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This paper explores the gender gap in time allocation in European countries, offering a comparison of the 2000s and the 2010s, along with an explanation of the documented gender gaps, based on social norms and institutional factors. The results show that the gender gap in both paid and unpaid work has decreased in most countries, but with a significant level of cross-country heterogeneity in the size of the gender gaps. More traditional social norms are related to greater gender inequalities in paid and unpaid work, while countries with better family-friendly policies and a greater representation of women in politics and in the labour market exhibit smaller gender inequalities. This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of gender gaps in Europe, and attempts to monitor the progress towards the elimination of gender inequalities. Despite that some degree of gender convergence in paid and unpaid work has taken place, there remain inequalities in the distribution of labour in European countries, and possible solutions may be related to social norms and family-friendly policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concerns about the quality of housing feature prominently in academic and policy discussion on housing, yet there is little agreement about how housing deprivation should be measured or monitored. In empirical studies, measures of housing deprivation are typically examined for one of two purposes—either to compare incidences of housing quality problems for different groups, which typically leads to an examination of performance of different measures of housing deprivation, or as dependent variables to examine competing theories about what explains cross-national variation in such problems, which typically ignores these measurement considerations. Our paper seeks to analyse measurement and theory jointly, focussing in particular on the EU's severe housing deprivation measure, and its subcomponents—overcrowding and housing conditions problems. In descriptive analysis, we show that the two components of the severe housing deprivation measure are weakly related and pattern differently across nations and that the aggregation rule of the main measure has a substantial influence on observed incidences of this problem. We subsequently construct multi-level regression-based models and demonstrate that the two components have quite different determinants. Our paper has implications for the measurement of severe housing deprivation in Europe, for theories that seek to account for differences in housing outcomes, and for policy that seeks to tackle housing deprivation problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the association of opportunity and choice enhancing societal conditions and perceived autonomy with life satisfaction in Europe. Building on the capability approach, I investigate whether the positive effects of six basic functionings—safety, friendship, health, financial security, leisure, and respect—on people's life satisfaction are weaker when people have more opportunity and choice. This paper addresses two main questions: (1) Are people more satisfied with their life when they have more opportunity and choice? (2) Do basic functionings play a smaller role for life satisfaction in societies that enable more opportunity and choice and for individuals with more perceived autonomy? The analyses are based on the European Quality of Life Survey (2016), covering 36,460 individuals in 33 European countries and using multilevel linear regressions. My study finds that both choice and opportunity enhancing societal conditions and individual's perceived autonomy are positively associated with on life satisfaction. Further, all six basic functionings are conducive to individual life satisfaction. The positive effects of health, financial security, respect, and friendship are reduced when people experience a great deal of autonomy over their lives. Societal conditions that provide people with more opportunity and choice further lower the positive effects of financial security, leisure, respect, and safety on individual life satisfaction. This corroborates the importance the capability approach attributes to individual opportunities and freedom of choice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Food insecurity is the limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods or limited or uncertain ability to acquire foods in socially acceptable ways. The study presents a comparison of the principal determinants of individual food insecurity in Europe and other Continents, with particular regard to gender, since the literature clearly states the importance of women in the administration of food in the household. The study of gender related differences in food insecurity is particularly important in Europe, since women experience food insecurity at a larger extent than men, but with a variability related to the geographical distribution and with complex relationships with economic and social drivers. Using a large international sample of individual level data, that allows the analysis for developed Countries for the first time, and the first experiential measure of food insecurity comparable at the global level, the paper analyses the principal determinants of gender differences in food insecurity. In order to verify if women's vulnerability in food insecurity is moderated by specific factors, the modelling approach allows gender to vary by education, poverty, place of residence. The results suggest that the driver that could most mitigate women disadvantage is education: people with a university degree present a lower probability of experiencing food insecurity, both for men and for women. On the contrary, familial characteristics, such as the number of children in the household, present a higher impact on women's food insecurity than on men's. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Workers' wellbeing at work is a central theme for the development of institutions and enterprises. Within this debate, a central issue relates to the search for the best ways to organize lunch-breaks and food services for employees. In the past, canteens had a crucial role for workers, yet the last twenty years have marked a profound transformation of the European economy, with the effect of diversifying workers' foodways and their food-related practices while at work. Based on the research "Eating at Work" conducted by the University of Gastronomic Sciences in 2015–2016, this paper analyses the consumer behavior at lunch of almost 9400 workers, from ten different European countries. By exploring the workers' foodways during lunch-breaks and how they answer to their individual needs in terms of nutrition, socialization, productivity and overall satisfaction, the paper points out that the lunch-break has major implications in boosting wellbeing at work, thus suggesting the essential role canteens have the potential to carry out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The older population is growing globally, and more so in some European countries. Aimed at enhancing the quality of life of older people, active ageing has been on the policy agenda in Europe since the beginning of the twenty-first century. Using a subsample of the European Quality of Life Survey consisting of individuals aged 65 and over living in 27 European countries we explore the effect of active ageing on subjective quality of life. The central argument of the paper is that active ageing is cumulative, consisting of a mix of various interconnected activities. Hence, when assessing the impact of active ageing on quality of life we include the whole collection of activities in which seniors engage and avoid limiting to a single activity. Latent Class Analysis is employed to