The Construction of a Synthetic Index Comparing Multidimensional Well-Being in the European Union

For many years, the quantification and measurement of level of well-being in a society has become an object of study by researchers, economists, international organizations and institutions. The purpose of these researches and applications is mainly the collection of data as accurate and complete as possible, dictating the paths of economic and social development policies, in order to help the economic problem of allocating scarce resources within a community, where not all individual needs can be fully met. The present work is intended as a part of that field. It will undertake the construction of a composite index of multidimensional well-being, through an aggregation of data, able to balance the trade-off between immediacy and completeness of information and to trespass the limits that characterize the commonly used income related measures. The method of factor analysis, which aims at detecting a statistically sufficient number of variables, is used to represent most of the explained variance of the phenomenon. Results are tested with different aggregative processes. This analysis is applied to the reality of the European Union, characterized by deep transformation and cultural, economic and social inequalities.     

Prosperity-Enhancing Institutions: Towards a Comprehensive Composite Index

Institutions that potentially have a positive impact on economic performance rarely exist outside of a system of institutions; rather they are embedded in the institutional order of a country. It is thus imperative to investigate the composition of such prosperity-enhancing institutional orders. This paper proposes a measurement of bundles of institutions that channel the positive effect of democratic institutions on economic prosperity. We construct composite sub-indices measuring the political, economic and societal institutional quality as well as an overall index combining these bundles of institutions. Index data is available for 148 countries between 1995 and 2010. We obtain scores summarizing the level of prosperity-enhancing institutions that the respective countries exhibit with regard to their overall institutional setting and to the three bundles of institutions, and we grade the countries accordingly. Since the indices allow for inter-temporal comparisons, we can highlight a country’s achievements in institutional development, amongst other aspects of country comparisons, and we show their value as a tool in the analysis of determinants of economic prosperity. The proposed indices are a step towards a more systematic international comparison of democratic institutional settings.     

Challenges in Constructing a Multi-dimensional European Job Quality Index

There are few attempts to benchmark job quality in a multi-dimensional perspective across Europe. Against this background, we have created a synthetic job quality index (JQI) for the EU27 countries in an attempt to shed light on the question of how European countries compare with each other and how they are developing over time in terms of job quality. Taking account of the multi-faceted nature of job quality, the JQI is compiled on the basis of six sub-indices which cover the most important dimensions of job quality as identified in the literature. The paper addresses the methods used to construct the JQI and make it comparable over time. It presents the results for 2010 and briefly addresses changes over time to illustrate the potential and limits of a multidimensional European JQI. It also considers alternative specifications for various sub-indices and tests for the impact of changes in the indicators used on the outcomes. Overall, the findings appear to confirm the feasibility and desirability of attempting to assess job quality by means of a composite index that can be periodically updated. The key strength of this approach is the possibility to monitor and benchmark EU countries’ overall job quality performances and the outcomes in six sub-dimensions of job quality and compare them with each other, across gender and over time. At the same time, the limitations of such a composite index need to be borne in mind. The most important challenges are the availability (over time), timeliness and periodicity, comparability and disaggregation of data.     

Inclusiveness as Construction of Open Identity: How Social Relationships Affect Attitudes Towards Immigrants in European Societies

Studies of individual and group-level sources of prejudice have contributed to today’s greater understanding of the emergence of prejudice and discriminatory attitudes towards immigrants. Yet, scholars have claimed that future research should investigate institutional and socio-political macro-level factors affecting individuals’ attitudes towards outsiders (Ceobanu and Escandell in Ann Rev Sociol 36:309–328, 2010). To contribute to filling this knowledge gap, this article goes across levels of analysis and theories to provide insights about group-level sources influencing attitudes towards immigrants. These sources are taken into account as both institutional and social factors involved in processes of national identity constructions. To this purpose, this work combines Blumer’s perspective (Pac Sociol Rev 1:3–7, 1958) with both the distinction Weber (Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Tübingen, Mohr, 1922) made between open and closed social relationships and some other theoretical contributions that emerged in the field. The findings of a multilevel analysis confirm that, whereby inclusive socio-political factors are involved in the processes of countries’ identity constructions, individuals show more positive attitudes towards immigrants. In addition, in inclusive countries, a society’s high regard for its own traditions and customs influences individual members to appreciate other cultures and show positive dispositions towards outsiders.     

Composite Indicator of Social Inclusion for European Countries

Social inclusion is one of the key challenges of the European Union (EU) Sustainable Development Strategy. We use four indicators from EU policies to measure social inclusion for the 27 member countries of Europe. In particular, we aggregate the four indicators in a multiplicative composite indicator via a DEA-BoD approach with weights determined endogenously with proportion constraints. We obtain a score of social inclusion that allows us to grade the 27 EU countries from 2006 to 2010. In this way, we highlight the specific role played by the four indicators in determining improvements and deteriorations of social inclusion during the European phase of the financial and economic crisis.     

