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.     

Child Well-being: A Systematic Review of the Literature

A systematic review the child well-beingliterature in English was conducted withsearches in five databases to assess thecurrent state of child well-being research andanswer the following questions: (1) How is childwell-being defined? (2) What are the domains ofchild well-being? (3) What are the indicators ofchild well-being? and (4) How is childwell-being measured? This review updates andexpands a previous review of the childwell-being literature spanning 1974–1992. Results indicate that well-being is a commonlyused but inconsistently defined term frequentlyincluded in the study of child development. There are five distinct domains of childwell-being: physical, psychological, cognitive,social, and economic. Positive indicators areused more often in the physical, cognitive,social, and economic domains, while morenegative or deficit indicators are used in thepsychological domain. There is littleagreement in the research literature on how tobest measure child well-being.

     

Child Well-being in Flanders: A Multidimensional Account

In this article we characterise the well-being of young children in the Belgian region of Flanders. We focus on three commonly used indicators: educational attainment, the existence of special needs and the occurrence of problematic behaviour. The former derives from a relatively impartial source, the schooling system, while the latter two originate from parental assessment. Somewhat surprisingly, the different measures are only weakly associated with each other. Moreover, negative outcomes tend to correlate with different characteristics of the child and the household, depending on the well-being indicator used. Only a low level of education of the mother and the fact the child is living in a single parent family is consistently associated with negative outcomes. This is not true, however, for a whole range of other characteristics, like the work schedule of the parents, the sex of the child, the child’s rank in the line of siblings or the number of children in the household. Consequently, policy makers should be wary of quick conclusions when presented with results from single indicator research. Educational lagging, for example, may seem a very objective measure of problems, yet it does not necessarily coincide with problematic behaviour nor a parental perception of special needs. Hence, political action is not self-evident and may require additional justification. For future research, a more thorough investigation about the links between the various indicators of child well-being seems indicated.

Income and Well-being Across European Provinces

The majority of studies investigate the effect of income on life satisfaction at either individual or country level. This study contributes with analysis at the (sub-national) province level across West European countries. I use a unique dataset Eurobarometer 44.2 Bis that is representative of province populations in a multilevel model. Provinces are defined according to The Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics at second level (NUTS II). Living conditions measured by regional income increase life satisfaction beyond personal income and national income. There is larger life satisfaction inequality between the rich and the poor in poor provinces than in rich provinces. Personal income matters more for life satisfaction in poor provinces than in rich provinces.     

Quality of Life in the European Union: An Econometric Analysis from a Gender Perspective

Social Indicators Research - This paper provides an approach to measure the quality of life in the European Union from a multiple perspective: individual, socioeconomic and territorial by creating...     

Informal Food Production in the Enlarged European Union

How widespread is the production of food in old and new member states of the European Union and what is the social meaning or logic of such activities? We show that growing food is (a) more widespread in former communist countries than in traditional market economies and (b) is predominantly a hobby or recreational activity in affluent countries, but a coping strategy in reaction to experienced difficulties in making ends meet in poorer nations, and especially so in the former communist countries.     

International Well-being Index: The Austrian Version

The International Well-being Index (IWI) measures both personal and national well-being. It comprises two subscales: the Personal Well-being Index (PWI) and the National Well-being Index (NWI). The aim of this paper is to test the psychometric properties (validity and reliability) of the translated scale in Austria. Convergent validity is assessed using the Scales of Psychological Well-Being, the Satisfaction with Life Scale and the Positive and Negative Affect Scale. In addition, a Visual–Analog Scales capturing “satisfaction with life as a whole” was applied. The participants were 581 students of the Medical University Innsbruck (female: 47.7%; age: 23.2 ± 3.7). Internal consistency (Cronbach’s α) of the IWI was for both scales > .70 (PWI: .85; NWI: .83). The exploratory factor analysis of the IWI identified a 2-factor-structure identical with the two scales of the IWI explaining 54.2% of the variance. The convergent validity hypotheses were confirmed, construct validity was partly confirmed for the PWI being a deconstruction of a first factor called “satisfaction with life” (38.1% explained variance). Happy participants scored higher on the PWI (84.3 ± 7.9 vs. 68.7 ± 13.7; p < .001) and NWI (64.3 ±  15.8 vs. 57.9 ±  15.1; p < .001) scores than unhappy participants. It is concluded that the Austrian version of the IWI is a reliable and valid instrument to assess personal and national well-being. Further studies including a representative sample should be carried out on a recurring basis to use the IWI as an indicator for social science research in Austria.     