find the mix of interconnected activities in which older adults engage. We identify three classes: home keepers (mainly engaging in housekeeping activities), carers (mainly engaged in caring, but also some housekeeping activities) and those engaged outside their homes (engaged primarily in paid or unpaid work). Multilevel regression models test the connection between the different strategies to remain active in later life on life satisfaction and happiness, the cognitive and affective indicators of subjective quality of life. Our results show that remaining active in later life does not always lead to improvements in subjective quality of life and that separate strategies to remain active in later life are at work to maintain life satisfaction and happiness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there is renewed interest in earnings differentials between social classes, the contribution of social class to overall earnings inequality across countries and net of compositional effects remains largely uncharted territory. This paper uses data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions to assess earnings differentials between social classes (as measured by ESeC) and the role of between-class inequality in overall earnings inequality across 30 European countries. We find that there is substantial variation in earnings differences between social classes across countries. Countries with higher levels of between-class inequality tend to display higher levels of overall earnings inequality, but this relationship is far from perfect. Even with highly aggregated class measures, between-class inequality accounts for a non-negligible share of total earnings inequality (between 15 and 25% in most countries). Controlling for observed between-class differences in composition shows that these account for much of the observed between-class earnings inequality, while in most countries between-class differences in returns to observed compositional variables do not play a major role. In all these respects we find considerable variation across countries, implying that both the size of between-class differences in earnings and the primary mechanisms that produce these class differences vary substantially between European countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last two decades, European countries have struggled with several crises (e.g., the Great Recession, the refugee crisis) which had a tremendous impact on (some) societies. Typically, these crises were accompanied by divisive public discourses that rely heavily on a sharp and moralistic us-them distinction. Especially extreme right- and left-wing parties have adopted such conflict discourses and have gained much electoral support. Against this background, this paper has two objectives. First, data from the European Quality of Life Survey from 2003 to 2016 in 27 countries are used to provide a comprehensive overview of the salience of perceived societal conflicts between seven pairs of groups between countries and across time. We find substantial differences between countries and longitudinal trend variation in the salience of perceived societal conflict. For example, in Eastern European countries more economic conflict is perceived, while in Western European countries people perceive more cultural conflict between different ethnic and religious groups. Second, multigroup confirmatory factor analyses reveal that specific perceptions of conflict are structured by an underlying general orientation, generalized conflict thinking: people's tendency to perceive society through the lens of conflict regardless of the specificity of these groups. The measure for generalized conflict thinking is metric equivalent across a large sample of countries. This demonstrates that generalized conflict thinking can be used as a social indicator for comparative research. In the conclusion we elaborate on the implications of our findings and develop a research agenda regarding generalized conflict thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the onset of the Great Recession, it could be argued that it is the young who have been hardest hit in their living conditions. This paper offers a comprehensive description of youth living conditions and how they evolved during the recession period. To do so, we develop a synthetic index combining the indicators proposed by experts in the dimensions of Education and Training, Employment and Entrepreneurship, and Social Inclusion, through a multi-criteria approach based on the double reference point method. This technique enriches the debate by shifting the focus to acceptable and desirable thresholds for each indicator and by overcoming limitations inherent in previous youth indexes that allow for total compensation between the indicators, whilst ignoring potential imbalances. Results show that, in a context of convergence in policy instruments across countries during the Great Recession, there was an improvement in education performance, whereas cross-country divergences in terms of youth labour market prospects and social inclusion increased. This evolution has led to a more complex picture which is characterized by greater polarization in the spatial distribution of youth living conditions, with two noticeable poles: north-central Europe as opposed to the south and east of Europe. Differences in institutional configurations in the fields of education and training, active labour market policies, employment protection legislation and welfare provision together with macroeconomic trends, particularly levels of demand for youth labour and fiscal resources, have played an important role in shaping European youth living conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the onset of the Great Recession, it could be argued that it is the young who have been hardest hit in their living conditions. This paper offers a comprehensive description of youth living conditions and how they evolved during the recession period. To do so, we develop a synthetic index combining the indicators proposed by experts in the dimensions of Education and Training, Employment and Entrepreneurship, and Social Inclusion, through a multi-criteria approach based on the double reference point method. This technique enriches the debate by shifting the focus to acceptable and desirable thresholds for each indicator and by overcoming limitations inherent in previous youth indexes that allow for total compensation between the indicators, whilst ignoring potential imbalances. Results show that, in a context of convergence in policy instruments across countries during the Great Recession, there was an improvement in education performance, whereas cross-country divergences in terms of youth labour market prospects and social inclusion increased. This evolution has led to a more complex picture which is characterized by greater polarization in the spatial distribution of youth living conditions, with two noticeable poles: north-central Europe as opposed to the south and east of Europe. Differences in institutional configurations in the fields of education and training, active labour market policies, employment protection legislation and welfare provision together with macroeconomic trends, particularly levels of demand for youth labour and fiscal resources, have played an important role in shaping European youth living conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the relationship between attitudes toward migrants and social integration. Specifically, we consider two types of migration flow: migration flow from EU countries and migration flow from non-EU countries. The aims of this paper are twofold: (1) we want to understand whether an inclusive attitude towards migrants can contribute to their efforts to integrate with the receiving society (2) we want to understand whether the potential impact is the same across different migrant groups (EU vs. non-EU). Using data from 33 mainly European countries over the period 2003–2016 and controlling for common integration determinants such as inflation, foreign direct investment and educational attainment, our results indicate that there is a significant positive relationship between inclusive and good attitude toward migrants and social integration. We also in the robustness sections, identify that the size of this impact differs across different subcomponents of attitudes and integration, these results are robust to alternative estimation techniques that take cares of endogeneity (System GMM, 2SLS, and Lewbel 2SLS). