Societal Inequality and individual subjective well-being: Results from 68 societies and over 200,000 individuals, 1981–2008

Income inequality has been contentious for millennia, a source of political conflict for centuries, and is now widely feared as a pernicious “side effect” of economic progress. But equality is only a means to an end and so must be evaluated by its consequences. The fundamental question is: What effect does a country's level of income inequality have on its citizens' quality of life, their subjective well-being? We show that in developing nations inequality is certainly not harmful but probably beneficial, increasing well-being by about 8 points out of 100. This may well be Kuznets's inverted “U”: In the earliest stages of development some are able to move out of the (poorly paying) subsistence economy into the (better paying) modern economy; their higher pay increases their well-being while simultaneously increasing inequality. In advanced nations, income inequality on average neither helps nor harms. Estimates are from random-intercept fixed-effects multi-level models, confirmed by over four dozen sensitivity tests. Data are from the pooled World Values/European Values Surveys, Waves 1 to 5 with 169 representative national samples in 68 nations, 1981 to 2009, and over 200,000 respondents, replicated and extended in the European Quality of Life Surveys.     

On the Identification and Early Warning of College Students＇ Psychological Crisis from the Perspectiveof Life Education

心理危机的识别与预警既是预防心理危机发生的重要策略，也是对危机当事人和相关人进行生命教育和促进生命成长的重要机会。心理危机产生的原因具有复杂性，发生过程具有阶段性，危机现象具有特殊性，危机爆发具有极端性，危机发生也具有一定规律性。因此，在进行生命教育过程中，需要关注不同类别的生命个体、不同阶段的生命现象、处在规律中的独特生命个体，同时要注意识别生命危机信号和生命求救信号。     

Three Days to Walk: a personal story of life writing and disability consciousness in China

Through a close reading of Three Days to Walk, a memoir of disability by Chinese writer Zhang Yuncheng, this paper develops a new understanding of self-narrated life writing and its intersection with disability consciousness in the contemporary Chinese context. It examines the changing nature of disability life writing since the end of the early 1980s, a time when the images and voices of disabled began to emerge from effective cultural invisibility and silence. In a move away from state-sponsored ‘triumph over tragedy’ biographical narratives typical of the immediate post-Cultural Revolution period, Three Days to Walk is characteristic of a new popular trend to publish self-narrated life stories that reveal unique and intimate histories of disability experience both imbued with and propelled by a burgeoning sense of disability consciousness in the Chinese context.     

It's Complicated: The 2014–2015 U.S. Measles Outbreak and Parents’ Vaccination Beliefs,Confidence, and Intentions

While it seems intuitive that highly visible vaccine‐preventable disease outbreaks should impact perceptions of disease risk and facilitate vaccination, few empirical studies exist to confirm or dispel these beliefs. This study investigates the impact of the 2014–2015 Disneyland measles outbreak on parents’ vaccination attitudes and future vaccination intentions. The analysis relies on a pair of public opinion surveys of American parents with at least one child under the age of six (N = 1,000 across each survey). Controlling for basic demographics, we found higher levels of reported confidence in the safety and efficacy of childhood vaccinations in our follow‐up data collection. However, this confidence was also accompanied by elevated levels of concern toward childhood vaccines among American parents. We then examined how different subgroups in the population scored on these measures before and after the outbreak. We found that parents with high levels of interest in the topic of vaccines and a child who is not fully upto date with the recommended vaccination schedule reported more supportive attitudes toward vaccines. However, future intentions to follow the recommended vaccination schedule were not positively impacted by the outbreak. Possible explanations for these results and implications for vaccination outreach are discussed.     

A class of partially linear transformation models for recurrent gap times

In this article, we propose a general class of partially linear transformation models for recurrent gap time data, which extends the linear transformation models by incorporating non linear covariate effects and includes the partially linear proportional hazards and the partially linear proportional odds models as special cases. Both global and local estimating equations are developed to estimate the parametric and non parametric covariate effects, and the asymptotic properties of the resulting estimators are established. The finite-sample behavior of the proposed estimators is evaluated through simulation studies, and an application to a clinic study on chronic granulomatous disease is provided.     

Working and disability expectancies at older ages: The role of childhood circumstances and education

The ability to work at older ages depends on health and education. Both accumulate starting very early in life. We assess how childhood disadvantages combine with education to affect working and health trajectories. Applying multistate period life tables to data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) for the period 2008–2014, we estimate how the residual life expectancy at age 50 is distributed in number of years of work and disability, by number of childhood disadvantages, gender, and race/ethnicity. Our findings indicate that number of childhood disadvantages is negatively associated with work and positively with disability, irrespective of gender and race/ethnicity. Childhood disadvantages intersect with low education resulting in shorter lives, and redistributing life years from work to disability. Among the highly educated, health and work differences between groups of childhood disadvantage are small. Combining multistate models and inverse probability weighting, we show that the return of high education is greater among the most disadvantaged.     

历史文献学视野下的重大历史事件

重大历史事件的提出源于国家文艺创作政策,是重大历史题材的内核。从历史文献学的视角来看,重大历史事件的文献形态表现为本源事件、衍生事件和文本事件。重大历史事件的衍生特征主要体现为本源事件的内容选择性、视角多样性、衍生多态性和历史叙事的结构层次性。重大历史事件具有文献能产性,其根本动力来源于历史主体的社会认可需要、纪念活动的客观物证需要和文艺创作的传奇叙事需要。     

Modelling financial satisfaction across life stages: A latent class approach

We explore the determinants of financial satisfaction using a modelling framework which allows the drivers of financial satisfaction to vary across life stages. Given that financial satisfaction is measured as an ordered variable, our modelling approach is based on a latent class ordered probit model with an ordered probit class assignment function. Our analysis of household survey data indicates that four life stages are supported by the data. Our results suggest that such flexibility is important in understanding the drivers of financial satisfaction over the life cycle since there is a substantial amount of parameter heterogeneity across the four classes.     

No Expo Network: a failed mobilization in a post-political frame

In 2015 Milan hosted the Universal Exposition with the theme ‘Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life’. Even if characterized by various scandals and problems, the edition was narrated by the mainstream media as a political and economic success. Critical voices were almost completely obscured by favorable propaganda and the ideas of development and the future proposed by the Expo rhetoric was presented as inevitable, configuring ‘the best of all possible worlds’ in a more general post-political frame. In this profile I first present the main characteristics of the No Expo Network, e.g. the actors that composed it and the main critiques that they advanced. I will then focus on the reasons for its defeat, which is then contextualized in relation to the election of the Chief Executive Officer of Expo 2015 as new Mayor of Milan. Here, we can see the continuation and structural strengthening of the neoliberal politics of Expo2015 beyond the mega event itself.     

中国决策情境下的多源流模型及其优化研究

作为当今公共政策研究领域最炙手可热的理论模型之一,约翰·金登的多源流分析理论业已得到国内外学者的广泛应用与认可。在对该模型的相关内容进行简单铺陈后,通过辨析国内外不同的政策主体参与逻辑,进一步厘清了我国公共决策的独有特征。研究重点是在整合提炼西方既有修正思路的基础上,沿袭模型的模糊性假设,结合我国具体实践案例,对多源流模型进行优化与补充。研究表明,中国决策情境下的多源流模型优化主要有提高源流间的融合性、政治源流的核心化、焦点事件的独立化以及特殊情况下的临时决策等四种路径,四种优化与补充路径的有机结合将为进一步提升模型适用性提供帮助。