Fifty Years After the Social Indicators Movement: Has the Promise Been Fulfilled?

In spite of its currency both in academic research and political rhetoric, there are numerous attempts to define and conceptualize the social cohesion concept but there has been paid little attention to provide a rigorous and empirically tested definition. There are even fewer studies that address social cohesion in a framework of cross-cultural validation of the indicators testing the equivalence of the factorial structure across countries. Finally, as far as we know there is no study that attempt to provide an empirically tested multilevel definition of social cohesion specifying a Multilevel Structural Equation Model. This study aims to cover this gap. First, we provide a theoretical construct of social cohesion taking into account not only its multidimensionality but also its multilevel structure. In the second step, to test the validity of this theoretical construct, we perform a multilevel confirmatory factor analysis in order to verify if the conceptual structure suggested in first step holds. In addition, we test the cross-level structural equivalence and the measurement invariance of the model in order to verify if the same multilevel model of social cohesion holds across the 29 countries analysed. In the final step, we specify a second-order multilevel CFA model in order to identify the existence of a general factor that can be called “social cohesion” operating in society that accounts for the surface phenomena that we observe.     

Social Capital or Social Cohesion: What Matters For Subjective Well-Being?

The theoretical analysis of the concepts of social capital and of social cohesion shows that social capital should be considered as a micro concept whereas social cohesion, being a broader concept than social capital, is a more appropriate concept for macro analysis. Therefore, we suggest that data on the individual level should only be used to analyze the relationship between social capital, social cohesion indicators and subjective well-being and that they do not allow commenting on the level of social cohesion in a society. For this last type of analyses aggregated indicators of social cohesion have to be computed which is not the issue of this paper. Our empirical analysis is based on individual data for Luxembourg in 2008. In general, our results suggest that investments in social capital generate monetary returns (increased income) and psychic returns (increased subjective well-being) even in a highly developed and multicultural country like Luxembourg. When we are adding on the micro level variables representing the economic domain of social cohesion following Bernard (1999), then we observe that this domain also has an effect on income and on subjective well-being. Therefore, we recommend including the economic domain in any future analysis using the concept of social cohesion.     

Declining Social Cohesion in The Netherlands?

In the Netherlands, topics related to social cohesion, such as various aspects of participation and trust, are prominently on the political agenda. The bottom line is a widespread feeling that social cohesion in Dutch society is eroding, which is also reflected in a perception of a change from a high trust into a low trust society. Based on large-scale surveys (e.g. Labour Force Surveys, Permanent Survey on Living Conditions, Dutch Parliamentary Election Studies, and European Social Survey) and (population) registers, we investigate the development of: (a) Social contacts, informal help and volunteering; (b) Political participation (turnout and participation in political actions); (c) Social, institutional and political trust. Overall, we found no empirical evidence for a decline in participation and trust levels. However, there are large gaps between prevailing groups in Dutch society, in particular between lower and higher educated, natives and ethnic minorities, and various religious groups. Such gaps are rather stable for participation (since 1997) and trust (since 2002).     

The Value of Community Cohesion Among Vietnamese Students in Era of Urbanisation and Globalisation

The concept of community cohesion as applied in social research is about more than tackling social exclusion and also involves sustaining relationships of trust and neighbourly interaction. Community cohesion is a function of connections and relations maintained between individuals, groups and associations. It can be fostered through measures that build feelings of trust, safety and belonging between people and can form a basis for shared values and norms of behaviour. This concept originates from Emile Durkheim, who identified the interdependence between members of a social group who share solidarity, loyalties and responsibilities. In Vietnam, various idioms and proverbs about social solidarity and social cohesion express the significant role of community in the lives of individuals as well as an individual’s responsibilities towards the community. Recent public debates suggest that social cohesion is changing or fraying, especially among youth, owing to the social, economic and cultural impacts of globalisation and urbanisation. However, there is lack of research focusing on community cohesion among young people in general and students in particular in the Vietnamese context. This paper reports on a research project on student life conducted in twelve Hanoi universities, and with 484 research participants, utilizing surveys, interviews and focus groups. This paper aims to identify the current situation and trends in student values with regards to community, particularly their views on community participation, and their responsibilities to communities, friends and society in general. The findings suggest that in spite of significant changes associated with urban life and globalisation, students still positively value community cohesion and engage in practices that maintain solidarity, trust and interdependencies with a range of consociates.     