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Benchmarking the analysis of countries' performance in terms of sustainable development helps to understand the success factors of countries that over perform and to target priority issues of others with lower performance. However, assessing sustainable development comes with methodological challenges, including indicator standardization, aggregation and weighting. Our study significantly contributes to the measure of sustainable development by providing a new approach based on an extended Hellwig method. After describing the main limitations of existing methodologies, this paper's aim is twofold. First, we show that the proposed analytical framework allows for comparing the sustainable performance of EU countries on the national level. The extended Hellwig method takes into consideration EU targets and/or national targets in building patterns of development. Second, this framework is tested as a part of the evaluation of the implementation of the Europe 2020 strategy in the education area. The results obtained using the extended Hellwig method were compared with those obtained by means of the Education Index, TOPSIS and Ward technique. Our analysis showed the significant disparities in the implementation of the Europe 2020 strategy recommendations in the education area in 2015. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tax and benefit systems play an important role in determining work incentives at both the extensive and the intensive margin of labour supply. The aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive comparative analysis of work incentives in Europe. Our analysis makes use of microsimulation techniques and representative household surveys from all 27 EU countries and the UK to compare the distribution of short- and long-term participation tax rates and marginal effective tax rates across population subgroups. We focus on people currently in work and characterise the population facing low work incentives in each country. Our results highlight the large variation in the distribution of work incentives across European countries, explained not only by differences in the design of tax-benefit systems, but also by the characteristics of the labour force across countries. Unemployment insurance benefits contribute substantially to short-term participation tax rates and explain on average a 20 percentage point difference between work incentives of short- versus long-term unemployment. Our analysis further highlights the need to use microdata to study differences across countries in terms of the population subgroups facing low incentives to work with the aim to inform the policy debate on potential reforms to make work pay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In various fields of research self-perceived health has been defined and analysed as a significant measure of the health-related quality of life, and also as a predictor of health status. This paper examines the determinants of self-perceived health in the EU-27 area in order to find whether a common set of governmental policies could improve the self-perceived health and whether this positive effect would remain positive and significant on other measures of the quality of life as well as across the quintiles of income distribution. A number of panel regression models using the first-difference GMM estimator are applied to comparatively examine self-perceived health together with other measures of health status and quality of life, based on Eurostat data from 2003 to 2012. The empirical results of the paper could provide useful insights for the European health policy and other common actions and policies in the field of the quality of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special brings together innovative and multidisciplinary research (sociology, economics, and social work) using data from across Europe and the US to examine the potential flexible working has on the gender division of labour and workers' work–life balance. Despite numerous studies on the gendered outcomes of flexible working, it is limited in that the majority is based on qualitative studies based in the US. The papers of this special issue overcome some of the limitations by examining the importance of context, namely, family, organisational and country context, examining the intersection between gender and class, and finally examining the outcomes for different types of flexible working arrangements. The introduction to this special issue provides a review of the existing literature on the gendered outcomes of flexible working on work life balance and other work and family outcomes, before presenting the key findings of the articles of this special issue. The results of the studies show that gender matters in understanding the outcomes of flexible working, but also it matters differently in different contexts. The introduction further provides policy implications drawn from the conclusions of the studies and some thoughts for future studies to consider. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economic crisis has undoubtedly impacted welfare states through the austerity policies prioritised to purportedly lead economies back to a growth path. In this paper, we assess the effects of the crisis in those welfare states, focusing on income benefits and analysing cases of welfare state change before the crisis via gross replacement rates available through the OECD tax/benefits database. We begin with a literature review on impacts of the crisis on welfare states, then focus on our hypothesis that retrenchment trends were already in motion before the crisis. From our point of view, this is relevant to understanding the evolution of welfare states since 2001, particularly those effects attributable to the crisis (versus those that are not); this may also be of help in the prediction of future trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we analyse the main determinants of the propensity to NEET status in a selection of European countries. The NEET rate is the share of young people, aged between 19 and 30 years, not in Employment, Education or Training. In treating the 19–24 and 25–30 cohorts separately, our hypothesis is that for the younger cohort NEET status is mainly influenced by the school-to-work transition while for the older cohort this status is primarily due to labour market functioning and institutional factors. We apply different specifications of multilevel models with binary outcomes accounting for both personal and macro-economic factors which afford advantages over simple logit models. Estimates refer to 2007 and 2016 in order to verify how the economic crisis changed NEET status. The results confirm our hypothesis, highlighting the crucial role on the NEET propensity of the school-to-work transition in the first approach to the labour market, but also the strong influence of long-term unemployment, confirming the structural nature of the NEET phenomenon especially in countries where NEET levels remain high even during times of economic recovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The