Birth rates decline as neighbors learn from one another how to control fertility

This article refers to a recent article (by Population Council demographer John Bongaarts and University of Pennsylvania sociology professor Susan Cotts Watkins) on strategies for promoting future global fertility decline. The article emphasizes the importance of the process of social interaction as a powerful force that accelerates the pace of demographic transition. The force of social interaction is frequently overlooked. Social interaction operates through personal networks that connect individuals; national channels of interaction connecting social and territorial communities within a country; and global channels connecting countries. Empirical evidence finds that the most important interaction for fertility change occurs in exchanges between personal networks of small communities. When innovative fertility behavior is adopted by a group within a community, then changes are communicated in an ever widening band. It is expected that countries with multiple channels of linked transportation and communication networks and extensive media facilities would experience more rapid fertility decline. Bongaarts and Watkins argue that the extent of a country's links with a global society help determine the timing of its transition to lower fertility. All countries are connected to some extent by ideas, information, or social influence and are at some level of development. When some countries in a region begin their fertility transition, neighboring countries soon follow. Fertility transition occurs even at low levels of development. Fertility decline can occur rapidly, even if socioeconomic development is modest, once the onset of the transition has occurred.     

A system of social indicators for the CMEA countries and for Hungary

This paper discusses the reasons for the growing demand for social indicators in Hungary and in other European socialist countries. A brief history of the construction of a system of social indicators within the framework of the Council of Mutual Economic Aid is given. The subsystems and the main indicators are described. The present practice and the problems of social classifications used in the social indicator systems and in social surveys are treated. In addition to the existing data sources of social indicators, sample surveys were considered to be necessary to provide a full and detailed view of Hungarian society. In addition to objective indicators, recently, subjective indicators have also been collected.     

Big Data and Social Indicators: Actual Trends and New Perspectives

Big Data are a top subject in international research articles and a vast debate is taking place on their actual capability of being used to complement or even substitute official statistics surveys and social indicators in particular. In this paper we analyse the metadata of the Scopus database of academic articles on Big Data and we show that most of the existing and intensively growing literature is focused on software and computational issues whilst articles that are specifically focused on statistical issues and on the procedures to build social indicators from Big Data are a much smaller share of this vast production. Nevertheless the works that focus on these topics show promising results because in developed countries Big Data seem to be a good information base to create reliable proxies of social indicators, whereas in developing countries their use (for instance using satellite images) may be a viable alternative to traditional surveys. However, Big Data based social indicators deeply suffer of a number of open issues that affect their actual use: they do not correspond to any sampling scheme and they are often representative of particular segments of the population; they generally are private process-produced data whose access by national statistical offices is rarely possible although the intrinsic value of the information contained in Big Data has a social importance that should be shared with the whole community; Big Data lack the socio-economic background on which social indicators have been founded and their help to policy makers in their decision process is a fully open point. Therefore Big Data may be a big opportunity for the definition of traditional or new social indicators but their statistical reliability should be further investigated and their availability and use should be internationally coordinated.     

Measuring Subjective Issues of Well-Being and Quality of Life in the European Statistical System

Over the last decades, the European Statistical System has developed many European statistics and indicators to measure social progress and sustainable development. Initially only in a few cases the measuring instruments contained questions on subjective issues. With the adoption of its Communication on “gross domestic product and beyond” the Commission has given an impetus to the development of subjective social indicators. This has led to the establishment of a first set of indicators on quality of life and well-being and to a new instrument (the 2013 EU-SILC ad-hoc module for measuring subjective well-being). This new step in European statistics creates an important potential for researchers to engage in in-depth analysis and for national and European Union policy makers to use the resulting indicators—and in casu subjective well-being indicators—for developing and monitoring policy strategies and programmes.     

Basic Minimum Needs,Quality of Life and Selected Correlates: Explorations in Villages in Northern India