Never Waste a Good Crisis: Towards Social Sustainable Development

The report by the Stiglitz Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress highlighted the idea that sustainability in essence is about quality of life. This paper discusses and elaborates this notion. It argues that sustainable development should be seen as a process which does not focus on economic development alone, but which also includes well-balanced ecological and social development. Social aspects of sustainability deserve attention because of their instrumental and intrinsic relevance. A society needs a sense of community and commitment. The presence of social capital is very important for the liveability of a society. It is argued that the amount of social capital may fluctuate over time. This means that in the long term, future societies may be better in a social respect (more trust, more participation, less inequality) than today’s. Ensuring social sustainability is thus not only a matter of ensuring that present social cohesion is preserved, but also ensuring that this cohesion will increase or improve. The paper ends by addressing lines of research on social sustainability. The following research themes are mentioned: (1) Quality of life, social capital and social cohesion in a longitudinal perspective. (2) ‘Sustainability of what, why and for whom?’ Sustainability as an issue of choice: trade-offs. (3) Civil society and governance aspects of sustainability. (4) Public perceptions, values and opinions with regard to sustainability issues and (5) Fairness and inequality in relation to sustainability policy, both nationally and internationally.     

Construct Validation and Application of a Common Measure of Social Cohesion in 33 European Countries

The aim of the paper is to assess the construct validation of a multidimensional measure of social cohesion which is well theoretically grounded and has an equivalent/comparable interpretation across all European countries. Up-to-now published research on social cohesion is deficient in either one or both of these important aspects. This paper attempts to cover this gap. The task is accomplished in two steps. In the first step, we conceptualize social cohesion, flowing mainly from Bernard and Chan’s definitions of social cohesion. Based on this theoretical framework we operationalize social cohesion and derive a set of intermediate indicators in the data. By return we verify whether these indicators empirically reflect/corroborate the multidimensional structure of the concept proposed by the theory. In the second step, we examine whether the obtained intermediate indicators of social cohesion form the same constructs across countries and whether they can yield a cross country equivalent measure of social cohesion. To test the validity of the theory we use multidimensional scaling and confirmatory factor analysis. Both models are able to verify the equivalence of the structural results between groups (i.e. countries). Confirmatory factor analysis produces further meaningful measures of these constructs. The analyses are based on the data from the 1999 European Values Study (EVS). The outcomes of the analyses reveal that, firstly, the existence of the multifaceted construct of social cohesion suggested by the theory has been corroborated by empirical analysis of the EVS data (i.e. social cohesion consists of components of formal and substantial relationships and political and socio-cultural domains). Secondly, the proposed constructs measuring social cohesion are equivalent across all analysed countries and thus allow the calculation of internationally comparable national scores of social cohesion. Application of the aggregate measures at the country level will illustrate the interest of the approach for further research.     

Implications of demographic change for civil society in Germany

Germany is currently beginning to become aware of the consequences of a process of demographic change, initially triggered by extremely low levels of fertility. The population recently started to decline, the demographic dividend is coming to an end and the ageing of society accelerates. Particularly places in peripheral regions are already seriously affected by this process which will increase in pace and spread spatially. Shrinking and ageing populations are associated with a declining purchasing power as well as fewer local tax revenues for public and private services and infrastructure. The population necessary to maintain and economically justify the provision of public services and infrastructure at the current level will in many cases shrink below required thresholds. Commercial services will probably also continue to diminish at such places. Volunteer organizations may provide some of the services which the local administrations can no longer afford to provide and thus strengthen civil society and social cohesion. But can this be an option for communities with a shrinking and ageing population in which qualified younger people are lost through out-migration? The paper presents a new projection of the future demographic capacity for volunteer organizations and concludes that the decay of demographic capacity will affect most regions and sectors of civil society. The loss will be most prominent in remote areas with low population density and in sectors where the need to compensate for declining public services and infrastructure will be highest.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