income inequality hypothesis claims that in rich societies inequality causes a range of health and social problems (henceforth: social ills), e.g. because economic inequality induces feelings of status anxiety and corrodes social cohesion. This paper provides an encompassing test of the income inequality hypothesis by exploring levels and breeding conditions of social ills in 40 affluent countries worldwide, as well as pathways for a subsample of wealthy European countries. Our aggregate-level research is based on a revised and updated Index of Social Ills inspired by Wilkinson and Pickett's book The Spirit Level, which we compile for both more countries (40) and more years (2000–2015) and combine with survey information about experienced quality-of-life as potential mediators. We get three major results: First, cross-sectionally income inequality is indeed strongly and consistently related to social ills, but so is economic prosperity. Second, while longitudinally changes in inequality do not result in changing levels of social ills, rising prosperity effectively reduces the amount of social ills, at least in Europe. Finally, whereas the cross-sectional analysis indicates that aspects of social cohesion most consistently mediate between economic conditions and social ills, the longitudinal mediation analyses could not ultimately clarify through which pathway rising prosperity reduces social ills. Overall we conclude that the income inequality hypothesis is, at best, too narrow to fully understand health and social problems in rich countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers elaborate analyses regarding the effects of social- as well as institutional trust as parts of social capital on subjective well-being (SWB) by using data from the European Social Survey, including 36 countries and eight time-points between 2002 and 2016. We analyze (1) The development of trust and SWB on the aggregate level; (2) The effect of trust on SWB on the individual cross-sectional level; and (3) The longitudinal and cross-sectional effect of trust on SWB on the aggregate level while considering control variables based on previous research. We observe a weak positive trend regarding social trust as well as SWB over time, but no significant change in institutional trust. However, trends are far from homogeneous across countries. In accordance to previous studies, we find a positive effect of social trust on SWB. This effect holds on the individual cross-sectional level for every participating country, but also on the longitudinal level. In view of institutional trust, we see a positive effect on SWB on the individual and aggregate cross-sectional level, but not over time. Thus, this study particularly sheds new light on this relation, indicating that it´s cross-sectional relation is due to confounding variables. Moreover, we observe no relation between economic growth and SWB after controlling for unemployment, but a positive effect of decreasing unemployment and inflation on SWB. Our data suggests that establishing an environment with high social trust across Europe would be rewarded with a happy society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Population aging in developed countries has created new challenges to improve the well-being of individuals at different age cohorts. This issue is especially significant for Southern European countries, were aging societies have worse health and less socio-economic resources. The aim of this study is to contribute to this body of literature and to estimate the effect of aging on quality of life of oldest people. This paper uses the latest available data (6th wave) from the Survey on Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). Specifically, robust ordinary least squares and multilevel regressions are employed to analyse the effects of socioeconomic, health, and community factors on quality of life among the oldest population for Southern European countries. Our findings confirm the significance of several factors on life satisfaction among the oldest population in this group of countries. Moreover, we show that the determinants which are correlated with quality of life include predisposing, health, geographic area and social isolation factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aftermath of the Global Financial and Economic Crisis of 2007/2008 turned out as a veritable “stress test” for European welfare states. Aiming to stabilize citizens’ living conditions and mitigate socio-economic hardship, European governments have engaged in active crisis management. Yet, the protective capacities of European welfare states vary, as does individuals’ exposure to crisis-induced social risks. Hence, the crisis has impacted countries and the members of different social classes unequally. Against this backdrop, this paper asks how Europeans’ perceptions of the personal impact of the crisis are associated with their welfare attitudes, focusing on variations between social classes and across nations. Using cross-sectional Eurobarometer survey data from 2010 for 27 European countries, I find that perceived crisis impact is associated with greater support for welfare state responsibility and redistribution. However, this association is not homogeneous but moderated by an individual’s class position as well as national economic conditions and social spending levels. More specifically, on the individual level, perceived crisis impact is associated with more favourable welfare attitudes not only among its traditional supporters—such as the working class or the unemployed—but also among its traditional opponents, notably the self-employed. Furthermore, where social spending is higher, welfare state support is less strongly related to perceived crisis impact, suggesting that more encompassing welfare states mitigate the subjective impacts of the crisis. However, redistribution appears to be slightly more contested between those affected and those not affected by the crisis under better economic conditions. Given the challenges facing welfare states across Europe, it remains to be seen how stable a basis of popular support can be formed on these grounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the annual time series and the average annual growth rate of the European Gender Equality Index, which was proposed by Bericat (Soc Indic Res 108:1-28, ), for the EU and its 27 member countries for the period 2000-2011. The paper also reports the time series and average annual growth rate for each of the three subdimensions of gender equality-education, work, and power-and the underlying indicators for each subdimension for EU as a whole. The calculated index shows that in the period 2000-2011, overall gender equality, equality in education, work, and power in the EU has been improving at a rate of 1.7, 0.92, 0.65, and 3.48 % per year, respectively. By 2011, overall gender equality, and equality in education, work, and power has reached 58.3, 77.4, 60.9, and 42.7, respectively. In short, this paper offers the scientific community, as well as those that design and implement public policies, a robust, valid and precise synthetic description of the current situation and evolution, from 2000 to 2011, of structural gender equality in European countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the market transition in Eastern Europe, social support mechanisms shifted from employment-based measures to means-tested ones. This restructuring, along with an overall decrease in social support and economic productivity and an increase in unemployment, meant that these payments were often inadequate to address the large rise in poverty during this period of time. Little research, however, considers whether individual-level payments were effective in reducing poverty. This paper