scholarly journals Positional, mobility and reference effects: How does social class affect life satisfaction in Europe?

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caspar Kaiser ◽  
Nhat An Trinh
Keyword(s):  
Life Satisfaction ◽  
Social Class ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
Social Survey ◽  
Class Mobility ◽  
Negative Effect ◽  
Class Origin ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Do So ◽  
Diagonal Reference Models

In this study, we analyse the effects of social class on life satisfaction and develop a theoretical framework that shows how social class affects life satisfaction through five pathways. Informed by this framework, we estimate the direct effects of class destination and class origin, the effect of own intergenerational class mobility as well as the effects of others’ class position and mobility (so-called reference effects). To do so, we utilize European Social Survey (ESS) waves 1 to 5 (2002-2010). We obtain information on life satisfaction as well as destination and origin class for about 100,000 respondents in 32 European countries. Our mobility analyses are performed with diagonal reference models, which allow for the consistent estimation of mobility effects. We find: (1) Class destination consistently and strongly structures life satisfaction across Europe. (2) Own class mobility positively impacts life satisfaction, particularly in Eastern Europe. (3) Other’s class mobility has a strong negative effect on life satisfaction. Especially the latter finding points to the hitherto neglected importance of reference effects when considering the impact of social class onlife satisfaction.

scholarly journals Does Downward Social Mobility Make People More Hostile Towards Immigrants?

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marii Paskov ◽  
Patrick Präg ◽  
Lindsay Richards
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
Economic Decline ◽  
Downward Mobility ◽  
Social Survey ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
Class Mobility ◽  
Positive Attitudes ◽  
Parental Class

This study explores the relationships between intergenerational social class mobility and attitudes towards immigration. We interpret a failure to keep up with parental social class (i.e. downward mobility) as an indicator that individual’s status achievements lag behind expectations and contribute to subjective feelings of loss and decline. An innovative feature of this paper is that we investigate both whether individual’s mobility experience -- micro level -- and also whether opportunity structures -- mobility on a macro level -- are linked with attitudes towards immigration. In contexts with high downward-mobility, opportunities for moving up are limited and hence perceived economic decline and loss might lead to more hostility towards immigrants. By contrast, high upward mobility expands opportunities for all and as such might promote positive attitudes towards immigrants. We use the European Social Survey data (2002-10) and conduct analyses on 30 countries using diagonal reference models that allow the effects of individual mobility trajectory to be disentangled from origin status and destination status. Our results show that the working classes hold stronger anti-immigration attitudes and parental class continues to exert an effect on attitudes in adulthood even after accounting for individual’s own social class position. Being downwardly mobile from parental class does not appear to be associated with more hostility towards immigrants, except in a few European countries like Italy, Poland, and Greece. Our random-effects meta-regression models show, however, that people living in contexts of high downward mobility are more hostile towards immigrants compared to people in contexts with high upward mobility.

scholarly journals Hello pension, goodbye tension? The impact of work and institutions on older workers’ labor market participation in Europe

2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 33-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Fleischmann ◽  
Ferry Koster ◽  
Pearl Dykstra ◽  
Joop Schippers
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Older Workers ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
Individual Characteristics ◽  
Institutional Characteristics ◽  
Labor Market Participation ◽  
Market Participation ◽  
Social Survey ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Welfare State

To sustain the welfare state, several EU countries agreed to take measures aimed at increasing the labor market participation of older workers (European Commission 2001). In this study, we developed a framework integrating individual, work, and institutional characteristics in order to explain the labor market participation of older workers. While prior studies focused mainly on individual characteristics, the present analysis investigated the impact of work and institutions more closely using the European Social Survey. Multilevel analyses across 21 countries showed that work characteristics increased the benefits from work, hence increasing the likelihood of participation among older workers, and that the generosity of institutions discouraged older workers to remain in the labor market.