An Index of Child Well-being in the European Union

While the living conditions of children and young people in the European Union have gained increasing recognition across the EU, the well-being of children is not monitored on the European level. Based on a rights-based, multi-dimensional understanding of child well-being we analyse data already available for the EU 25, using series data as well as comparative surveys of children and young people. We compare the performance of EU Member States on eight clusters with 23 domains and 51 indicators and give a picture of children’s overall well-being in the European Union. The clusters are children’s material situation, housing, health, subjective well-being, education, children’s relationships, civic participation and risk and safety.     

The International Multidimensional Fertility Index: The European Case

We propose an index to measure the degree of ability or desire of the population in a given country to have children, via an analysis of certain factors that may have a positive or negative influence on the fertility rate of that country. Using data for the twenty-eight countries of the European Union, and Principal Components Analysis, we construct the International Multidimensional Fertility Index as a combination of four dimensions: (1) Economy and family, (2) Attitudes and habits, (3) Work–Life Balance, and (4) Policy, along with nineteen distinct variables. We find that Denmark, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg are among the countries with the highest value of the index, and they also have high fertility rates within the EU. At the other end of the spectrum, Latvia, Cyprus, and Greece, are ranked in the last positions according to our index, countries that also present low values in their fertility rates. We also find a positive correlation between the value of our index and country fertility rates, an indication that our index may be capturing country differences in the conditions for bearing children, with higher values of the index indicating better conditions for childbirth and childrearing. To the extent that international data becomes available, our methodology will allow for the construction of international rankings, helpful in identifying cross-country differences in the conditions for fertility.     

Construction and Evolution of a Multidimensional Well-Being Index for the Spanish Regions

The study presented here is an attempt to calculate a comparative multidimensional index of economic well-being for the Spanish Autonomous Communities. Based on the dimensions of adjusted consumption, real wealth, equity and economic security per inhabitant, we obtain one relative index using a system of uniform weightings, a second resulting from a factor analysis and a third provided by a DEA analysis. We elaborate the index for the year 2000 and for 2006, thereby providing the relative results with greater robustness and permitting some conclusions to be reached with regard to the evolution over time of the index.     

The European Gender Equality Index: Conceptual and Analytical Issues

This article presents a composite indicator designed to measure and compare existing structural gender equality in the countries of the European Union. The construction of an index is always a complex task which requires making a great many important conceptual, analytical and empirical decisions. This complexity explains the wide variety of gender equality indices created during the last 25?years. All the proposed indices attempt to measure the same thing, gender (in)equality, but none of them define the concept they want to measure in exactly the same way, nor do they operationalize measurement in the same manner. Taking into account the methodology of these preceding approaches, this article explains the basis for the most important analytical and conceptual decisions made in constructing the European Gender Equality Index. The article also includes the overall scores obtained by the 27 European countries on this index, on its three basic dimensions (education, work and power), and on the eighteen indicators that make up its structure. With this data, corresponding to 2009, an adequate analysis of gender equality in Europe can be established.     

Weighting and Aggregation in Composite Indicator Construction: a Multiplicative Optimization Approach

Composite indicators (CIs) have increasingly been accepted as a useful tool for benchmarking, performance comparisons, policy analysis and public communication in many different fields. Several recent studies show that as a data aggregation technique in CI construction the weighted product (WP) method has some desirable properties. However, a problem in the application of the WP method is the difficulty and subjectivity in determining the weights for sub-indicators. In this paper, we extend the WP method and propose a multiplicative optimization approach to constructing CIs. This approach requires no prior knowledge of the weights for sub-indicators. Instead, the weights are generated by solving a series of multiplicative data envelopment analysis type models that can be transformed into equivalent linear programs. Additional relevant information on the weights, if available, can be incorporated into the proposed models. We apply the proposed approach to the 2005 data of 27 economies in the Asia and the Pacific region in the United Nations’ Human Development Index study and present the results.     

Measuring Health Inequality in US: A Composite Index Approach

Social Indicators Research - In this paper, we use the standardized mortality rates for 21 mutual exclusive causes of death to propose a composite index of US county-level health performances in...     

European Identity: An Analysis of Measurement Equivalence Across Countries and Mode of Data Collection in the European Values Survey 2017/2018

The study of European Identity has gradually become central to social sciences in the past decades. The enlargement of the European Union, as well as the economic crises from a decade ago called into question the very idea of Europe as a polity, the legitimacy of the European project and the homogeneity of the European culture. Although many analyses study European Identity, most research focuses on the definition and measurement of European Identity within the EU member states. Due to the interest in European Identity within EU borders on the one hand, and the lack of comparable data on the other, the European Identity of all Europeans is rarely explored. To address this gap, we investigate the common understanding of Europeanness among those living in Europe. We define European Identity as ethnic/cultural identity as opposed to civic identity and analyse the measurement equivalence of the scale tapping European ethnic/cultural identity fielded by European Values Survey in 2017 in 30 European countries. The results point out to a common understanding of Europeanness among those living in Europe, in ethnic terms, not in cultural ones. Methodologically, the analyses proved that the scale is suitable for cross-national comparisons among countries, but the comparability should be refrained to comparing means of the scale across countries. The mode of data collection does not impact on the comparability of the scale in four of the six countries that used mixed modes of data collection.