considers the efficacy of these individual-level payments in Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania, using two-wave panel data. It shows that state transfers to individuals reduced their poverty in all these countries. Thus, while the level of payments may have been inadequate to eliminate the adverse effects of the market transition, the payments themselves were beneficial to individuals and reduced their poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on immigrants’ assimilation is widespread both in the U.S. and Europe. While it has been extensively studied how immigrants fare compared to natives on socio-economic indicators, few studies have focussed on immigrants’ perception of their position. In this paper we focus on comparing life satisfaction of immigrants and natives across Europe and on the role of social embeddedness. Using data from the first six rounds (2002-2012) of the European Social Survey, a repeated cross-sectional survey, we find that life satisfaction among immigrants is lower than among natives even though differences diminish over generations. For first generation immigrants part of the life satisfaction gap is explained by the lower level of social embeddedness they have compared to natives. We also find that social embeddedness is a key explanatory factor for life satisfaction for both immigrants and natives. For two out of the three indicators of social embeddedness that we consider we however find different patterns of association with life satisfaction for immigrants compared to natives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Population ageing, together with the negative effects of the recent economic and financial crisis that some European countries are still facing, have threatened the sustainability of public pension systems. In this context, voluntary private pensions have emerged as the most feasible alternative to supplement the minimum provided by Social Security Systems; however, this financial product does not enjoy its expected popularity. A potential explanation of this reality might be due to the fact that European countries are far from being homogeneous, nor their pensions systems. Therefore, any policy geared toward improving financial retirement planning should take into account these potential differences. As a first approach to their analysis, this paper proposes the existence of four different ‘social models’ in Europe -namely, Continental, Mediterranean, Nordic and Transitional-. Overall, empirical evidence confirmed the significant influence of country’ ‘social model’ on the decision to invest in retirement accounts on a sample of 31,468 individuals in 2013. It was also proved that this decision is positively related to age, household income and wealth, higher levels of formal education, job situation, good health status, and long-term planning horizons; and negatively related to age squared, household size or financial risk aversion. In short, future policies and reforms regarding private pensions should not only take into account the existence of individual differences among Europeans, but also the existence of differences depending on institutional and cultural country factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper originates from the current political debate on the vulnerability and lack of opportunities of the young people in Italy that may stand in the way of enjoying a 'good quality of life'. In particular, we refer to three basic life outcomes, namely 'having enough money', 'enjoying an adequate life standard' and 'enjoying good health' that summarize the aspirations of many young people. The paper is intended not only to stress the particular features for the Italian case but also to present a comparative analysis across the European Countries. Moreover, the discussion on the above issues is referred to the group of individuals between 26 and 40 years-old since this group includes different generations of young people facing different opportunities to achieve independent adult life in the presence of a wide range of educational, employment, housing or social-welfare policies that might support or hinder the autonomisation process. In detail, we use a life-course causal model in order to study how, for every individual, the current outcomes may be even strongly related to past outcomes and we highlight that the understanding of the causes of 'succeeding in life' in a comparative perspective across Europe can be an useful tool for Italian policy makers in order to pursue the goal of planning a future for Italian younger generations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is increasing interest among researchers in the effects of social capital on the health of older adults. One of the key policy question for an ageing population concerns how do we identify the factors that influence health. Very recently, an increasing interest on social capital as a key determinant for health has developed and, surprisingly, not much is known for the European population. This paper analyzes the association between social capital and self-perceived health among older adults in Europe using a mixed effects logistic model. Social capital is considered in its two components-bonding and bridging-in order to understand if the relations inside or outside an individual inner circle have a different association with health. Our results give empirical support to the role of individual social capital in preventing a poor self-perceived health. This means that social capital, especially the bridging component of it, can be one of the key factors of ageing in good health and should be fostered by policy makers in order to give an answer to one of the most compelling challenge of our century: population ageing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Welfare-state regimes achieve different outcomes in dealing with social inequalities. For example, the social democratic or Scandinavian welfare-state regime is often considered as the most egalitarian with a high social transfer rate and a comparably low level of income inequality. While most research on welfare-state regimes focuses on objective indicators of quality of life and inequalities, we are interested in how citizens actually evaluate their lives, using subjective well-being (SWB) as an indicator. The paper deals with two research questions: (1) How does the welfare-state regime affect subjective well-being, and (2) does the welfare-state regime influence the effect of status on SWB? Status is an essential first-order goal to produce subjective well-being according to the social production theory of Lindenberg and colleagues (Ormel et al. 1999), but is also linked to many other instrumental goals such as comfort and stimulation. The study carries out a multilevel analysis using pooled European Social Survey data from the years 2002-2012, covering more than 30 European countries. While we first look at how status drives SWB levels in different welfare-state regimes as classified by Esping-Andersen 1990, 1999), our focus is mainly on cross-level interactions between welfare-state regime type and the relationship between status and SWB. Our results provide evidence that social-democratic welfare-state regimes not only provide for living standards that are associated with the highest SWB levels, but also compensate best for status differences in SWB compared to other welfare-state regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an index to measure the possibilities individuals have to balance their work and life spheres. Using data for 26 European countries, and principal components analysis, we compute the National Work-Life Balance Index© as a combination of five dimensions: Time/Schedule, Work, Family, Health, and Policy. We find that Northern and Central European countries, such