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Interest in examining climate change adaptation has arisen in many disciplines in the past two decades; however to date, sociologists have given only sparse attention to the issue. This is both a missed opportunity for sociologists and a detriment to the study of adaptation. In this paper, we set out the following research agenda: bringing core concerns of sociology into the critically important conversation of how society will respond to climate change. We identify five broad themes in which sociologists can begin their work on adaptation: (1) structures and resource access, (2) social cohesion and future planning, (3) constraints of social stratifications, (4) power and agency in decision‐making, and (5) justice in process and outcomes. After summarizing existing sociological work on adaptation and detailing our research agenda, we draw examples from our own work in Bangladesh to illustrate how this agenda might be taken up. In doing so, we point to several places where sociological insights come into play in questions related to development, organizations, expertise, migration, gender, and labor. We believe a robust sociological analysis can produce a clarified, reparative, and just conceptualization of adaptation that will contribute to the growing global discourse on the topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between women’s social class and their levels of self- and other-objectification. Two online studies comprising of multiple questionnaires were conducted: Study 1 examined the association between the social class (both objective and subjective) of 198 non-student British women and their self-objectification levels, while Study 2 turned towards the relationship between social class and other-objectification among 82 non-student British women. Our results indicated no apparent relationship between social class and each of the relevant objectification measures. As the first paper on the topic of class and objectification, it appears that there is no relationship observed between the two. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commentary critiques Betthäuser, Bourne and Bukodi's (2020) paper which finds that cognitive ability does not substantially mediate class of origin effects on educational and occupational outcomes. From these results, they conclude that cognitive ability is only of minor importance for social stratification, reasserting their view of the primacy of class origins for social stratification. The central issue surrounding cognitive ability in social stratification is its effects on socioeconomic attainments vis‐à‐vis socioeconomic origins, not the extent that cognitive ability mediates classorigin effects. Their analytical strategy of estimating the extent that cognitive ability mediates class origineffects is misleading because: it ignores the only moderate associations of socioeconomic origins with educational and occupational outcomes; the stronger direct effects of cognitive ability; the associations of parents' ability with their own socioeconomic attainments; and the genetic transmission of cognitive ability and other traits relevant to social stratification from parents to their children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are public officials more responsive to requests from affluent or poor constituents? A growing body of evidence suggests that lawmakers are more responsive to the rich when they craft policy. However, some scholars theorize that officials also exhibit a corresponding bias in favor of the poor when they handle casework, essentially giving policy to the rich and services to the poor. In this paper, we test this casework prediction using four experiments in which confederates sent simple requests to state or local officials. In each, our confederates’ reported social classes were randomly assigned and signaled with a brief introductory statement mentioning the sender’s occupation or economic situation. Across our samples, we find precisely-estimated null effects of social class biases: the officials we studied were equally likely to respond regardless of the constituent’s class. These findings raise doubts about whether casework is really a class-biased process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stratification and inequality are among the most central concepts in sociology, and although related, they are fundamentally distinct: inequality refers to the extent to which resources are distributed unevenly across individuals or between population subgroups, whereas stratification refers to the extent to which population subgroups occupy distinct hierarchical layers within an overall resource distribution. Despite the centrality of stratification in theories of class structure, prior empirical studies have focused exclusively on measures of inequality, which do not accurately capture the degree of class stratification and suffer from a variety of methodological limitations. In this paper, we employ a novel rank-based index of stratification to measure the degree to which occupational classes inhabit distinct, non-overlapping, and hierarchically arranged layers in the distribution of personal market income. The stratification index is nonparametric, both scale and translation invariant, and independent of the level of inequality. Based on this index, our results show that the US income distribution is highly stratified by occupational class and that the degree of class stratification increased substantially from 1980 to 2016. Moreover, we find that this trend is almost entirely due to growing stratification among aggregate occupational classes rather than among the disaggregate occupations nested within them. Finally, a set