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.     

Institutionalized collective action and the relationship between beliefs about environmental problems and environmental actions: A cross-national analysis

How do institutions affect the relationship between an individual's beliefs and their actions? Institutionalized strategies are routine ways of addressing problems that become taken-for-granted in a society. Environmental problems constitute a collective action problem in that personal consumption often conflicts with collective interests. I test whether beliefs about environmental problems have a different impact on a person's pro-environmental behaviors, depending on how addressing collective action problems is institutionalized in their society. In particular, I use level of welfare targeting as an observable, organizational difference among societies that reflects different institutionalized strategies for addressing a prominent collective action problem. I use multilevel models on data from the 2010 International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) and measures of welfare targeting from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to answer this question. I find that in societies where the institutionalized strategy for dealing with inequality is highly targeted, individuals' beliefs that these problems are important, real, and whether they can do something about them have a greater impact on their actions. The results suggest individuals generalize taken-for-granted strategies of assuring collective welfare to implement their individual beliefs about the environment, making institutional environments important moderators of the strength of the belief-action relationship.     

Apron strings of working mothers: Maternal employment and housework in cross-national perspective

This paper asks whether maternal employment has a lasting influence on the division of household labor for married women and men. Employing multi-level models with 2002 ISSP survey data for 31 countries, we test the lagged accommodation hypothesis that a long societal history of maternal employment contributes to more egalitarian household arrangements. Our results find that living in a country with a legacy of high maternal employment is positively associated with housework task-sharing, even controlling for the personal socialization experience of growing up with a mother who worked for pay. In formerly socialist countries, however, there is less gender parity in housework than predicted by the high historical level of maternal employment.     

Are all jobs created equal? A cross-national analysis of women's employment and child malnutrition in developing countries

Using multi-level models, the analysis examines female employment and child stunting across 49 developing countries. At the country level, female labor force participation is not associated with malnutrition after controlling for economic development. At the individual level, a binary measure of employment is not significantly associated with malnutrition. However, a more nuanced measure of seven occupational categories shows that certain types of employment improve malnutrition. Professional, clerical, sales, and domestic jobs are associated with reduced stunting. These effects are only partially mediated by wealth, perhaps suggesting that some jobs may bring benefits to the household beyond the sheer acquisition of tangible resources. Agricultural jobs are associated with increased malnutrition. Manual labor and service work do not have an effect on malnutrition, compared to unemployment. Thus, women's employment is not necessarily a mechanism for empowerment and wellbeing. Not all jobs are created equal, and many of them do not confer the benefits that are typically associated with working outside the home.     

多层次信仰：一个蒙古村落传统民俗社会的维系——在珠腊沁村的田野研究

这是一项关于蒙古民间信仰的田野研究,在具体操作层面上,选择了一个民间信仰比较密集的蒙古村落--珠腊沁村,从村落的角度对多层次信仰问题提出了实证研究的结论珠腊沁村多层次信仰结构与村落民俗社会的多层次组织结构产生了紧密对应关系,这种对应关系不是因行政社会手段巧妙设计而成的,而是从村落形成之初在习俗中自然形成并世代传承下来的,是珠腊沁村信仰民俗传承世界的结构.     

An Empirical Study of Statistical Properties of Variance Partition Coefficients for Multi-Level Logistic Regression Models

Partitioning the variance of a response by design levels is challenging for binomial and other discrete outcomes. Goldstein (2003 Goldstein , H. ( 2003 ). Multilevel Statistical Models. 3rd ed . London : Edward Arnold . [Google Scholar]) proposed four definitions for variance partitioning coefficients (VPC) under a two-level logistic regression model. In this study, we explicitly derived formulae for multi-level logistic regression model and subsequently studied the distributional properties of the calculated VPCs. Using simulations and a vegetation dataset, we demonstrated associations between different VPC definitions, the importance of methods for estimating VPCs (by comparing VPC obtained using Laplace and penalized quasilikehood methods), and bivariate dependence between VPCs calculated at different levels. Such an empirical study lends an immediate support to wider applications of VPC in scientific data analysis.     

泛在大学英语多层次互动学习模式的建构

泛在大学英语学习模式是后二语习得时代的语言学习新转向。本文旨在进一步明晰泛在大学英语的学习模式,并建构多层次互动式的泛在大学英语学习模式。建构泛在大学英语多层次互动学习模式主要包括:一是解析微格课堂语境;二是从经验性和定性大学英语学习模式研究转移到定量实验的方法来验证构建模式的科学性和有效性;三是要从模式验证和模式本质两个方面来展开讨论泛在大学英语学习模式。