Political attitudes and trade union membership in the Nordic countries

2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 381-395 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carsten Strøby Jensen
Keyword(s):  
Survey Data ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
Union Membership ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Political Attitudes ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
Nordic Countries ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Social Survey ◽  
The Impact

Do political attitudes influence the likelihood of employees being members of a trade union, and to what extent is this the case in the Nordic countries with their high aggregate levels of membership? In this article, I address these questions using European Social Survey data from 2012. The results show that left-wing political attitudes have the most impact on the likelihood of trade union membership in Sweden and to a lesser extent in Denmark. In Norway and Finland, there is no statistically significant impact. I argue that the impact of left-wing political attitudes on unionization in Sweden and Denmark reflects a conception among employees that trade unions are normative organizations.

scholarly journals Social Class Origin and Assortative Mating in Britain, 1949–2010

Sociology ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 52 (6) ◽  
pp. 1217-1236 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ursula Henz ◽  
Colin Mills
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Assortative Mating ◽  
Class Mobility ◽  
The Social ◽  
Class Origin ◽  
To Come ◽  
Similar Class ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Level Aspect ◽  
Over Time

This article examines trends in assortative mating in Britain over the last 60 years. Assortative mating is the tendency for like to form a conjugal partnership with like. Our focus is on the association between the social class origins of the partners. The propensity towards assortative mating is taken as an index of the openness of society which we regard as a macro level aspect of social inequality. There is some evidence that the propensity for partners to come from similar class backgrounds declined during the 1960s. Thereafter, there was a period of 40 years of remarkable stability during which the propensity towards assortative mating fluctuated trendlessly within quite narrow limits. This picture of stability over time in social openness parallels the well-established facts about intergenerational social class mobility in Britain.

scholarly journals When economic and cultural interests align: the anti-immigration voter coalitions driving far right party success in Europe

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 427-448 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daphne Halikiopoulou ◽  
Tim Vlandas
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Analysis ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
Strong Positive Correlation ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Social Survey ◽  
Positive Correlation ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Party Support ◽  
The Impact

AbstractThis article contests the view that the strong positive correlation between anti-immigration attitudes and far right party success necessarily constitutes evidence in support of the cultural grievance thesis. We argue that the success of far right parties depends on their ability to mobilize a coalition of interests between their core supporters, that is voters with cultural grievances over immigration and the often larger group of voters with economic grievances over immigration. Using individual level data from eight rounds of the European Social Survey, our empirical analysis shows that while cultural concerns over immigration are a stronger predictor of far right party support, those who are concerned with the impact of immigration on the economy are important to the far right in numerical terms. Taken together, our findings suggest that economic grievances over immigration remain pivotal within the context of the transnational cleavage.

scholarly journals Diversity and Perceptions of Immigration: How the Past Influences the Present

2020 ◽  
pp. 003232172092277 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren McLaren ◽  
Anja Neundorf ◽  
Ian Paterson
Keyword(s):  
Generational Differences ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
Additive Models ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Social Survey ◽  
The Past ◽  
Positive Attitudes ◽  
The Uk ◽  
British Sample ◽  
The Impact

The question of whether high immigration produces anti-immigration hostility has vexed researchers across multiple disciplines for decades. And yet, understanding this relationship is crucial for countries dependant on immigrant labour but concerned about its impact on social cohesion. Absent from most of this research are theories about the impact of early-years socialisation conditions on contemporary attitudes. Using the British sample of the European Social Survey (2002–2017) and two innovative approaches to modelling generational differences – generalised additive models and hierarchical age‒period‒cohort models – this paper shows that rather than producing hostility to immigration, being socialised in a context of high immigrant-origin diversity is likely to result in more positive attitudes to immigration later in life. This implies that through generational replacement, countries like the UK are likely to become increasingly tolerant of immigration over time. Importantly, however, a context of high-income inequality may diminish this effect.

Voter Turnout, Information Acquisition and Education: Evidence from 15 European Countries

2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesca Borgonovi ◽  
Beatrice d'Hombres ◽  
Bryony Hoskins
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Causal Relationship ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Information Acquisition ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Compulsory Schooling ◽  
Social Survey ◽  
The Impact

Abstract This article examines the impact of education on political participation in 15 European countries. We use data from the European Social Survey and find that education is positively associated with voter turnout and information acquisition about politics and currents affairs. However, when we use exogeneous changes in compulsory schooling to instrument education, we observe a statistically significant causal relationship in the case of information acquisition but not voter turnout.

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