as Denmark, the Netherlands, Finland, and Sweden have a higher value of the National Work-Life Balance Index©, compared to Southern and Western European countries, such as Spain, Greece, Portugal, Latvia, and Bulgaria. These results are consistent with existing literature showing that there is a lower proportion of individuals reporting difficulty balancing their work and household responsibilities in Northern countries, compared to other European countries. To the extent that international data becomes comparable, the National Work-Life Balance Index© may help to guide public policies aimed at improving the work-life balance of individuals in countries that are comparatively worse off in this respect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the paper is to assess the construct validation of a multidimensional measure of social cohesion which is well theoretically grounded and has an equivalent/comparable interpretation across all European countries. Up-to-now published research on social cohesion is deficient in either one or both of these important aspects. This paper attempts to cover this gap. The task is accomplished in two steps. In the first step, we conceptualize social cohesion, flowing mainly from Bernard and Chan’s definitions of social cohesion. Based on this theoretical framework we operationalize social cohesion and derive a set of intermediate indicators in the data. By return we verify whether these indicators empirically reflect/corroborate the multidimensional structure of the concept proposed by the theory. In the second step, we examine whether the obtained intermediate indicators of social cohesion form the same constructs across countries and whether they can yield a cross country equivalent measure of social cohesion. To test the validity of the theory we use multidimensional scaling and confirmatory factor analysis. Both models are able to verify the equivalence of the structural results between groups (i.e. countries). Confirmatory factor analysis produces further meaningful measures of these constructs. The analyses are based on the data from the 1999 European Values Study (EVS). The outcomes of the analyses reveal that, firstly, the existence of the multifaceted construct of social cohesion suggested by the theory has been corroborated by empirical analysis of the EVS data (i.e. social cohesion consists of components of formal and substantial relationships and political and socio-cultural domains). Secondly, the proposed constructs measuring social cohesion are equivalent across all analysed countries and thus allow the calculation of internationally comparable national scores of social cohesion. Application of the aggregate measures at the country level will illustrate the interest of the approach for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the strategies for reconciling family and work in different union types. The focus here is on investigating how cohabiting and married individuals perceive the work-life conflict in different European countries. To test the union type impact on work-life balance in the context of different societal conditions, this paper draws on 2004 ESS data from Sweden, Germany, United Kingdom, Slovenia and Estonia (European Social Survey 2004). The pooled country data are examined to analyze the association between work-life conflict and socio-demographic, as well as family-level characteristics of individuals. The findings did not demonstrate uniform differences in the work-life conflict of married and cohabiting couples. However, a higher degree of work-life conflict among Swedish cohabiting women was still significant when controlling for individual characteristics, household composition and working conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the extent of and the mechanisms behind the penalty to motherhood in six European countries. Each country provides different levels of support for maternal employment allowing us to determine institutional effects on labour market outcome. While mothers tend to earn less than non-mothers, the penalty to motherhood is considerably lower in countries with policy support for working mothers. The paper establishes the United Kingdom and West Germany to have the least policy support for working mothers as well as the largest penalties to motherhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tests the impact of various determinants of the preference for two key elements of the European social models: redistribution and trade unions, using individual data from the first round of the European Social Survey. The basic hypothesis is that the main determinant of an individual’s support for these elements of the European models is the social position of the individual in terms of income, status and risks attached to their labour market insertion. The paper also considers the relative importance of less ‘materialist’ influences such as religion or other cultural determinants. The estimations show that ‘materialist’ determinants are by far the most important influences on individual preferences, contrary to what most social theories of modernisation contend. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyses the relationship between subjective and objective measures of well-being in selected European countries using the data of the European Community Household Panel (ECHP). In the first part of the paper, we develop a random-effect ordered probit model, separately for each country, relating the subjective measure of income satisfaction to actual income, and controlling for some individual and household socio-demographic fixed effects. In the second part of the paper, we fit a Bayesian cross-classified multilevel model, in order to control for intra-family correlation in subjective well-being, which actually appears to be present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a previous paper in this journal (Headey et al., 2000) a comparison was made between three so-called ‘best cases’ of welfare regime types, the ‘Liberal’ US, 'the ‘Corporatist’ Germany and the ‘Social-Democratic’ Netherlands. The main conclusion was that the Social-Democratic welfare state performed best on nearly all social and economic indicators that were applied. That paper was based on the ten-year datasets drawn from the national socio-economic panel studies. For this paper we use the unique comparative panel dataset of the European Community Household Panel. At the time of research, only three waves of data covering the 1994–96 period were available. Instead of three countries representing three different welfare state types as in the earlier paper we cover twelve countries allowing us to distinguish a fourth Southern or Mediterranean welfare regime type and to compare the performance of the four regimes. Compared to the Headey's et al. paper we focus on the comparative analysis of the level of deprivation and pay less attention to income poverty and inequality. Because we consider deprivation to be part of the concept of social exclusion (see also Atkinson et al., 2002) our results also provide evidence on how welfare regimes across the EU cope with social exclusion. We conclude that the Social-Democratic welfare state does a good job of preventing income poverty but performs less well in equalising levels of deprivation. Our results also show that the immature Southern welfare states perform worse with respect to preventing deprivation. Trying to explain levels of deprivation by estimating Tobit panel regressions it turned out that the impact of regime type remains significant though limited. Common, ‘structural’ disparities between the countries and regimes in terms of economic welfare, the demographic structure, and the employment situation explain most of the variance across countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More