An Assessment of Social Welfare in Spain: Territorial Analysis Using a Synthetic Welfare Indicator

The aim of this paper is measure social welfare in Spanish provinces. To achieve this, we use the distance method P₂ to compose a synthetic indicator of welfare for 2007, the last year for which data are available. The index comprises information on different social indicators from various life domains and enables a classification of Spanish provinces, as well as a study of the impact of each individual indicator in order to determine provincial disparities in social welfare levels.     

Assessment of the Living Conditions in Polish and German Transborder Regions in the Context of Strengthening Territorial Cohesion in the European Union: Competitiveness or Complementation?

Social Indicators Research - The European Union's regional policy aims to strengthen economic, social, and territorial cohesion and equal space development opportunities. It is an action...     

The Relevance of Objective and Subjective Social Position for Self-Rated Health: A Combined Approach for the Swedish Context

The study investigates the health effects of subjective class position stratified by objective social position. Four types of subjective class were analysed separately for individuals with manual or non-manual occupational background. The cross-sectional analysis is based on the Swedish Level-of-Living Survey from 2000 and includes 4,139 individuals. The dataset comprises information on perceived class affinity and occupational position that was combined to conduct logistic regression models on self-rated health. An inverse relationship between self-rated health and the eight combinations of objective and subjective social position was found. Lower socio-economic position was associated with poor health. The largest adverse health effects were found for lower subjective social position in combination with lower occupational position. When the covariates education, father’s occupational position and income were added to the model, adverse effects on health remained only for females. Subjective social position helps to explain health inequalities. Substantial gender differences were found. It can be assumed that subjective class position captures a wide range of perceived inequalities and therefore complements the measure of occupational position.     

Erratum to: Child at Risk of Poverty or Social Exclusion: Comparative View Between Spain and Portugal in the European Context

The aim of this study is to investigate the relations between identity statuses and the perceived quality of life in adolescents aged 16–19. The research methods include the Ego Identity Process Questionnaire to assess identity status of a sample covering 233 participants (148 girls, 85 boys), and the Youth Quality of Life Instrument to assess their subjective quality of life. Diffused identity is linked to the lowest level of subjective quality of life, whereas foreclosed identity to the highest. Five patterns of the connection between identity dimensions and perceived quality of life have been distinguished through cluster analysis. The results indicate that different patterns of identity processes in adolescents coexist with different levels of quality of life.     

Child Obesity and the Interaction of Family and Neighborhood Socioeconomic Context

Population Research and Policy Review - The literature on neighborhoods and child obesity links contextual conditions to risk, assuming that if place matters, it matters in a similar way for...     

Social Networks,Social Cohesion,and Later-Life Health

Our study contributes to the literature acknowledging the joint role of social networks and social cohesion in shaping individual’s health, focusing on the older population aged 50 and over. Exploiting rich ego-centered social network data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe and following the conceptual model of social integration and health proposed by Berkman et al. (Soc Sci Med 51:843–857. doi:10.1016/S0277-9536(00)00065-4, 2000), we estimate multilevel models of self-reported and observer-measured later-life health outcomes. These models simultaneously account for (a) characteristics of 39,551 respondents’ personal social networks and (b) a measure of social cohesion—namely, participation in social organizations—across 57 Continental European regions, clustered in 14 countries. We find significant associations between individuals’ health and various social network characteristics (size, support, quality) as well as social cohesion. Moreover, cross-level interaction effects suggest that the social-network-health nexus is contextually bound. We conclude with a discussion of limitations and perspectives for future research.     

Considering Social Cohesion in Quality of Life Assessments: Concept and Measurement

In recent years, the concept of social cohesionhas received great attention in scientificresearch as well as in politics. It representsa central policy goal at the national and thesupranational level as declared for example bymany policy documents of the European Union.The present paper integrates social cohesioninto the components of quality of life anddistinguishes two essential goal dimensionsinherent in the concept: the inequalitydimension and the social capital dimension. Thefirst dimension incorporates the goals ofreducing disparities, promoting equalopportunities and combating social exclusion,while the second dimension deals with allaspects aiming at strengthening socialrelations, interactions and ties. A proposal ismade on how to measure this conceptualisationof social cohesion within the framework of aEuropean System of Social Indicators, and someexamples of indicators of social cohesion inEurope are discussed.     

