Social Indicators Research最新文献

This paper seeks to understand pathways into volunteering in the encore life stage and contribute to policy interventions. There is a need for more clarity regarding the delineation of formal volunteering from informal volunteering and from adult kin-caring. A sample of 4,464 respondents from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey was analysed using a set of logistic regressions, to explore three frames of volunteering —substitution (of former work time), complementary focus (gradual adjustment to less paid work or other change in personal circumstance), and obligation (compulsion to provide care or unpaid labour). Results indicate that formal volunteering was largely discretionary and a result of substitution, that informal volunteering, particularly caring for children, was complementary and partly obligatory, and the area of greatest potential policy intervention, adult kin caring was found to be largely obligatory.

While optimism is often assumed to predict subjective well-being, few longitudinal studies have actually examined the directionality of this relationship over time. To address this gap, the current study examined within-person associations between optimism and facets of subjective well-being (i.e., negative affect, positive affect, life satisfaction) over time using data from the Health and Retirement Study. The sample consisted of American adults surveyed every four years between 2008 and 2020, with a mean age of approximately 62 years at baseline. Results of the random intercept cross-lagged panel model showed reciprocal within-person associations: Increases in life satisfaction and positive affect predicted future increases in optimism, and vice versa. Negative affect and optimism were also negatively and reciprocally related. Subjective well-being was a stronger predictor of future optimism than vice versa. This study challenges the common notion that subjective well-being is merely an outcome of optimism, showing instead that subjective well-being also predicts future optimism. The results also highlight the value of taking a within-person perspective to clarify directionality in the association between psychological constructs.

Demographic ageing has influenced the well-being of the population. Issues that need to be addressed in terms of generating vulnerability in older adults (aged 60+) include social exclusion. Using the longitudinal Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), this study proposes a measure of social exclusion among older adults represented by five underlying dimensions: exclusion from material resources, from social relationships, from basic services, from participation in civic activities and from neighbourhoods. This measure is then associated with individual and collective factors using a multilevel linear regression model, which captures differences between countries and individuals over three years. The main results indicate that being female, having a high level of education, and living in an urban area are significant factors in the risk of social exclusion. Additionally, trust in government has a negative association while the Gini coefficient variable and belonging to Southern and Eastern European countries have positive associations. These regions are characterised by a more family-based, dependent culture, but exclusion in old age is also reflected in different political, historical, and socio-cultural contexts over time, which makes older people less likely to be socially excluded today.

This paper purports to enrich the burgeoning field of research on the content of people’s beliefs about inequality by studying the structure of these beliefs. We develop a theoretical and methodological framework that combines Correlational Class Analysis and Exploratory Graph Analysis, and we test it empirically with original survey data collected in the United States and the Netherlands (n = 2,501 and 1,618). Using CCA, we identify groups of individuals who share construals of inequality, while EGA allows us to model these structures as inequality belief systems, which are networks of perceptions, explanations and attitudes about inequality. Results reveal the presence of two distinct belief systems in each country. These systems exhibit structural differences and are related to different sociodemographic factors in the U.S. and the Netherlands. Moreover, we show that inequality belief systems are more socially patterned in the former country. Finally, we demonstrate that belief systems, in both countries, are associated with different levels of support for redistribution. We discuss the significance of our findings for the politics of inequality and stress that overlooking attitudinal structures impedes a full understanding of people’s views on inequality and their support for redistribution.

This paper introduces a new statistical methodology for estimating Duncan dissimilarity indexes of occupational segregation by sex in administrative areas and time periods. Given that direct estimators of the proportion of men (or women) in the group of employed people for each occupational sector are not accurate enough in the considered estimation domains, we fit to them a three-fold Fay–Herriot model with random effects at three hierarchical levels. Based on the fitted area-level model, empirical best predictors of the cited proportions and Duncan segregation indexes are derived. A parametric bootstrap algorithm is implemented to estimate the mean squared error. Some simulation studies are included to show how the proposed predictors have a good balance between bias and mean squared error. Data from the Spanish Labour Force Survey are used to illustrate the performance of the new statistical methodology and to give some light about the current state of sex occupational segregation by province in Spain. Research claims that there is a sex gap that persists despite advances in the inclusion of women in the labour market in recent years and that is related to the unequal sharing of family responsabilities and the stigmas still present in modern societies.

The physical structure of the dwelling itself and its immediate surroundings determine its Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) and this has a direct impact on the perception of comfort and wellbeing of the people who live there. Analysing the adequacy of housing from a comfort perception perspective makes it possible to better design renovation strategies for buildings. The aim of this paper is to define a multidimensional index based on multiple comfort variables to measure household discomfort. The proposed method assigns to each household a level of discomfort according to the comfort variables in which it is affected. Subsequently, these households’ values are aggregated to obtain an overall discomfort value for the society analysed. The evolution of the perception of discomfort from 2008 to 2020, the incidence of each of the variables, and the characteristics of the dwellings with the highest levels of discomfort are studied for Spanish households using the Spanish Survey on Income and Living Conditions. The results highlight a large increase in discomfort in 2020, the year of Covid-19 lockdown in Spain, and reveal that the most affected households are those living in populated areas, in apartments and in rented houses, and that the variable that affects them the most is Acoustic Comfort.