of counterfactual analyses indicate that the rise of occupational class stratification is driven by increases in the income returns to education, deunionization, and deindustrialization, although the relative importance of these factors varies by gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines social class-based differences in influence in online review contexts. We explore four mechanisms for how a review writer’s social class may affect readers’ evaluations of the organization. First, we argue that, via a “contagion” process, organizations reviewed by higher-class individuals will be evaluated more positively than organizations reviewed by lower-class individuals. Second, we expect that higher-class reviewers will be seen as more knowledgeable; thus, their opinions will be more influential in shaping others’ opinions. Third, we expect that reviewers will be seen more influential when they review organizations that match their social class. Fourth, we expect people to be more influenced by those who share their own class background. A large-scale observational study of reviews (N = 1,234,665) from finds support for the contagion, the organization-reviewer social class matching, and the reviewer-participant social matching hypotheses, but disconfirms the hypothesis that higher-class reviewers are always treated as having more expertise. Two experimental studies (N = 354 and N = 638) demonstrate that reviewer class plays a causal role in both a contagion process and in an assumption of higher-class knowledge process, but do not provide evidence for the reviewer-participant social matching hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People are motivated to hold favorable attitudes about the systems on which they depend, so they justify (i.e., rationalize, defend and bolster) forms of social and economic inequality, even if the inequality is disadvantageous to them. This paper examines how this system-justifying motivation is reflected in behaviors involving interpersonal trust. In a series of three experiments using the trust game I manipulate income inequality by providing participants with higher (advantaged position) or lower (disadvantaged position) initial endowments and measure their trust toward individuals on the same or on different positions. Results show that higher income individuals trust other higher income individuals more than lower income individuals (ingroup favoritism), while lower income individuals trust higher income individuals more than lower income individuals (outgroup favoritism). It is also shown that the strength of these biases is dependent on the level of endorsement of system justifying ideology and the legitimacy of the system. More trust toward those in advantaged positions within a social system, expressed both by equally advantaged as well as by disadvantaged others, not only secures the advantaged in their positions but also reinforces the underlying inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to present new theorisations of social structure in light of the new sociologies of the individual currently being developed in France. Although these sociologies are little known, they have significant value in rethinking today's society and sociology. Starting from a review of the concept and the main conceptions of social structure, I will focus on the most significant contributions of these new sociologies of the individual. To do this, on the one hand, it will be shown that the two classical traditions of social structure (institutional or cultural and as a class structure) are insufficient to explain today's society, in which the individual has become the main protagonist and key focus of sociology. On the other hand, in contrast with the old sociologies of the individual, which are centred on the micro level of social interaction, this paper analyses new structural constraints that limit the individual's action. The paper concludes with an invitation to develop these new sociologies at an individual scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to present new theorisations of social structure in light of the new sociologies of the individual currently being developed in France. Although these sociologies are little known, they have significant value in rethinking today's society and sociology. Starting from a review of the concept and the main conceptions of social structure, I will focus on the most significant contributions of these new sociologies of the individual. To do this, on the one hand, it will be shown that the two classical traditions of social structure (institutional or cultural and as a class structure) are insufficient to explain today's society, in which the individual has become the main protagonist and key focus of sociology. On the other hand, in contrast with the old sociologies of the individual, which are centred on the micro level of social interaction, this paper analyses new structural constraints that limit the individual's action. The paper concludes with an invitation to develop these new sociologies at an individual scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: There is much evidence showing that childhood socioeconomic position is associated with physical health in adulthood; however existing evidence on how early life disadvantage is associated with adult mental wellbeing is inconsistent. This paper investigated whether childhood socioeconomic position (SEP) is associated with adult mental wellbeing and to what extent any association is explained by adult SEP using harmonised data from four British birth cohort studies. Methods: The sample comprised 20,717 participants with mental wellbeing data in the Hertfordshire Cohort Study (HCS), the MRC National Survey of