     

Highlighting Methodological Limitations in the Steps of Composite Indicators Construction

The paper opens the debate on the need to find a stable methodological framework in the construction of composite indicators (CIs) in order to address the methodological challenges including those of sensitivity and uncertainties related to methods used. As CIs are well-known to be essential in public debate, their methodological construction must be known by a large public. Illustrating CIs’ construction steps by a simple indicator, the paper aims to “democratize” this disciplinary field which is still a black box for some researchers but also to show how composite scores are sensitive to methods used and then, its impacts on policies. For example, in the Sustainable Development Indicator case, the geometric aggregation system is favorable to emerging countries which lead the ranking table whereas high income countries (which are leaders in the linear and equal weight system) except Australia, are misclassified. Uncertainty and sensitivity analysis confirm these results showing that the indexes’ scores seem to be influenced by the orientation (implied theoretical framework) given by its sponsors including policy makers. Regarding the validity of the index, correlation tests with some lights and well known indicators, reveal very consistent results.     

Construction,Robustness Assessment and Application of an Index of Perceived Level of Socio-Economic Threat from Immigrants: A Study of 47 European Countries and Regions

The focus of psychological studies of poverty is usually on the psychological outcomes, causal attributions and the personality characteristics of the poor. Different from previous psychological accounts, the present study considered poverty as a group level phenomenon in the frame of Social Identity Theory, addressing the question of how poor people deal with the negative poor identity. In order to explore which of the three identity management strategies suggested by SIT (so-called individual mobility, social creativity and collective effort) would most likely be adopted by the poor to deal with the negative poor identity, a semi-structured interview study (N = 50) and a survey study (N = 170) were conducted of a sample of Turkish adults living below the poverty line, based on data from a 2011 Report of Confederation of Turkish Trade Unions (TURK-IS, 2011). The analysis of the interviews showed that when people see group boundaries as permeable and the social structure as unstable, they tend to move into higher status groups, even if they perceive the unequal social structure to be illegitimate. On the other hand, when the social structure is perceived as stable, they tend to use creative strategies. The analysis of the survey data mostly confirmed the proposed model, which suggests that a poor identity leads poor people to endorse one of the three identity management strategies through the perceptions of permeability between the poor and the wealthy, and through the perceptions of stability and illegitimacy of the status relations between the poor and the wealthy group.     

The Discursive Construction of Women Politicians in the European Press

The appointment of the first majority female government in Spain generated a significant amount of coverage in newspapers across Europe, synthesising the multi-faceted debate about the relationship between gender and political leadership. Through the combination of qualitative thematic and quantitative content analysis, this article examines the construction of women politicians across different European nations. By analysing the coverage of the issue in the main newspapers of four European countries (France, Italy, Spain and the UK) in the two weeks after the new Spanish cabinet was appointed, this article explores the values and ideal roles the media assign to female politicians. The article is based on the premise that mediated representations of female politicians can tell us important things about the relations between gender, power and politics. Such representations embody a set of assumptions about how successful women should look, behave and speak, and thus implicitly express judgments on models of femininity. Ultimately, such representations construct heroines and villains that inform our conceptions of women's political participation, thereby encouraging some forms of gendered political discourse and discouraging others. Our research found that while certain discourses celebrate women ministers for their (symbolic) emancipatory value, others judge them by their physical appearance or their performance as wives, mothers, and mothers-to-be.     

Another Approach to Measuring Human Development: The Composite Dynamic Human Development Index

This paper seeks mainly to contribute to the debate on how the relative degree of development of a country should be measured by proposing an indicator to build on the valuable starting point provided by the Human Development Index (HDI). The indicator proposed is called the “Composite, Dynamic Human Development Index”. It incorporates in a simple way additional points which are significant for the current concept of human development and provides a dynamic factor that distinguishes between countries on the basis of achievements attained. It helps ensure that the static average data on which the HDI is based does not conceal wide-ranging economic, social and political differences within countries, lack of sustainability in current levels of development or effective development strategies drawn up by governments.     

Two-Spirit Identity in a Time of Gender Fluidity

ABSTRACT

Indigenous sexual and gender minority people have been identifying as two-spirit since 1990 and are reclaiming traditional Indigenous gender terms such as nádleehí or agokwe. At the same time, Settler-dominated communities are undergoing a cultural shift toward challenging binary categories of sex and gender, causing some Settler governments to adopt a multi-gender framework reminiscent of the Indigenous systems they aimed to erase through colonial systems and practices. This article examines how shifts in Settler gender frameworks relate to traditional and contemporary understandings of gender in Indigenous nations and how Indigenous gender systems support resistance to ongoing colonization.