The significance of absolute income has consistently been highlighted in the literature as an important factor shaping individuals’ propensity to engage in political participation. However, considerably less research has been done on the relationship between relative income and individuals’ propensity to engage in both conventional and unconventional forms of political participation. Using relative income to quantify relative standing, this paper explores the relationship between relative standing and political participation in South Africa. Results show that individuals’ relative standing had a divergent relationship with their propensity to engage in voting and protest. More specifically, the results showed that South Africans with a higher relative standing, i.e., those who experienced relative privilege were more likely to engage in voting, while those with a lower relative standing, i.e., those who experienced relative deprivation, were more likely to engage in protest participation.

A strong and attractive educational system serves normally as a cornerstone for enhancing a nation’s long-term socio-economic development potential. In recent years, bullying among pupils or students has become a pressing issue in many schools, with significant negative repercussions for both pupils (or students) and their educational environment. Bullying not only diminishes the quality of school education but also erodes the students’ motivation and wellbeing. Thus, it plays a critical role in educational performance, prompting an urgent need for an assessment of its negative implications. This paper seeks to design and test a new model-based approach to evaluate the negative role of bullying at school in educational performance. A prominent avenue of evidence-based research on the quantitative evaluation of educational outcomes can be found in the use of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), a multidimensional comparative assessment tool for judging the efficiency of a set of relevant decision-making agents by examining the ratio of outputs to inputs. Among the various applications of DEA, the Distance Friction Minimization (DFM) approach has emerged as a promising tool. Nevertheless, the conventional DFM approach has also a serious limitation: it considers normally only one input and one output element in its projection. To address this shortcoming, this paper introduces a new Improved Ratio Minimization (IRM) approach. The IRM method overcomes the above-mentioned constraint, by allowing for the distribution of efficiency improvement projections among all input and output items contributing to efficient outcomes. Subsequently, this paper seeks to demonstrate the practical relevance of the IRM approach in DEA by applying it to an assessment of educational efficiency, with a particular focus on the effects of bullying in secondary education in European countries. Drawing from an extensive international dataset, the IRM-DEA model generates a variety of comparative empirical findings regarding the overall wellbeing and efficiency loss caused by bullying among students in European countries. The paper also explores new policy avenues for enhancing educational performance in the context of bullying at school across Europe.

India, the third largest carbon-emitting country currently faces a three-dimensional policy challenge on one hand enhancing economic growth through foreign direct investment (FDI) and reducing income inequality and on the other hand complying with its intended nationally determined contributions (INDC) commitment to reducing carbon emissions. This study aims to contribute to the current policy discourse of India by examining the asymmetric and symmetric effects of income inequality and FDI on carbon emissions with the augmentation of non-linear and linear autoregressive distributive lag model technique and using time series data from 1990 to 2021. Findings indicate that positive shock on income inequality reduces emissions, while the same on FDI increases emissions. Further, negative shock on both income inequality and FDI shows an insignificant influence on carbon dioxide emissions. The study not only confirms the presence of the pollution haven hypothesis for India but also provides evidence of conflict between the sustainable development goal (SDG-10) of reducing income inequality and the goal of climate change mitigation (SDG-13). In addition, the human development index has been found to aggravate carbon emissions. The study highlights the policy challenges of harmonizing India's SDGs with its economic growth. It suggests significant policy changes to strategically prioritize foreign direct investment projects that are in line with SDG13.

Scholars have long investigated the positive link between income and well-being, including its gender difference. However, little is known about (1) how low income is linked to ill-being among women and men; and (2) how their association varies depending on societal-level gender (in)equality. Filling this knowledge gap is crucial not only for scholarship but for social policy to tackle income-based disparities of ill-being. In this study, using the European Social Survey and the joint European Values Study-World Values Survey data, we conduct country-specific regressions and cross-national multilevel analyses to examine the relationship between low income, subjective ill-being (SIB), and macro-level gender parity. We first confirm that low-income individuals, regardless of gender, are more likely than their affluent counterparts to suffer from SIB in many countries. This indicates the applicability of implications derived from conventional approaches focused on the positive association between higher income and better well-being to the studies on low income and SIB. Nevertheless, the SIB risk significantly differs depending on the degree of gender inequality in that (1) both women and men face a higher likelihood of SIB in gender-inegalitarian societies; and importantly, (2) the psychological penalty for the poor is intensified under such gendered circumstances, especially among men. These results suggest that gender inequality not merely induces women’s ill-being but punishes low-income men possibly by exacerbating pressure as a breadwinner and imposing stigmas when they cannot meet gendered social expectations.