Construction, Validation and Application of the Measurement of Social Cohesion in 47 European Countries and Regions

This paper aims to present a theoretically based, multidimensional and comparable measurement of social cohesion, applicable in 47 European countries/regions using the most recent micro-level data of the European Value Study (EVS) from 2008 that build upon the previous research conducted on the EVS data from 1999 covering 33 countries. The analysis is conducted in five steps. In the first part, we create a set of measurable intermediate indicators that correspond to the social cohesion dimensions suggested by the theory. In the second part, we verify whether these indicators empirically corroborate the multidimensional structure of the concept proposed by the theory. The third part examines whether the obtained intermediate indicators of social cohesion form the same constructs across countries and whether they can yield a cross-country equivalent measure of social cohesion. In the fourth step, composite scores of all dimensions of social cohesion are calculated for all analysed countries/regions. The last step shows a practical application of the obtained indices and compares levels of social cohesion in six broader geographical regions of Europe to demonstrate the applicability of the measurement in comparative research.     

Estimating Diversity Effects in the Neighborhood: On the Role of Ethnic Diversity and Out-group Size and their Associations with Neighborhood Cohesion and Fear of Crime

This study considers and simultaneously tests the role of ethnic diversity and out-group size in relation to individuals’ perceptions of neighborhood cohesion and fear of crime among natives in Dutch neighborhoods. We challenge the way the impact of diversity has been studied previously and propose an alternative measure to examine diversity effects. This results in a better understanding of how and why the ethnic composition of a neighborhood may impact levels of cohesion and fear, and thereby contributes to the literature on the societal effects of ethnic diversity. In addition, attention is paid to the association between cohesion and fear and whether neighborhood cohesion mediates the relationship between ethnic diversity and fear of crime. We apply multilevel equation modeling techniques to analyze the different relationships and use data of the Dutch Safety Monitor (N?=?71,760) in combination with detailed register data. Our study is one of the first to detect a diversity effect on cohesion based on the modified diversity measure. We do not find support for the hypothesized diversity effect on fear of crime. Lastly, out-group size turned out to decrease cohesion and increase fear.

     

Measuring Social Cohesion: An Experiment using the Canadian National Survey of Giving,Volunteering, and Participating

Social cohesion is a concept difficult to define and to measure. As there can be many definitions, so there can be many measurements. The main problem, either in defining or measuring the concept, is its multilevel and multidimensional nature. At one extreme, country is the most commonly used level to view social cohesion but measurement at this level is of little use for any interventions. At the other extreme, community is the most useful level but it is a social construct for which data are difficult to get, given the administrative boundaries used in social surveys. As an initial attempt to measure social cohesion at a subcountry level, this study focuses on census metropolitan areas for which data on several dimensions of social cohesion are available. We use the information gathered by the National Survey on Giving, Volunteering and Participating (NSGVP) on three dimensions of social cohesion: political (voting and volunteering), economic (occupation, income, labour force participation) and social (social interactions, informal volunteering). Using statistical techniques including factor analysis and standardization, we create an overall index of social cohesion for each CMA. We point out use of this measure for further analysis of social dynamics.     

Consequences of Overnight Work Travel for Personal Social Relations: Problems,Promises, and Further Repercussions

Abstract

The article uses survey data from Sweden to examine social consequences of the mobile society. Key questions tackled include the implications of overnight work travel for the travellers’ ability to cultivate locally based and long‐distance friendships and the potential of travel to provide a source of new acquaintances. Data analysis indicates that widening social networks and increasing opportunities to achieve co‐presence with long‐distance friends, as brought by mobility, represent significant consequences of overnight work travel from an individual’s standpoint. This experience was salient even among those respondents who travelled no more than occasionally, while only the most frequent travellers perceived their travel as something impeding with their chances of sustaining local social ties. While the benefits deriving from travel thus seem incontestable, it may therefore not be possible either to entirely discard the prevalent notion of mobile lifestyles as a factor undermining social cohesion and promoting isolation and loneliness.     