Conceptualising and Measuring Social Cohesion in Africa: Towards a Perceptions-Based Index

Social cohesion is a key concept in development studies. Weak social cohesion is often related to slow economic growth and (violent) conflict. So far few attempts have been made to measure this complex concept in a systematic manner. This paper introduces an innovative method to measure national-level social cohesion based on survey data from 19 African countries. We distinguish three dimensions of social cohesion; i.e. the extent of perceived inequalities, the level of societal trust, and the strength of people’s adherence to their national identity. Importantly, our Social Cohesion Index (SCI) is based on individuals’ perceptions vis-à-vis these three different dimensions of social cohesion rather than certain macro-level ‘objective’ indicators such as GDP/capita or Gini-coefficients. We develop two social cohesion indices: a national average SCI and a Social Cohesion Index Variance-Adjusted (SCIVA); the latter one takes into account the level of variation across different ethnic groups within countries. The SCI and SCIVA are computed for and compared across nineteen African countries for the period 2005–2012 on the basis of Afrobarometer survey rounds 3, 4 and 5. We also investigate quantitatively the relationship between countries’ levels of social cohesion and the occurrence of a range of conflict events. As expected, we find that countries with low levels of social cohesion in a particular year according to our SCI are more likely to experience a range of different violent conflict events in the subsequent year.     

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.     

Economic Growth and Social Cohesion: Evidence from the Organization of Islamic Conference Countries

This study contributes in the literature by investigating the impact of social cohesion on economic growth using a panel data of 44 OIC countries over the period 1986–2010. The study has employed a comprehensive measure of social cohesion that covers a large number of social indicators such as inequality, trust, terrorism, and social conflicts. Our study finds out that the growth effect of social cohesion is positive and significant in the Muslim world. Finding of the study are shown to be robust to different control variables, different specifications, econometric techniques and outliers.     

Social Cohesion and the Labour Market: Societal Regimes of Civic Attitudes and Labour Market Regimes

The aim of this paper is to test the connections between the indicators used in the literature on social cohesion, which usually reflect ‘general’ values or behaviours, and indicators specific to a particular space, namely the labour market. A key question is the stability of the social cohesion’s indicators when moving from a societal level to the labour market. Based on data from the World Value Survey, and following a restrictive definition of social cohesion, a comparison is done, for European countries. Examination of the situation in the two spheres makes it possible to identify more or less homogeneous groups of countries and also to point to instabilities. ‘Regimes’ of social cohesion begin to emerge. As in most analyses, the Nordic countries (excluding Finland) have high scores in all the dimensions. Conversely, most of the new EU member states from the former Eastern bloc have low scores, particularly in the horizontal dimension of trust between individuals.     

Dynamics of Mixed Coalitions Under Social Cohesion Constraints

ABSTRACT

Parameters for the birth and death diffusion life table model subject to downward jumps randomly occurring at a constant rate are estimated. The jump magnitudes have a beta distribution with support [0, l_x ], where l_x is the total number of survivors prior to the jump. The estimation method is maximum likelihood. The Cramer–Rao Lower bound and the asymptotic distribution for the MLE are derived. The model is applied to the U.S. men′s population from 1900 to 1999.     

Social Capital in Association with Socioeconomic Variables in Iran

The objective of this study was to determine the various dimensions of social capital in Tehran and its association with socioeconomic variables. Two thousand, four hundred and eighty-four persons participated in the study through multi-stage stratified sampling in Tehran. The study questions were extracted from the World Bank integrated questionnaire. While respondents obtained over 50 % of the attainable scores in the ‘trust’, ‘cooperation’, ‘social cohesion’, and ‘political action’ dimensions, they obtained only 18.9 % of the attainable scores in the ‘networks’ dimension. The respondents in age groups older than 45 had higher trust scores than respondents in the 18–25 age group. Men had higher ‘network’ and ‘social cohesion’ scores than women (p ≤ 0.001). Respondents in the poorest wealth quintile had lower ‘networks’ and ‘social cohesion’ scores than the richest group and ‘political action’ scores higher than the richest group (p = 0.038). The lowest score in ‘Tehranians’ social capital was in the groups and networks dimension. Therefore designing effective interventions for such activities, particularly in women’s groups, is a priority.     