An Index of Child Health in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) of Africa

In this article we present a new composite index of child health, applied to the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) of Africa, one of the areas of the planet most castigated by poverty. Our index has been constructed attending to the variables defined in the Goals of the Millennium Declaration. For this purpose we will use the P₂ distance method for the year 2008, the last year for which data are available. This index integrates variables of child health that permit a territorial ordering of the LDCs of Africa, in terms of those partial indicators.     

A population density grid of the European Union

This paper describes four methods used to produce dasymetric population density grids combining population data per commune with CORINE Land Cover, a map available for all countries of the European Union. An accuracy assessment has been carried out for five countries for which a very reliable 1-km population density grid exists; the improvement, compared with the choropleth map per commune, ranges between 20% for the weakest result in Finland and 62% for the best result in the Netherlands. The best results are obtained with a method using logit regression to integrate information from the point survey LUCAS (Land Use/Cover Area frame Survey); however, performance differences between methods are moderate. The dasymetric grid is distributed free of charge by the European Environment Agency, for non-commercial use.     

Subjective Well-Being in the European Union during the 90ies

Social Indicators Research -     

Indicators and Indices of Child Well-being: A Brief American History

This paper traces the history of indicators and indices of child well-being from its origins in the social indicator movement of the 1970s through recent developments in the field. Initial work calling for comprehensive sets of indicators of child well-being and later recommendations for indicator improvement are detailed. Products that resulted from these recommendations, such as comprehensive indicator reports and online resources are described. The development of child well-being indices is shown to parallel the history of indicators. The contributions of state and international indicator and index projects are included as well. Important aspects of child well-being indicator development are uncovered through documenting its history, including the need to focus on subjective as well as objective measures of well-being, and the need to develop indicators for the multiple ecological contexts of children’s lives, but to separate measures of context from measures of child outcomes. A rough consensus emerges across the history of indicator efforts on the critical domains of child well-being: physical, psychological, cognitive, social, and economic well-being. Recent recognition of the importance of indicators of positive development is noted. This paper was funded by the KIDS COUNT project of the Annie E. Casey Foundation.     

County-Level Patterns of Undeclared Work: An Empirical Analysis of a Highly Diversified Region in the European Union

Social Indicators Research - The scale and impact of undeclared work on the economy and on society are more apparent in emerging countries compared to developed economies. The same issue concerns...     

Legal Corruption and Dissatisfaction with Democracy in the European Union

We aim to clarify a puzzling paradox: while shares of highly educated and non-religious individuals—who generally hold less prejudice—have increased in the Netherlands, levels of prejudice against ethnic minorities have yet risen over time. To solve the paradox, we use cross-sectional data from 1985 to 2011 in counterfactual analyses. In these analyses we simulate that levels of ethnic prejudice within categories of education, church membership, and church attendance are kept constant at the 1985 level and a new simulated trend in prejudice is estimated for the 1985–2011 period. Our findings show that changing levels of prejudice within categories of education are partly responsible for the trend. We conclude that the increasing share of highly educated individuals has not resulted in a decline of prejudice in the Netherlands over time, because all Dutch have become more prejudiced over the years and in particular the higher educated.     

