Francesco Bartolucci, Donata Favaro, Fulvia Pennoni, Dario Sciulli
{"title":"An Analysis of the Effect of Streaming on Civic Participation Through a Causal Hidden Markov Model","authors":"Francesco Bartolucci, Donata Favaro, Fulvia Pennoni, Dario Sciulli","doi":"10.1007/s11205-023-03261-z","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-023-03261-z","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We examine the effect of streaming based on ability levels on individuals’ civic participation throughout their adult life. The hypothesis we test is that ability grouping influences individuals’ general self-concept and, consequently, their civic participation choices across the life course. We employ data from the British National Child Development Study, which follows all UK citizens born during a certain week in 1958. Six binary variables observed at 33, 42, and 51 years of age are considered to measure civic participation. Our approach defines causal estimands with multiple treatments referring to the evolution of civic engagement over time in terms of potential versions of a sequence of latent variables assumed to follow a Markov chain with initial and transition probabilities depending on posttreatment time-varying covariates. The model also addresses partially or entirely missing data on one or more indicators at a given time occasion and missing posttreatment covariate values using dummy indicators. The model is estimated by maximizing a weighted log-likelihood function with weights corresponding to the inverse probability of the received treatment obtained from a multinomial logit model based on pretreatment covariates. Our results show that ability grouping affects the civic participation of high-ability individuals when they are 33 years old with respect to participation in general elections.</p>","PeriodicalId":21943,"journal":{"name":"Social Indicators Research","volume":"20 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139677433","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Efraín García-Sánchez, Juan Matamoros-Lima, Eva Moreno-Bella, Davide Melita, Ángel Sánchez-Rodríguez, Juan Diego García-Castro, Rosa Rodríguez-Bailón, Guillermo B. Willis
{"title":"Perceived Economic Inequality Is Negatively Associated with Subjective Well-being through Status Anxiety and Social Trust","authors":"Efraín García-Sánchez, Juan Matamoros-Lima, Eva Moreno-Bella, Davide Melita, Ángel Sánchez-Rodríguez, Juan Diego García-Castro, Rosa Rodríguez-Bailón, Guillermo B. Willis","doi":"10.1007/s11205-024-03306-x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-024-03306-x","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The relationship between economic inequality and subjective well-being has produced mixed results in the literature. Conflicting evidence may be due to overlooking the role of psychosocial processes that translate socioeconomic conditions into subjective evaluations. We argue that perceiving high economic inequality erodes social capital, undermining people’s subjective well-being. We rely on the Psychosocial Model of Perceived Economic Inequality and Subjective Well-Being (PEISW), which posits that perceived economic inequality negatively affects subjective well-being by increasing status anxiety and decreasing social trust. Furthermore, these indirect effects from perceived inequality to subjective well-being will be moderated by system-justifying ideologies. The present article provides the first empirical test of this model using a national survey from Spain (<i>N</i> = 1,536). We confirmed that perceived economic inequality is negatively associated with well-being. We also found that perceived economic inequality had an indirect negative effect on subjective well-being via increasing status anxiety and reducing social trust. We found no evidence that system-justifying ideologies (i.e., social dominance orientation) moderated the association between perceived economic inequality and subjective well-being. We discuss that perceived economic inequality is crucial to understanding the link between economic inequality and subjective well-being and elaborate on the role of psychosocial mechanisms that promote competition and undermine social cohesion.</p>","PeriodicalId":21943,"journal":{"name":"Social Indicators Research","volume":"27 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139677462","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Long-run inequality persistence in the U.S., 1870–2019","authors":"Carlos Gayán-Navarro, Marcos Sanso-Navarro","doi":"10.1007/s11205-024-03309-8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-024-03309-8","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper studies the long-run persistence of inequality in the U.S. With this aim, both income and wealth inequality measures covering the period from 1870 to 2019 have been analyzed. The persistent character of inequality has been assessed using unit root and structural break test statistics for time series. Furthermore, the determinants of inequality persistence have been explored by implementing Bayesian model averaging techniques in a generalized linear model framework. Our results suggest that the wealth-to-income ratio displays a non-stationary behavior throughout the whole sample period. On the contrary, the Gini index of disposable income and the top 10% income share alternate between I(0) and I(1) regimes. We also find that, while a higher level of globalization increases the persistence of income inequality, it is inversely related to the levels of educational attainment and trade union membership.</p>","PeriodicalId":21943,"journal":{"name":"Social Indicators Research","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139677291","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Revisiting the Impact Evaluation of Women’s Empowerment: A MCDM-Based Evaluation Indicator Selection Framework Proposal","authors":"Nihan Yıldırım, Fatma Köroğlu","doi":"10.1007/s11205-023-03302-7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-023-03302-7","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Women’s empowerment programs play a critical role in achieving the United Nations’ (UN’s) sustainable development goal of “Gender Equality”. However, non-profit organizations (NPOs) running women’s empowerment (WE) programs face challenges in monitoring, assessing, and evaluating the social impact (SI) and program performance due to the lack of solid guidelines. This study aims to analyze the impact and outcome evaluation indicators of WE programs by providing a quantitative tool. A multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) model is proposed to identify and prioritize the performance indicators by utilizing Fuzzy TOPSIS (FTOPSIS) and Fuzzy AHP (FAHP) in a combined methodology. Results validated the identification and classification of the indicators by their importance and viability. In a qualitative study with NPOs working on WE in Turkey, social impact and outcome evaluation indicators are defined and ranked by criteria set in the proposed combined MCDM framework. The study aims to contribute to the theoretical frameworks and practices on social impact and outcome evaluation of women’s empowerment.