Health and Development (NSHD), the National Child Development Study (NCDS), and the British Cohort Study (BCS70). Warwick Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (WEMWBS) scores at age 73 (HCS), 60–64 (NSHD), 50 (NCDS), or 42 (BCS70) were used. Harmonised socioeconomic position (Registrar General’s Social Classification) was ascertained in childhood (age 10/11) and adulthood (age 42/43). Associations between childhood SEP, adult SEP, and wellbeing were tested using linear regression and multi-group structural equation models. Results: More advantaged father’s social class was associated with better adult mental wellbeing in the BCS70 and the NCDS. This association was independent of adult SEP in the BCS70 but fully mediated by adult SEP in the NCDS. There was no evidence of an association between father’s social class and adult mental wellbeing in the HCS or the NSHD. Conclusions: Socioeconomic conditions in childhood are directly and indirectly, through adult socioeconomic pathways, associated with adult mental wellbeing, but findings from these harmonised data suggest this association may depend on cohort or age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Trust is regarded as a necessary component for the smooth running of society, although societal and political modernising processes have been linked to an increase in mistrust, potentially signalling social and economic problems. Fukuyama developed the notion of ‘high trust’ and ‘low trust’ societies, as a way of understanding trust within different societies. The purpose of this paper is to empirically test and extend Fukuyama’s theory utilising data on interpersonal trust in Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan, Australia and Thailand. This paper focuses on trust in family, neighbours, strangers, foreigners and people with a different religion. Methods: Cross-sectional surveys were undertaken in 2009–10, with an overall sample of 6331. Analyses of differences in overall levels of trust between countries were undertaken using Chi square analyses. Multivariate binomial logistic regression analysis was undertaken to identify socio-demographic predictors of trust in each country. Results: Our data indicate a tripartite trust model: ‘high trust’ in Australia and Hong Kong; ‘medium trust’ in Japan and Taiwan; and ‘low trust’ in South Korea and Thailand. Trust in family and neighbours were very high across all countries, although trust in people with a different religion, trust in strangers and trust in foreigners varied considerably between countries. The regression models found a consistent group of subpopulations with low trust across the countries: people on low incomes, younger people and people with poor self-rated health. The results were conflicting for gender: females had lower trust in Thailand and Hong Kong, although in Australia, males had lower trust in strangers, whereas females had lower trust in foreigners. Conclusion: This paper identifies high, medium and low trust societies, in addition to high and low trusting population subgroups. Our analyses extend the seminal work of Fukuyama, providing both corroboration and refutation for his theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The local neighborhood forms an integral part of our lives. It provides the context through which social networks are nurtured and the foundation from which a sense of attachment and cohesion with fellow residents can be established. Whereas much of the previous research has examined the role of social and demographic characteristic in relation to the level of neighboring and cohesion, this paper explores whether particular environmental features in the neighborhood affect social porosity. We define social porosity as the degree to which social ties flow over the surface of a neighborhood. The focus of our paper is to examine the extent to which a neighborhood's environmental features impede the level of social porosity present among residents. To do this, we integrate data from the census, topographic databases and a 2010 survey of 4,351 residents from 146 neighborhoods in Australia. The study introduces the concepts of wedges and social holes. The presence of two sources of wedges is measured: rivers and highways. The presence of two sources of social holes is measured: parks and industrial areas. Borrowing from the geography literature, several measures are constructed to capture how these features collectively carve up the physical environment of neighborhoods. We then consider how this influences residents' neighboring behavior, their level of attachment to the neighborhood and their sense of neighborhood cohesion. We find that the distance of a neighborhood to one form of social hole–industrial areas–has a particularly strong negative effect on all three dependent variables. The presence of the other form of social hole–parks–has a weaker negative effect. Neighborhood wedges also impact social interaction. Both the length of a river and the number of highway fragments in a neighborhood has a consistent negative effect on neighboring, attachment and cohesion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a global pandemic metabolic disorder. In recent years, the amount of medical resources required for the treatment of diabetes has increased as diabetes rates have gradually risen. The combined effects of individual and neighbourhood socio-economic status (SES) on DM survival rates are still not clear, especially in patients of working age. In this paper, we aim to analyze the combined effects of neighbourhood and individual SES on DM survival rates in patients of working age in Taiwan. Methods: The study of 23,781 people who were diagnosed with DM by using population—based study