Health,Quality of Homecare Services and Quality of Life: A Case of Frail Older Immigrant Adults

The theory about missing links of economic growth often lags behind the empirical estimations of such links. A consensus has emerged that ethnic fractionalization has a negative impact on growth, also when controlled for income inequality. Often, although implicitly, the assumed channel is social cohesion. We analyse the effect of fractionalization on social cohesion with a different inequality measure, namely a social measure of inequality: the Inclusion of Minorities Index. Our results indicate that it is social exclusion, which reduces social cohesion, rather than diversity as such. We conclude that future studies of social cohesion and its relation to growth may benefit from using measures of social exclusion next to ethnic diversity.     

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.     

Human Empowerment and Trust in Strangers: The Multilevel Evidence

This study aimed to develop a social cohesion index for understanding the social relation between residents in high-rise group housing complexes through a self-reported questionnaire. As a background of the study, literature on social cohesion and related literature on residents’ social relation in high-rise housing were reviewed. Later, we selected different high-rise group housings of Kolkata, a city in the eastern region of India. We conducted few focus group surveys involving the residents of those high-rises and also conducted expert opinion surveys to identify a context-specific list of statements for evaluating residential social cohesion. Finally, based on the responses of interviews from 652 residents of the identified high-rise housings from the same city, followed by confirmatory factor analyses, three factors of residential social cohesion were identified with adequate reliability and validity. This index holds huge potential to explore residential social relation in high-rise housing and carry out empirical studies, across various disciplines, in other cities in the country and outside the country of similar socio-economic and cultural context.     

Is Inequality a Latent Construct? An Assessment of Economic Inequality Indicators and Their Relation with Social Cohesion in Europe

In this article, we analyse the relation between different economic inequality indicators and social cohesion. Previous research usually narrows down economic inequality to income inequality, or distinguishes several types of economic inequality. Little attention has until now been given to how different aspects of economic inequality might be related to each other and can have an effect on social cohesion. This article analyses several indicators of economic inequality and makes a distinction between indicators measuring income inequality, poverty, economic strain and unequal distributions of wealth. Arguing that these indicators represent different aspects of inequality, we hypothesise that they cannot be reduced to one latent concept of inequality and have specific relations with social cohesion. In order to test this hypothesis, we conducted an exploratory factor analysis. This resulted in two different factors: one associated with economic hardship, and one associated with imbalances in market outcomes. This would imply that inequality indicators can be classified into two underlying concepts. Secondly, we related the factor scores of the two latent concepts to the social cohesion indicators via regression analyses. This paper focuses on European countries and uses pooled data from the European Social Survey (period 2006–2012), in combination with macro-level data drawn from the OECD, Eurostat and the World Bank. The results demonstrate that the strength of the link between inequality and citizens’ attitudes depends on the type of inequality indicator we analyse: only the factor economic deprivation can be significantly linked to social cohesion.     

Statistical and Perceived Diversity and Their Impacts on Neighborhood Social Cohesion in Germany,France and the Netherlands

The question whether ethnic diversity is associated with declining social cohesion has produced much controversy. We maintain that more attention must be paid to cognitive mechanisms to move the debate ahead. Using survey data from 938 localities in Germany, France, and the Netherlands, we explore a crucial individual-level mechanism: perceptions of diversity. We not only consider perceptions of the amount, but also of the qualitative nature of diversity. By asking about various qualitative aspects of diversity, we test the cognitive salience of three explanations that have been proposed in the literature for negative diversity effects: out-group biases, asymmetric preferences and coordination problems. We show that all three mechanisms matter. Perceptions both mediate statistical diversity effects, and have important explanatory power of their own. Moreover, we are able to address the question to what extend the relationship of perceived diversity and neighborhood social cohesion varies across policy contexts. Based on assumptions in the literature about positive impacts of inclusive and culturally pluralist immigrant integration policy approaches, we hypothesize that ethno-cultural diversity is less negatively related to neighborhood social cohesion in more inclusive policy contexts. Our results provide partial support for this hypothesis as perceived diversity has a significantly stronger negative impact on neighborhood cohesion in Germany.