than 5 years since the outbreak of the global financial crisis, a flurry of evidence is emerging on the effects of the ensuing economic downturn on unemployment and poverty rates in rich countries, but less is known about cross-country differences in subjective assessments of the crisis and whether adults in households with children were affected to a greater extent. This paper investigates differences in the perceived impact of the economic crisis between adults in households with and without children in 17 European countries, using data from the Life in Transition Survey 2010 in a multilevel modelling framework. It also explores differences in the coping strategies that households adopted to deal with the decline in income or economic activity. Everything else being equal, perceptions of the crisis were more widespread in countries with higher rates of child poverty, lower economic growth and lower GDP per capita. Across countries, perceptions of the crisis closely trailed subjective indicators of financial difficulties from other international surveys conducted in 2010. Adults in households with children were more likely to report an impact of the crisis, with larger differences in countries with higher rates of monetary child poverty. Adults in households with children also adopted a greater variety of coping strategies than the rest, prioritizing expenditure on basic necessities, while cutting back on luxuries and holidays. Nevertheless, many still reported reduced consumption of staple foods as a result of economic difficulties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the effects of different dimensions of religiosity and trust on religious and racial prejudice in Europe. The sample is based on 37 European countries that are current or potential members of the European Union (EU). Using multi-level logistic regression modeling and the latest wave from the European Values Study data, we test the effects of both individual and country-level variables. Our results suggest that religious particularism is correlated with more religious and racial prejudice. Doctrinal belief and individual spirituality are both correlated with less religious prejudice only. Nonreligious individuals have the highest religious prejudice compared to members of religious denominations. Individual and country-level generalized trust, as well as trust in the EU, are all negatively correlated with religious and racial prejudice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing research on family and well-being has generally focused on the traditional family, and has largely ignored the increasing diversity in family forms and relations. Our aim in this paper is to help fill this gap by investigating the extent of the relationship between living arrangements and life satisfaction (LS) in Europe. We examined variations in life satisfaction by applying a multilevel approach (i.e., individuals nested in countries) to data from the 2007 European Quality of Life Survey. First, we found that levels of life satisfaction among families consisting of couples with children were significantly higher than among people in other (less typical) family arrangements. Second, our results illustrate that after the socioeconomic situation of the family was taken into account, the influence of family status on LS disappeared almost completely. Overall, our findings suggest that the lower levels of life satisfaction experienced by people living in atypical families can be largely attributed to their weaker socioeconomic position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is aimed at presenting a new intergenerational mobility index that (a) combines the intergenerational elasticity and the R-squared of the intergenerational regression and (b) enables the expression of the total degree of mobility as the weighted sum of mobility with respect to both parents. As a case study, we apply our proposal to investigate the intergenerational mobility of education in several European countries and its changes across birth cohorts. The results derived from the proposed index indicate that Nordic countries display higher levels of educational mobility than Southern countries, whereas continental countries are in an intermediate position. Moreover, it appears that the degree of mobility increases over time only in those countries with low initial levels and remains stable for the most mobile countries. Finally, for most of the countries the proposed methodology can prove that the degree of educational mobility with respect to each parent tends to converge to the same level over the course of time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to present a theoretically based, multidimensional and comparable measurement of social cohesion, applicable in 47 European countries/regions using the most recent micro-level data of the European Value Study (EVS) from 2008 that build upon the previous research conducted on the EVS data from 1999 covering 33 countries. The analysis is conducted in five steps. In the first part, we create a set of measurable intermediate indicators that correspond to the social cohesion dimensions suggested by the theory. In the second part, we verify whether these indicators empirically corroborate the multidimensional structure of the concept proposed by the theory. The third part examines whether the obtained intermediate indicators of social cohesion form the same constructs across countries and whether they can yield a cross-country equivalent measure of social cohesion. In the fourth step, composite scores of all dimensions of social cohesion are calculated for all analysed countries/regions. The last step shows a practical application of the obtained indices and compares levels of social cohesion in six broader geographical regions of Europe to demonstrate the applicability of the measurement in comparative research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to provide an assessment of urban quality of life (QoL) of European cities from the perspective of qualified human resources. The competitiveness of cities relies increasingly in their capacity to attract highly educated workers, as they are important assets for firms when choosing a location. Qualified human resources, on the other hand, tend to value QoL over other urban features. This is why policymakers and urban planners need to evaluate QoL of cities and be provided with tools that can guide action to improvements in this area. We assess urban QoL by means of a composite indicator constructed using data envelopment analysis, based on Urban Audit data and Mercer's framework of analysis, to give account of 246 European cities. Besides presenting a ranking of the best and the worst scores of QoL, this methodology allows benchmarking strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we suggest a way to measure the well-being of society based upon our own development of the Social Quality model. The Social Quality model has the advantage of being sociologically grounded as a measure of the well-being of society and the individuals within it. We test our model of Social Quality against life satisfaction as an indicator of how successful it is in delivering these aspirations. The model was tested on all European countries using the European Quality of Life Surveys in 2003 and 2007 and was found to explain a large amount of variance, which was consistent across time and space. We suggest that it is possible to operationalise this model using small number of variables, ones that are frequently used in comparative surveys and this should enable the quality of society to be measured in a parsimonious and effective way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we evaluate income distributions in four European countries (Austria, Italy, Spain and Hungary) using