</p>","PeriodicalId":21943,"journal":{"name":"Social Indicators Research","volume":"69 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2024-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139646437","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Variations in Access to Social Support: the Effects of Residential Mobility and Spatial Proximity to Kin and Family","authors":"Kyra Hagge, Diana Schacht","doi":"10.1007/s11205-023-03280-w","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-023-03280-w","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Increasing residential mobility is said to challenge existing social support systems as mobility raises geographic distances between family members. Since family social support is essential for health and well-being, this study investigates whether residential mobility affects familial social support following changes in proximity to family and kin. By applying a stepwise linear regression on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel study, this paper is looking at variations between different residential mobility trajectories regarding social support provision and spatial proximity to family members in Germany over a 10-year period. Our findings show that people who are moving within Germany are receiving significantly more social support from their family and kin, while internationally mobile respondents receive less compared to non-mobile people. Mediation analyses show that proximity to family and kin are accounting for the negative effect of international mobility on social support but cannot explain the positive effect of internal migration.</p>","PeriodicalId":21943,"journal":{"name":"Social Indicators Research","volume":"23 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2024-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139646063","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Gaurav Kumar Yadav, Hatem A. Rashwan, Benigno Moreno Vidales, Mohamed Abdel-Nasser, Joan Oliver, G. C. Nandi, Domenec Puig
{"title":"A Data-Driven Model to Predict Quality of Life Dimensions of People with Intellectual Disability Based on the GENCAT Scale","authors":"Gaurav Kumar Yadav, Hatem A. Rashwan, Benigno Moreno Vidales, Mohamed Abdel-Nasser, Joan Oliver, G. C. Nandi, Domenec Puig","doi":"10.1007/s11205-023-03263-x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-023-03263-x","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In recent times, observers have noticed that people with intellectual disability (ID) experience increasing complexity in their older age. Many initiatives launched by healthcare organisations and government bodies are rigorously working to improve ID people’s quality of life (QoL) and health status. The concept of QoL is rooted in a multidimensional framework comprising both universal (etic) and culture-bound (emic) components. It has objective and subjective features and is affected by individual and environmental factors. The professionals in QoL proposed eight dimensions to cover every aspect of ID people, including emotional well-being, interpersonal relationships, material well-being, personal development, physical well-being, self-determination, social inclusion, and rights. In the last decades in Catalonia, the professionals suggested the GENCAT scale predict these eight dimensions’ values through a set of questionnaires containing 69 questions. The professionals use the beneficiary’s response the heir to 69 questions based on four point frequency scale. The GENCAT scale tool converted these 69 questions’ answers into eight values corresponding to the eight QoL dimensions. The GENCAT tool uses a set of rules and some correlatable tables to evaluate the eight dimensions of each beneficiary. In this work, we propose using machine and deep learning-based models instead of the GENCAT tool to estimate the eight dimensions values. Based on the private Newton One dataset, we train various machine learning (ML), such as Random Forest and Decision Trees, along with Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) models to predict the eight dimension values. The trained models predict the eight values by feeding with the 69 questions responses of the beneficiaries. We evaluate the performance of the various models using the Mean Absolute Error (MAE), Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), and <span>(R^2)</span> scores. The proposed model based on DNNs achieved the best results among all tested models with MAE of 1.5991, RMSE of 3.0561, and <span>(R^2)</span> of 0.9565. The study shows the promise of the machine and deep learning-based models, particularly DNNs, as a more effective and precise substitute for the GENCAT scale for calculating the eight dimensions of QoL in people with ID. The results open the door for better QoL evaluations and individualised interventions to improve this population’s well-being as they age.</p>","PeriodicalId":21943,"journal":{"name":"Social Indicators Research","volume":"46 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2024-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139645891","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Changes in Social Impacts of Industrial Heritage Adaptive Reuse in High-Density Residential Environment: Reciprocal Relations Between Social Cohesion and Perceived Safety","authors":"Seyyedeh Fatemeh Mousavinia","doi":"10.1007/s11205-024-03308-9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-024-03308-9","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Assessing industrial heritage adaptive reuse projects as a dynamic process in a broader social context such as a neighboring community facilitates a better understanding of their effects. The present study addresses this issue using a cross-lagged model and focuses on perceived safety and social cohesion as two aspects of social sustainability. From 2017 to 2022, 230 participants residing near the “Innovation Factory” project in Mashhad, Iran, participated in a four-wave longitudinal study. The results of paired sample t-tests showed a considerable decrease in perceived safety after the project opening and identified this time point as a weakness that threatens the surrounding community. However, increased social cohesion and perceived safety after renovation compared to before affirms that the occurrence of temporary social deterioration does not necessarily signify long-term social costs. Un-gating an industrial heritage area can provide green spaces, thereby increasing the potential for spontaneous interactions and fostering social cohesion. Comparing models with diverse hypothesized patterns of connections between perceived safety and social cohesion affirmed that the reciprocal effects model has better-fit indexes. This transactional relationship indicates that the two studied variables are interdependent and accumulating concepts, each having a predictive impact on the other.