平等的认可程度越低。本研究既指出人们在减少收入不平等程度方面的普遍共识,又分析了人们认可的收入不平等程度的差异模式,从而有助于进一步理解民众如何感知和评价当前中国社会面临的日益严峻的收入不平等问题。     

Life satisfaction across nations: The effects of women’s political status and public priorities

Feminist scholars suggest that improving the quality of life of individuals living in nations around the world may be more readily achieved by increasing women’s political power and by reorienting public-policy priorities, than by focusing primarily on economic growth. These considerations raise the question of which characteristics of societies are associated with the quality of life of the people in those societies. Here, we address this issue empirically by statistically analyzing cross-national data. We assess the effects of gender equality in the political sphere, as well as a variety of other factors, on the subjective well-being of nations, as indicated by average self-reported levels of life satisfaction. We find that people report the highest levels of life satisfaction in nations where women have greater political representation, where military spending is low, and where health care spending is high, controlling for a variety of other factors. GDP per capita, urbanization, and natural resource exploitation are not clearly associated with life satisfaction. These findings suggest that nations may be able to improve the subjective quality of life of people without increasing material wealth or natural resource consumption by increasing gender equality in politics and changing public spending priorities.     

Explanations of changes in church attendance between 1970 and 2009

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

Discovering pockets of complexity: Socioeconomic status,stress exposure,and the nuances of the health gradient

One of the most pervasive statements about stratification and health identifies the strong inverse relationship—or gradient—between socioeconomic status (SES) and poor health. We elaborate on the ways that the SES-based gradient in stress exposure contributes to nuances in the SES-health association. In analyses of the 2008 National Study of the Changing Workforce, we find some evidence that the inverse association between SES and health outcomes is finely graded—but several ‘pockets of complexity’ emerge. First, education and income have different associations with health and well-being. Second, those associations depend on the outcome being assessed. Education is more influential for predicting anxiety and poor health than for depression or life dissatisfaction, while income is more influential for predicting depression and, to a lesser extent, life dissatisfaction. Third, different patterns of explanation or suppression reflect resource advantage or stress of higher status dynamics. Some impactful stressors that people encounter—especially job pressure and work-family conflict—are not neatly graded in ways that corroborate the conventional SES-health narrative. Instead, these mask the size of the overall health differences between lower versus higher SES groups. Our mapping of the SES gradient in stressors extends that story and complicates the conventional view of the association between SES and health/well-being.     

对外贸易依存度与中国对外贸易的利益分析

对外贸易依存度是反映一国经济总体上与对外贸易联系程度的指标,人们对贸易利得的所有争论都或多或少地以该指标作为分析的依据。经济全球化普遍地提高了各国特别是发展中国家的对外贸易依存度。经济发展需要借助对外贸易,依赖对外贸易实现经济的工业化和收入水平的提高。     

Unequal views of inequality: Cross-national support for redistribution 1985–2011

This research examines public views on government responsibility to reduce income inequality, support for redistribution. While individual-level correlates of support for redistribution are relatively well understood, many questions remain at the country-level. Therefore, I examine how country-level characteristics affect aggregate support for redistribution. I test explanations of aggregate support using a unique dataset combining 18 waves of the International Social Survey Programme and European Social Survey. Results from mixed-effects logistic regression and fixed-effects linear regression models show two primary and contrasting effects. States that reduce inequality through bundles of tax and transfer policies are rewarded with more supportive publics. In contrast, economic development has a seemingly equivalent and dampening effect on public support. Importantly, the effect of economic development grows at higher levels of development, potentially overwhelming the amplifying effect of state redistribution. My results therefore suggest a fundamental challenge to proponents of egalitarian politics.     

中国三大区域间收入不平等影响因素的实证研究:1952-2008

区域收入不平等的持续增大,对个人与群体的尊严、国家经济的可持续性发展形成严峻挑战。以往研究局限于经济学视角,只关心某一或某几种因素对收入不平等影响,过于碎片化。本文利用1952-2008年国家统计数据,基于结构主义视角,通过随机效应模型考察了区域间收入不平等背后的因果机制。研究发现:经济增长与区域间收入不平等存在微弱倒"U"关系;结构因素是构筑区域收入不平等的主要力量,解释比例达到69.7%。本文认为,"非均衡发展"是中国经济转型与发展过程中必然的路径选择,区域收入不平等不可避免,并将长期存在。     

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

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