International Seminar on Demographic Challenges and Social Cohesion Held in Beijing

On 3 and 4 May 2012,the International Seminar on Demographic Challenges and Social Cohesion was held in Beijing The seminar was hosted by Nationa Population and Family Planning Commission(NPFPC) and German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development(BMZ)     

Reconsidering Social Cohesion: Developing a Definition and Analytical Framework for Empirical Research

Despite its growing currency in academic and policy circles, social cohesion is a term in need of a clearer and more rigorous definition. This article provides a critical review of the ways social cohesion has been conceptualized in the literature in many cases, definitions are too loosely made, with a common confusion between the content and the causes or effects of social cohesion. This motivates us to propose a refined definition that we hope is clearer and more rigorous. We will show how our definition could be operationalized into a measurement scheme that facilitates empirical work on social cohesion.     

Social Cohesion as a Real-life Phenomenon: Assessing the Explanatory Power of the Universalist and Particularist Perspectives

Unlike most studies on social cohesion, this study explores the concept as a real-life macro-level phenomenon. It assesses to what extent the conceptions of social cohesion suggested by several macro-level approaches represent coherent empirically observable forms of social cohesion. Additionally it discusses two perspectives on social cohesion—the universalist and the particularist perspective. The former would expect social cohesion to be related to stages of socio-economic development. The latter hypothesizes enduring, regionally unique regimes of social cohesion resisting the homogenizing pressures of modernization. The paper finds evidence for both perspectives. On the one hand, a syndrome of social cohesion was identified consisting of trust, equality, order (i.e. lack of crime) and consensus on basic values which correlates closely with indicators of socio-economic development. This finding supports the universalist perspective. On the other hand, and consistent with the particularist perspective, the study found regionally unique patterns for Latin America, Eastern Europe and Scandinavia.     

Family Functioning and Socioeconomic Status in South African Families: A Test of the Social Causation Hypothesis

Optimal family relationships are central to individual well-being. The focus of this paper is on family functioning and how socioeconomic status (SES) explains family functioning. Ecological theory states that a family’s socioeconomic context is determined by macro-systemic factors, thereby influencing individuals’ perceptions of family functioning. Within this context, the social causation hypothesis asserts that social conditions influence family functioning. This paper uses the Family Attachment and Changeability Index as measure of family functioning. SES is viewed as multidimensional and individual-, household-, and subjective SES indices are developed using multiple correspondence analysis. Multivariate regression models suggest that household- and subjective SES are associated with higher levels of perceived flexibility in the family. There is no association between SES and family members’ attachment to each other. In general, the findings support the social causation hypothesis.     

On the Modernity of Traditional Contraception: Time and the Social Context of Fertility

Many studies of fertility implicitly equate temporal management, biomedical contraception, and “modernity” on the one hand, and “tradition,” the lack of intentional timing, and uncontrolled fertility on the other. This article questions that equation, focusing on the widespread use of periodic abstinence in southern Cameroon. Drawing on field data and the Cameroon Demographic and Health Survey, the article investigates how local concepts of timing shape both contraceptive choice and the evaluation of methods as “modern” or “traditional.” Cameroonian women prefer periodic abstinence because they perceive it as “modern,” a modernity tied both to the social context in which it is taught and to its unique temporal form. By contrast, Depo‐Provera, pills, and the IUD are seen as less‐than‐modern, because they are less exigent of temporal control. The reliance on a behavioral, rather than technological, contraceptive method parallels the experience of the European fertility transition. Cameroonian women draw on a complex social repertoire in making contraceptive choices; methods are preferred or rejected not only on the basis of their efficacy in averting pregnancy, but also because of their correspondence to models of legitimate social action. Reproductive practices may have social motivations that are unrelated to fertility per se.