Union Transitions Following the Birth of a Child to Cohabiting Parents

Despite a growing interest in the family trajectories of unmarried women, there has been limited research on union transitions among cohabiting parents. Using data from the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth, we examined how family complexity (including relationship and fertility histories), as well as characteristics of the union and birth, were associated with transitions to marriage or to separation among 1,105 women who had a birth in a cohabiting relationship. Cohabiting parents had complex relationship and fertility histories, which were tied to union transitions. Having a previous nonmarital birth was associated with a lower relative risk of marriage and a greater risk of separation. In contrast, a prior marriage or marital birth was linked to union stability (getting married or remaining cohabiting). Characteristics of the union and birth were also important. Important racial/ethnic differences emerged in the analyses. Black parents had the most complex family histories and the lowest relative risk of transitioning to marriage. Stable cohabitations were more common among Hispanic mothers, and measures of family complexity were particularly important to their relative risk of marriage. White mothers who began cohabiting after conception were the most likely to marry, suggesting that “shot-gun cohabitations” serve as a stepping-stone to marriage.     

Income,deprivation and economic stress in the enlarged European Union

At risk of poverty indicators based on relative income measures suggest that within the enlarged EU societies located at quite different points on a continuum of affluence have similar levels of poverty. Substantial differences in levels of income between societies do not in themselves invalidate this approach. However, the relative income approach fails to capture the fact that, if countries are grouped in terms of level of GDP, between economic cluster differences in life-style deprivation are sharper at lower income levels. Support for the argument relating to restricted reference groups is found in relation to the contrast between the twelve most affluent EU countries and all others. The limitations of relative income poverty lines have little to do with the process of enlargement as such. Instead the major problem involves the weak association between income and deprivation in the more affluent countries. However, as a consequence of such difficulties, such indicators do not provide entirely meaningful comparisons of levels of disadvantage across economic clusters. The current analysis, rather than supporting the alternative of a focus on absolute income or an EU wide poverty line, suggests that we should take the argument for adopting a multidimensional approach to the measurement of poverty more seriously.     

Is Low Fertility a Temporary Phenomenon in the European Union?

This article addresses two questions: (i) will the mere end of further postponement of fertility in the EU-countries lead to an appreciable rise in European fertility and bring total fertility rates closer to replacement level, as witnessed in the United States? and (ii) what are the chances that such a stop to postponement is imminent? The answer to the first question is positive, but only if there is enough recuperation of fertility at older ages. Translated in the Bongaarts–Feeney framework, this condition means that the birth-order-specific TFRs would indeed remain constant. In the absence of full recuperation at older ages, the induced rise in the national TFRs would be trivial and by no means restore period and cohort TFRs to replacement levels. Hence, caution is needed when using the Bongaarts–Feeney adjusted TFRs for pro-jective purposes. With respect to the second question, female education and employment trends in tandem with ideational and family disruption data are used to speculate about the prospects for such an end to further fertility postponement and for fertility increases at older ages. Strikingly, EU-countries that have the greatest potential for still later fertility are also the ones with very low TFRs (below 1.5) at present. The overall conclusion is that low to very low fertility in the EU is unlikely to be a temporary phenomenon     

The Impact of Parental Death on Child Well-being: Evidence From the Indian Ocean Tsunami

Identifying the impact of parental death on the well-being of children is complicated because parental death is likely to be correlated with other, unobserved factors that affect child well-being. Population-representative longitudinal data collected in Aceh, Indonesia, before and after the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami are used to identify the impact of parental deaths on the well-being of children aged 9–17 at the time of the tsunami. Exploiting the unanticipated nature of parental death resulting from the tsunami in combination with measuring well-being of the same children before and after the tsunami, models that include child fixed effects are estimated to isolate the causal effect of parental death. Comparisons are drawn between children who lost one or both parents and children whose parents survived. Shorter-term impacts on school attendance and time allocation one year after the tsunami are examined, as well as longer-term impacts on education trajectories and marriage. Shorter- and longer-term impacts are not the same. Five years after the tsunami, there are substantial deleterious impacts of the tsunami on older boys and girls, whereas the effects on younger children are more muted.     

欧盟共同就业策略的基础及其发展

1997年制定的《欧盟就业指南1998》中明确了欧盟共同就业策略的基础:企业家的权利和职能,就业能力,适应能力以及相等的就业机会。从此以后,欧盟就业政策的调和与制定都有较大的发展。在欧盟成员国中,丹麦、奥地利、希腊和意大利在劳动力市场政策的运用中有许多成功的实践。