Life Chances and Opportunities in Times of Social Change: Evidence from Two British Birth Cohorts

Author(s):  
Ingrid Schoon
2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (12) ◽  
pp. 2671-2698 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hal Kendig ◽  
Rafat Hussain ◽  
Kate O'Loughlin ◽  
Lisa Cannon

AbstractAttitudes to ageing can predispose decision-making as governments, interest groups and electorates negotiate competing demands in the context of economic constraints and social change. This paper, based on national survey data, investigates change and stability in Australian attitudes to intergenerational equity from 2009–2010 to 2015–2017, alongside concurrent socio-economic and policy change as well as cohort succession. The emphasis is on the baby-boom cohort who are viewed as significant beneficiaries of social change relative to opportunities of younger and older cohorts. Views of older people as a needy group may be changing slightly as more enter later life with substantial wealth and resources. Our results show that there is little perception of intergenerational conflict with the exception of the Millennial cohort whose life chances are compromised by economic and expenditure constraint over the past decade. Overall, attitudes remain sympathetic to older people, especially among women and people rendered vulnerable by poor health, non-home-ownership and low socio-economic positions. The findings do not align with government portrayals of intergenerational inequalities notwithstanding many having negative views of the future and ongoing expenditure restraint strategies. At what appears to be a critical turning point in the life chances of successive cohorts, the findings indicate the interplay between attitudes and social and policy change, as well as implications for social equity and processes of attitudinal change.


2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yun Xiao

Abstract As globalization presses on in China a market economy and democracy have been developed, and ordinary people obtained opportunities at many levels. One of them is their tangible access to media networks, computer facilities, online technologies, and global information exchange, which leads to the rise and expansion of Chinese Internet Language (CIL). Drawing on theoretical perspectives from globalization research, such as globalization and transformation (Steger 2009), as well as globalization and language (Fairclough 2006, 2009), this study intends to examine the emerging CIL and its role in social change. Taking a globalization and language approach, this study seeks to answer questions such as: What characterizes the CIL? How does the CIL reflect the changing social conditions in contemporary China? And how does the cyber community generate new public discourse that drives the changing China? Data used for this study are from three major sources: (1) The corpus-based annual national reports entitled The Language Situation in China《中国语言生活状况报告》Zhongguo Yuyan Shenghuo Zhuangkuang Baogao from 2005 to 2013 (English version in Volumes 1 and 2 of Language Policies and Practices in China, Yuming Li and Wei Li, 2013, 2014), (2) the Semi-Annual Report on International Development in China by CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center), and (3) recent Chinese publications, online or printed. Collectively, the data indicate that, with globalization rapidly changing and seriously challenging China, its social conditions and people’s life chances are radically changing, which are measured, evaluated, and reflected on by the language use of grassroots people that is marked with innovations, catch words, and novel forms. Officially branded as low standard and crude, CIL binds together a Chinese-speaking cyber community that generates new public discourse as the pushing hand and uncompromising challenger of the social change “from below.”


2006 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 41-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin D. Munk

Life chances and social mobility: different cohort conditions. Social position still depends on social origin, gender and work experience. Cohorts born in the mid- 1960s are less advantaged than cohorts born in the mid- and late 1950s, when studied at the time the respective birth cohorts were 31 years old. Research indicates that younger cohorts have a lesser chance of obtaining social positions such as higher-grade professionals/managers than relatively older cohorts had, when education, gender and other background factors have been controlled for. In addition, the younger cohorts have an increased risk of ending up in unskilled occupational groups. This development can be explained in part by the change in labour market conditions, such as unemployment, and in part by educational inflation (educational expansion), which means that similar social positions will be increasingly over time occupied by individuals who have more education and credentials that are demanded by workplaces. Agents are positioned according to a state of distribution of the specific capital (e.g. educational capital). Generally, a highly educated population, under pressure, will influence strong families to invest more in their children’s education, in order to defend their position (a “defensive expenditure“). This social process of differentiation can be characterised as an unequal achievement society.


2002 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
DOV FRIEDLANDER ◽  
BARBARA S. OKUN ◽  
ZVI EISENBACH ◽  
LILACH LION ELMAKIAS

2021 ◽  
Vol 118 (31) ◽  
pp. e2107020118
Author(s):  
Roland Neil ◽  
Robert J. Sampson ◽  
Daniel S. Nagin

This article draws on official criminal histories for multiple birth cohorts spanning a 17-y difference in birth year to study how social change can alter our understanding of influential theories and policies about criminal offender groups. Arrest histories are linked to comprehensive longitudinal measurement on over 1,000 individuals originally from Chicago. Using group-based trajectory modeling, we investigated the magnitude and type of cohort differences in trajectories of arrest over the period 1995 to 2020. Our results show that trajectory group membership varies strongly by birth cohort. Membership in the nonoffender group is nearly 15 percentage points higher for cohorts born in the mid-1990s as compared to those born in the 1980s; conversely, older cohorts are more likely to be members of adolescent-limited and chronic-offender groups. Large cohort differences in trajectory group membership persist after controlling for a wide-ranging set of demographic characteristics and early-life risk factors that vary by cohort and that prior research has identified as important influences on crime. Not only does the effect of social change on cohort differentiation persist, but its magnitude is comparable to—indeed larger than—differences in trajectory group membership associated with varying levels of self-control or by whether individuals grew up in high-poverty households. These results suggest that changes in the broader social environment shared by members of the same birth cohort are as powerful in shaping their trajectory group membership as classic predictors identified in prior research, a finding that carries implications for crime-control policies that rely on prediction.


2011 ◽  
Vol 20 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 95-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grant Jarvie

Sport, Social Division and Social InequalityThis article examines different forms of social division and social inequality which impact upon contemporary sport. The research draws upon and contributes to contemporary sports participation data in one country. It also draws upon some examples of research from countries other than UK in order to provide a broader international perspective. It examines new forms of inequality and some of the ways in which sport has helped to support social change. It suggests that future researcher examining the relationship between sport and social inequality might think of this in at least three ways (i) inequality of condition; (ii) inequality of opportunity and (iii) inequality of capability. The research supports the argument that sport has a part to play in improving the life chances. The research provides a valuable comparative example from which to develop further comparative research in this area.


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