two complementary approaches: a standard approach based on reported incomes in survey data, and a microsimulation approach, where taxes and benefits are simulated. These two approaches may be expected to generate slightly different results, particularly in respect of individuals on lower incomes, because benefit receipts tend to be under-reported in survey data, and over-estimated in microsimulation procedures. However, we find that the two approaches do in fact produce reasonably consistent results, in terms of both inequality measures and poverty rates. To the extent that the results differ, we explore the reasons why these differences arise, and suggest directions for future research, in which each approach may inform improvements in the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at investigating empirically the relationship between self-declared satisfaction with life and an individual's well-being as measured by the indices of deprivation and social exclusion proposed in the income distribution literature. Results on European countries show that life satisfaction decreases with an increase in deprivation and exclusion after controlling for individual's income, relative income and other influential factors in a multivariate setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from the 2004 Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, this paper investigates older workers' perceptions of job security in eleven countries. We describe cross-national patterns and estimate multilevel models to analyse individual and societal determinants of self-perceived job security in the older labour force. While there are considerable cross-country variations around a median value of 23% of workers aged 50 or older ranking their job security as poor, none of our suggested macro-level explanatory variables-employment rate, employment protection legislation, mean level of general social trust, and proportion disapproving of working beyond age 70-bears statistically significant associations with individuals' job security. We find some indication, however, that the various societal factors considered here might contribute jointly to explaining the observed cross-national variation. Future research should aim at identifying statistically more powerful indicators of the supposed multilevel relationship between social context and older workers' perceptions of job security. Moreover, supplementary findings indicate that further attention should be paid to the gender dimension of job insecurity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has shown little difference in the average leisure time of men and women. This finding is a challenge to the second shift argument, which suggests that increases in female labor market hours have not been compensated by equal decreases in household labor. This paper presents time-use and leisure satisfaction data for a variety of western European countries, and shows that accounting for socio-economic factors that differ between men and women is vital for understanding gender differences. We find that working mothers have leisure levels that are much lower than those of working fathers and singles. Working mothers are also most likely to report the least satisfaction with free time. Finding that time stress and leisure time are positively correlated within socio-demographic groups suggests that the second shift argument is still valid, and that feelings of time stress are indeed associated with the lack of leisure time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross-national comparisons generally show large differences in life satisfaction of individuals within and between European countries. This paper addresses the question of whether and how job quality and working conditions contribute to the quality of life of employed populations in nine strategically selected EU countries: Finland, Sweden, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Hungary, and Bulgaria. Using data from the European Quality of Life Survey 2003, we examine relationships between working conditions and satisfaction with life, as well as whether spillover or segmentation mechanisms better explain the link between work domain and overall life satisfaction. Results show that the level of life satisfaction varies significantly across countries, with higher quality of life in more affluent societies. However, the impact of working conditions on life satisfaction is stronger in Southern and Eastern European countries. Our study suggests that the issue of security, such as security of employment and pay which provides economic security, is the key element that in a straightforward manner affects people's quality of life. Other working conditions, such as autonomy at work, good career prospects and an interesting job seem to translate into high job satisfaction, which in turn increases life satisfaction indirectly. In general, bad-quality jobs tend to be more 'effective' in worsening workers' perception of their life conditions than good jobs are in improving their quality of life. We discuss the differences in job-related determinants of life satisfaction between the countries and consider theoretical and practical implications of these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the influence of the economic, social, and cultural variables on life satisfaction in Asia and Europe. The second section sets a unifying theoretical framework for all three domains by defining life satisfaction as a function of aspirations and expectations which in turn are affected by micro- and macro-level variables. On the micro-level, economic capital is a resource for the actor. On the macro-level, societal economic capital improves the opportunity structure for the individual under certain conditions. Thus, economic capital on both levels positively affects the perceived chances of fulfilling aspirations. As long as the latter remain unchanged life satisfaction will increase. Social and cultural factors partially follow the same logic, as indicated by the terms social and cultural capital. Under a set of assumptions, the hypotheses derived are that personal and societal economic capital, national pride and national integration, religiosity, and societal religious integration, all positively affect the life satisfaction of the individual. A multi-level analysis of data from the European Values Study and the AsiaBarometer confirms the micro-level hypotheses. The economic macro-level indicators also display the theoretically expected positive effect on life satisfaction in the multivariate analysis of Asian and European data. By contrast, the direct cross-level effects of a society’s national integration and particularly of religion do not become significant in Europe, yet they are highly significant in Asia. This strong influence of the social and cultural context in Asia can be interpreted in two different ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we seek to put Irish poverty rates in a comparative European context. We do so in a context whereby the Irish economic boom and EU enlargement have led to increasing reservations being expressed regarding rates deriving from the EU ‘at risk of poverty’ indicator. Our comparative analysis reports findings for both overall levels of poverty and variation by household reference person characteristics for this indicator and a consistent poverty measure for Ireland, the UK and five smaller European countries spanning a range of welfare regimes. Our findings demonstrate that the distinctiveness of Ireland’s situation lies not in the overall levels of poverty per se but in the very high penalties associated with being in a household where the household reference person is a lone parent or excluded from the labour market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]