For those involved in international development, one of the major goals is an improvement in the quality of life of the poor. Bhargava and Chakrabati (1992: 133) see the “primary objective of development at any given time is to improve the quality of life”. Indeed, the mission statement for an international development organization explicitly commits itself to the improvement of the quality of life for the “poorest of the poor” (DID, 1994). Social indicators, as “transeconomic” measures of quality of life, have “become an integral part of 'development indicators”' (Kao and Liu, 1984: 400; see, also Kahn, 1991). The connection between quality of life and development extends beyond the Third World. For example, in the U.S. Myers (1987) found quality of life influenced inmigration to Austin, Texas, thus affecting its economic development. Undoubtedly the majority of the connections between social indicators and development has been examined at the macro, or national levels using economic, health, education and other objective, comparative indices. Recognizing that such measures as GNP are oftentimes inadequate, assorted indices have been derived to gauge the changes in social development over time, e.g., the well-known Physical Quality of Life Index (PQLI) constructed by the Overseas Development Council (Morris, 1976). Many of these tend to focus on objective, material indicators (commodity possessions) as opposed to the more subjective ones (Anand and Ravallion, 1993). It is not the purpose of this paper to examine the various critics' arguments about the strengths and weaknesses of extant macro versus micro indices, but rather to lend support for the general need to assess development and social change through social indicators, whether macro or micro, objective or subjective. Ultimately, the purpose of the assessment should guide which social indicators are selected. The purpose of this paper is to examine several issues arising from the linkages between development efforts and quality of life (QOL). Using empirical data which were gathered to evaluate a community development project in the Garhwal region of Northern India, several issues, germane to both social indicators and development, will be investigated. These include: (1) the relationship between “Basic Minimum Needs” (BMNs) and QOL, (2) some methodological innovations for measuring both BMNs and QOL, and (3) selected correlates of BMNs and social indicators of QOL for Garhwali villagers. Before describing the project and its findings, we will first place it in the overall development context.     

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.     

Community-Level Social Capital and Household Strategies for Coping with Global Crisis in Transitional Countries

This study examines the ways in which the fabric of community-level social capital has affected the ex-post strategies of households in dealing with the 2007–2008 crisis in the transitional economies of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The data has been derived from nationally-representative surveys conducted in 28 transitional countries. The findings reveal that choices made with respect to survival strategies during the crisis were strongly dependent on community-level social capital. Higher levels of social capital within a community are associated with an increase in the utilization of active and safety net coping strategies. It was also found that most households were forced to employ depleting coping strategies, and that few households applied to safety net strategies.     

A Case for Developing Community Drug Indicators

The EU Action Plan on Drugs (2005?C2008) calls for member states of the European Union to provide information on five key epidemiological indicators. These are: general population surveys, prevalence and patterns of problem drug use, drug related infectious diseases, drug related deaths and mortality of drug users, and demand for drug treatment. The goal is to improve the comparability of data across the Member States, which is a central task of the EMCDDA (European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction). Ireland has made progress on a national level in meeting this obligation. Currently the core information systems used to monitor the drugs problem in Ireland and to inform policy making are in the health and law enforcement areas including treatment, mortality and crime data. The dominance of such objective indicators and treatment outcome measures has contributed to obscuring the view of communities experiencing drugs problems on a day to day basis. The data are summations of the individual experience of drug problems and contribute little to understanding the broader question of how drug problem effect communities. This article draws on a community drugs study to review the contribution of traditional indicators of drug problems and consider some of the limitations of this data. It then presents an analysis of community data to identify possible community indicators of drug problems.     

Social Indicators in Surveys of Urban Aboriginal Residents in Saskatoon

The Bridges and Foundations Project on Urban Aboriginal Housing, a Community-University Research Alliance (CURA) project financed primarily by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), has been operational in Saskatoon since early 2001. During these past 5 years over 50 specific research projects, community surveys, graduate theses, workshops, conferences, seminars and other meetings have been conducted under the auspices of the Bridges and Foundations Project as a whole. This paper first discusses the various social indicators employed in seven surveys, which probed deeply into the views of local Aboriginal residents of their quality of life, particularly their living conditions and affordable housing. The paper focuses less on the vast amount of data gathered from some 2,000 residents than on the relevance of social indicators used in these surveys—for example which were most or least informative, and which were of most or least interest and pertinence to the residents themselves. In the process it would seem pertinent to discern which of various research approaches seemed, in retrospect, to have been most appropriate, informative and beneficial. The paper then proceeds to place our experience in the Bridges and Foundations Project within a broader theoretical discussion of social indicator development; and concludes with a brief commentary on the linkages between theory and research and between academic and community-based research.     