</p>","PeriodicalId":21943,"journal":{"name":"Social Indicators Research","volume":"28 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2024-01-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139580469","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Understanding the Resilience of Garment Workers’ Families Through a Mixed-Method Approach: Surviving the Economic Hardship During the Covid-19 Pandemic in Indonesia","authors":"","doi":"10.1007/s11205-023-03277-5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-023-03277-5","url":null,"abstract":"<h3>Abstract</h3> <p>The Covid-19 pandemic has exerted enormous economic stressors on garment workers in the form of income decline, furlough, and layoffs, affecting their families. However, research on family resilience among garment workers is limited, particularly in Indonesia. This study examines the factors associated with the resilience of garment workers’ families. We used a complementary mixed-methods approach to analyze data from the 2021 Family and Community Resilience Survey. To enrich the study, we also performed 23 in-depth interviews and two focus group discussions in Bogor and Bandung Regencies. We assess family resilience as their current status in resolving their most disruptive stressor. We fitted a multinomial logistic regression model and assessed the relative variable importance, with socio-economic characteristics, social assistance, and family organizational factors as groups of explanatory variables. Less than half of the families (46.67%) overcame their most significant stressor. Regression analysis shows that wealth index, cash assistance, and role in the family are the three most contributing variables. Qualitative results underscore the importance of economic resources or access to cash assistance during the Covid-19 pandemic. However, reliance on <em>Emok</em> Bank or other informal lenders can create new stressors due to their high-interest rates. This option is common among garment workers, who usually cannot access the government’s assistance as many are migrants. The study emphasizes the need to strengthen formal social protection systems, especially for vulnerable populations like garment workers, to protect them from future crises.</p>","PeriodicalId":21943,"journal":{"name":"Social Indicators Research","volume":"392 1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2024-01-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139580818","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Proposal for Retirement Risk Measurement Based on Subjective Assessment of Income: An Empirical Study","authors":"Kamila Bielawska, Arkadiusz Kozłowski","doi":"10.1007/s11205-023-03295-3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-023-03295-3","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We propose a novel approach to retirement risk and its measurement. We define retirement risk as a shortfall of financial resources to meet the needs of a retiree’s household, which is different from the inability to maintain a standard of living in retirement. Taking a subjective approach to risk, we operationalise it using the <i>Leyden approach</i> to estimate the minimum satisfactory income for a retiree household and compare it to the pension value. Using a logistic regression model, we estimate the effect of pension value and household and reference person characteristics. The retirement risk level strongly depends on the pension value, household composition, and the reference person’s education attainment level, which also moderates the impact of the pension. This paper contributes to the literature by proposing a subjective retirement risk measurement method and offering a methodological tool that can be used with similar data from other countries.</p>","PeriodicalId":21943,"journal":{"name":"Social Indicators Research","volume":"185 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2024-01-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139580813","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Explaining the Homelessness Phenomenon in Familistic Mediterranean Societies: A New Analytical Framework","authors":"","doi":"10.1007/s11205-023-03292-6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-023-03292-6","url":null,"abstract":"<h3>Abstract</h3> <p>This article studies the importance of the loss of family ties and its symbolic burden in the narrative of homeless people in familistic societies. The family is the main reason why poverty does not directly lead to social exclusion in southern European countries. However, the economic crises of the last two decades have weakened the ability of the family to protect its members. The new forms of poverty that imply processes of individualized social exclusion that lead to homelessness in southern Europe can be understood as a consequence of the overload currently suffered by families in those countries due to the recent economic crises. The loss of family ties in this type of society is so stigmatizing that, even if the person is living on the street for structural reasons such as having been unemployed and having lost their home due to the effects of the recent economic crises and not receiving aid from social services, always reproduces a characteristic story of self-victimization and mourning for not having had a good family that has helped him in times of need.</p>","PeriodicalId":21943,"journal":{"name":"Social Indicators Research","volume":"10 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2024-01-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139514897","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}