The social meaning of social indicators

While new modes of data processing have provided reams of data, there has been relatively less effort in seeking to comprehend the social meaning of results of empirical work. A set of previously developed indicators of urban social structure is here examined for its link to theory, and to the social structure of the city itself. The original indicators (size, social class, racial composition and community maturity) were empirically derived. In this paper, each is taken in turn, and explored with respect to several possible social meanings. Size, for example, is considered to be itself an indicator, and an imperfect one, for system complexity; percent non-white is seen to be itself an indicator for a slowdown in the mobility process, or a slower social metabolism. These and other results are suggestions, with illustrations, but not conclusive support, from other than the original data. While it is hoped that the theoretical suggestions may themselves be of interest, it is also hoped that approach itself can indicate the fertility and usefulness of going back to theory once empirical measures have been developed.     

Social Cohesion and Living Conditions in the Canadian Arctic: From Theory to Measurement

Social cohesion has emerged as a powerfulhybrid concept used by academics and policyanalysts. Academics use the concept tounderline the social and economic failings ofmodernity, linking it to the decline ofcommunal values and civic participation. Policy analysts use it to highlight the socialand economic inequities caused byglobalization. The desired effect of usingthis concept is often to influence governmentsto implement policies that will enhance socialcohesion by reducing social and economicdisparities. Despite its widespread use,however, statistical measures of socialcohesion tend to overlook local, non-Westernstrategies of social inclusion as well as thesocial impact of non-Western economic systems,such as the mixed economy typical of manyAboriginal communities in North America. Inthis paper, we develop a model of socialcohesion that addresses these omissions throughthe use of social indicators that measure boththe behavior and perceptions of Inuit living inthe Canadian Arctic with respect to the social,cultural and economic conditions of Arcticcommunities. We explain how and why measuringsocial cohesion is optimized by combining bothculturally-specific and non-specific socialindicators.     

#Free_CeCe: the material convergence of social media activism

In 2011 CeCe McDonald, an African-American transgender woman, was charged with murder for killing her attacker during a racist and transphobic assault in Minneapolis. After McDonald’s arrest, local queer communities organized an astounding level of support. This article examines the CeCe Support Committee as a case study for effective grassroots organizing that is fueled by and increasingly reliant upon social media for advancing social justice. An ethnographic approach reveals how the success of the Committee’s social media activism largely depended on traditional activist strategies. Because the group’s activism was based on unpaid labor and supported by numerous physical protests, the use of social media platforms enabled the Support Committee to challenge news media’s racialized framing of McDonald’s gender non-conformity as deceiving and threatening and exposed the state-sanctioned violence enacted against her. Therefore, I contend that the transformative political potential of social media activism is only possible when sustained by coordinated, “on-the-ground” activism offline. Moreover, this case study illustrates that intersecting oppressions do not simply disappear in online activism, but that those oppressions—particularly the centrality of whiteness in organizing—continue to constrain the actual material achievements of social media activism. For the CeCe Support Committee the convergence of on- and offline activism resulted in a raised public consciousness about the disposability of transgender lives, turning a national spotlight on the violence transgender people face.     

城市社区养老服务质量评价--基于粗糙集方法的数据挖掘

客观公正的养老服务质量评价对完善社区养老体系建设有重要意义。本文基于粗糙集的研究方法,分别从生活照料、医疗护理、安全保障、精神慰藉以及社会参与五个维度对显著影响社区养老服务质量评价的指标进行了约简,进而确定质量评价体系的指标和权重,并对吉林市22个社区养老服务的质量进行了评价。结果显示,质量评价平均水平介于“一般”和“比较满意”之间;年龄越高的老年人对社区养老服务质量评价越低;社区养老建设试点小区的评分显著高于非试点小区。由此可见,我国社区养老试点建设已经取得明显成效,但亟须进一步推行和完善。     

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.     

Modernization Theory: How to Measure and Operationalize it When Gauging Variation in Women’s Representation?

Modernization theory, one of the most influential theories in the social sciences, holds that as the composition of the economy develops, from an agrarian to a postindustrial society, communities will develop post-materialist values, which should lead to a higher representation of women in elected positions. However, while this reasoning is intuitive, there is no consensus on how to operationalize and measure this process. Existing studies use different types of national level proxy measures such as aggregated survey data on public attitudes on gender equality and broad development indicators such as per capita GDP or population density. In this article, we not only highlight that existing strategies are suboptimal as they run the risk of creating ecological inference fallacies for the former type of indicators and measurement error for the second type of factors, but also offer some finer grained operationalization of modernization theory at the regional level. In more detail, we illustrate that modernization is a multifaceted concept, which is primarily characterized by urbanization, women’s increased labor force participation and a strengthening of the tertiary sector. Using an original dataset on 285 European regions we illustrate that any of these three characteristics of modernization has an independent impact on women’s representation.     

Quality of Life in the Gauteng City-Region,South Africa

The core challenge facing South Africa after it became a democracy in 1994 was twofold: to meet the basic needs of (black) people denied these by apartheid, and simultaneously restoring dignity and undoing the psycho-social damage of racist white rule. This article analyses the first two in a planned long-term sequence of quality of life surveys in the Gauteng City-Region, the economic power-house of South Africa, with Johannesburg at its centre. The survey gathers data across multiple objective and subjective indicators. The key challenge is to try and understand the interplay between the two—and thus what impact, if any, meeting basic needs has on the psycho-social profile of residents of the city-region. The conclusion is that the impact is limited: objective indicators, which largely measure delivery of goods and services by government, drives the quality of life index up; but social, community and individuated indicators (such as anomie and alienation) pull scores down, and most particularly so for older, low educated black South Africans. The future may look positive for those born after apartheid; but for those who sacrificed their education in the struggle to topple the regime, the future looks like ‘more of the same’. Education emerges as the key asset that allows black South Africans to overcome the damage of apartheid; lack of (or low levels of) education do the reverse; this is true of both socio-economic advancement and social attitudes.     

Sustainable Development and Capabilities for the Polar Region

The paper develops a sustainable development framework for individual and collective capabilities in mixed subsistence and wage-based economies. We apply this framework to such regions of the Arctic and evaluate interactions and conflicts between two sectors of the mixed economy and between current and future generations of Arctic inhabitants. A recent Arctic Social Indicators Report published by the Arctic Human Development Report (AHDR) Task Force recognizes the importance of the mixed economy in the Arctic and aims to integrate collective assets, as well as individual assets in order to understand the human development in the Arctic. Yet due to its concerns of comparability of social development and data availability across the whole Arctic region (of which some parts do not have the similar population structure), its proposed indicators are not capable of covering the social development of predominantly indigenous regions of the North. We emphasize the importance of tracking collective capabilities, as well as individual capabilities to sustain community development. In addition we suggest that environmental sustainability, which is ignored by the AHDR Task Force, has to be integrated with social development as environmental deterioration significantly influences the social well-being and cultural stability of traditional inhabitants of the Arctic. We critically review the proposed indicators of the AHDR Task Force and make supplementary and alternative suggestions.     

The Development of the Good Relations Measurement Framework in Britain: A Template for Experiential Social Measurement

This article explores the development of the Good Relations Measurement Framework (GRMF), the first attempt in Britain to create a framework designed to measure how people experience their lives, specifically in relation to their interactions with each other. It provides a reference point for others seeking to construct social indicator measurement frameworks which capture the experiential in the social policy field. In a wider sense, it provides a case study of the use of social indicators within the policy process in the modern polity. The overall objective of the GRMF is to measure the state of Good Relations in Britain. Seven key areas emerged as being crucial for the development of measurement frameworks during the construction of the GRMF. Firstly, a decision has to be taken about the extent to which social measurement frameworks are confined to measurement only or are to have a normative element. Secondly, a working definition of the subject area is needed early in the process. Thirdly, an element of consultation with the public is important. A fourth issue relates to the practical method of construction through the use of ‘long lists’ of potential indicators, and finding a balance between an ‘ideal’ list of potential indicators emerging from public consultation and a second list of existing indicators drawn from existing surveys. A fifth issue relates to the availability of social indicator data at an appropriate geographical level. A sixth issue is that social indicators drawn from different surveys are not always comparable. A final factor is that while quantitative indicators are useful as a tool of social measurement, qualitative research adds a further dimension which is especially important in particular circumstances.     

Subjective Well-Being and Social Capital in Belgian Communities. The Impact of Community Characteristics on Subjective Well-Being Indicators in Belgium

In this article, we investigate the effect of individual and community level characteristics on subjective well-being in Belgium. Various indicators for subjective well-being are being used in a multilevel analysis of the 2009 SCIF survey (n = 2,080) and the 2006 Belgian ESS sample (n = 1,798). On the individual level, most hypotheses on the determinants of subjective well-being were confirmed. Living with a partner and age were shown to have strong effects, but also social capital indicators had a significant positive effect on subjective well-being. All these effects remained significant controlling for optimism. On the community level, especially unemployment rate had a negative impact on subjective well-being. The analysis further demonstrates that in homogeneous regions, community characteristics have a far weaker impact on subjective well-being indicators than in economically more heterogeneous regions.