between 2002 and 2006. Each sample was followed up for 4 years or as a sensor case. We defined Individual SES and neighbourhood SES by each patient’s job category and household income which characterized as advantaged or disadvantaged. Then we compared the survival rates by SES group used Cox proportional hazards model for adjust risk factors. Results: The 4-year overall survival rates of diabetic patients were worst for those with low individual SES who living in advantaged neighbourhoods. After adjustment for patient characteristics, DM patients with high individual SES living in disadvantaged neighbourhoods had the same risk of mortality as those patients with high individual SES living in advantaged neighbourhoods (hazard ratio: 1.11; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.81–1.51). The study found that DM patients with low individual SES who live in disadvantaged areas had a greater risk of mortality than those with high SES (odds ratio: 2.57; 95% CI: 2.04–3.24). There were significant differences in survival rates between patients with high individual SES and patients with low individual SES. In contrast, the results did not statistically significant differences in survival rates between advantaged and disadvantaged neighbourhood SES groups. Conclusion: DM patients with low individual SES had the worst survival rate, regardless of whether they were living in a high or low SES neighbourhood area. The competitive cause of death, i.e., the fact that complications, rather than DM itself, are often the cause of death, may be the reason for the inverse relationship found between the effects of individual SES and neighbourhood SES on DM survival. We conclude that the socio-economic gradient in survival among DM patients may be the result of differences in access to medical treatment and attributes related to individual SES. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years policy makers and social scientists have devoted considerable attention to wellbeing, a concept that refers to people’s capacity to live healthy, creative and fulfilling lives. Two conceptual approaches dominate wellbeing research. The objective approach examines the objective components of a good life. The subjective approach examines people’s subjective evaluations of their lives. In the objective approach how subjective wellbeing relates to objective wellbeing is not a relevant research question. The subjective approach does investigate how objective wellbeing relates to subjective wellbeing, but has focused primarily on one objective wellbeing indicator, income, rather than the comprehensive indicator set implied by the objective approach. This paper attempts to contribute by examining relationships between a comprehensive set of objective wellbeing measures and subjective wellbeing, and by linking wellbeing research to inequality research by also investigating how subjective and objective wellbeing relate to class, gender, age and ethnicity. We use three waves of a representative state-level household panel study from Queensland, Australia, undertaken from 2008 to 2010, to investigate how objective measures of wellbeing are socially distributed by gender, class, age, and ethnicity. We also examine relationships between objective wellbeing and overall life satisfaction, providing one of the first longitudinal analyses linking objective wellbeing with subjective evaluations. Objective aspects of wellbeing are unequally distributed by gender, age, class and ethnicity and are strongly associated with life satisfaction. Moreover, associations between gender, ethnicity, class and life satisfaction persist after controlling for objective wellbeing, suggesting that mechanisms in addition to objective wellbeing link structural dimensions of inequality to life satisfaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The most widely used measure for studying social, economic, and health inequality is the Gini index/ratio. Whereas other measures of inequality possess certain useful characteristics, such as the straightforward decomposability of the generalized entropy measures, the Gini index has remained the most popular, at least in part due to its ease of interpretation. However, the Gini index has a limitation in measuring inequality. It is less sensitive to how the population is stratified than how individual values differ. The twin purposes of this paper are to explain the limitation and to propose a model-based method—latent class/clustering analysis for understanding and measuring inequality. The latent cluster approach has the major advantage of being able to identify potential “classes” of individuals who share similar levels of income or one or more other attributes and to assess the fit of the model-based classes to the empirical data, based on different cluster distributional assumptions and the number of latent classes. This paper distinguishes class inequality from individual inequality, the type that is better captured by the Gini. Once the classes are estimated, the membership of estimated classes obtained from the best fitting model facilitates the decomposition of the Gini index into individual and class inequality. Class inequality is then measured by two relative stratification indices based on either the relative size of the Gini between-class components or the relative number of stratified individuals. Therefore, the Gini index is extended and assisted by model-based clustering to measure class inequality, thereby realizing its great potential for studying inequality. Income data from France and Hungary are used to illustrate the application of the method. INSETS: Figure 1. Gini indices and Lorenz curves for income data...;Figure 2. Empirical income distribution of France in 1990...;Figure 3. Income clustering in France, 1990.;Figure 4. Income clustering in Hungary, 1992. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1945 Davis and Moore, following an earlier formulation by Davis, proposed a functional theory of stratification that was intended to account for what they contended was the "universal necessity" for social inequality in any social order. Beginning with an article by Tumin in 1953, the Davis-Moore theory elicited regular analysis, commentary, criticism, and debate through the 1970s. Although professional work on the theory has largely ceased since the late 1980s, the Davis-Moore theory remains perhaps the single most widely cited paper in American introductory sociology and stratification textbooks and constitutes "required reading" in hundreds, if not thousands, of undergraduate and graduate courses throughout the United States. The present paper traces the history of the debate and attempts to explain the theory's longevity and vitality in the face of what has amounted to largely negative assessments by other sociologists over the preceding fifty years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spatial distribution of income shapes the structure and organisation of cities and its understanding has broad societal implications. Despite an abundant literature, many issues remain unclear. In particular, all definitions of segregation are implicitely tied to a single indicator, usually rely on an ambiguous definition of income classes, without any consensus on how to define neighbourhoods and to deal with the polycentric organization of large cities. In this paper, we address all these questions within a unique conceptual framework. We avoid the challenge of providing a direct definition of segregation and instead start from a definition of what segregation is not. This naturally leads to the measure of representation that is able to identify locations where categories are over- or underrepresented. From there, we provide a new measure of exposure that discriminates between situations where categories co-locate or repel one another. We then use this feature to provide an unambiguous, parameter-free method to find meaningful breaks in the income distribution, thus defining classes. Applied to the 2014 American Community Survey, we find 3 emerging classes—low, middle and higher income—out of the original 16 income categories. The higher-income households are proportionally more present in larger cities, while lower-income households are not, invalidating the idea of an increased social polarisation. Finally, using the density—and not the distance to a center which is meaningless in polycentric cities—we find that the richer class is overrepresented in high density zones, especially for larger cities. This suggests that density is a relevant factor for understanding the income structure of cities and might explain some of the differences observed between US and European cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) are generally assumed to be concentrated in poor populations, but evidence on this remains scattered. We describe within-country socioeconomic inequalities in nine NTDs listed in the London Declaration for intensified control and/or elimination: lymphatic filariasis (LF), onchocerciasis, schistosomiasis, soil-transmitted helminthiasis (STH), trachoma, Chagas’ disease, human African trypanosomiasis (HAT), leprosy, and visceral leishmaniasis (VL). Methodology: We conducted a systematic literature review, including publications between 2004–2013 found in Embase, Medline (OvidSP), Cochrane Central, Web of Science, Popline, Lilacs, and Scielo. We included publications in international peer-reviewed journals on studies concerning the top 20 countries in terms of the burden of the NTD under study. Principal findings: We identified 5,516 publications, of which 93 met the inclusion criteria. Of these, 59 papers reported substantial and statistically significant socioeconomic inequalities in NTD distribution, with higher odds of infection or disease among poor and less-educated people compared with better-off groups. The findings were mixed in 23 studies, and 11 studies showed no substantial or statistically significant inequality. Most information was available for STH, VL, schistosomiasis, and, to a lesser extent, for trachoma. For the other NTDs, evidence on their socioeconomic distribution was scarce. The magnitude of inequality varied, but often, the odds of infection or disease were twice as high among socioeconomically disadvantaged groups compared with better-off strata. Inequalities often took the form of a gradient, with higher odds of infection or disease each step down the socioeconomic hierarchy. Notwithstanding these inequalities, the prevalence of some NTDs was sometimes also high among better-off groups in some highly endemic areas. Conclusions: While recent evidence on socioeconomic inequalities is scarce for most individual NTDs, for some, there is considerable evidence of substantially higher odds of infection or disease among socioeconomically disadvantaged groups. NTD control activities as proposed in the London Declaration, when set up in a way that they reach the most in need, will benefit the poorest populations in poor countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to estimate the cumulative effect of childhood household dysfunction (CHD) on alcohol related illness and death later in life and to test the interaction between CHD and socioeconomic background. The study utilised Swedish national registers including data of a Swedish national cohort born 1973–82 (n = 872 912), which was followed from age 18 to 29–40 years. Cox regression analyses were used to calculate hazard ratios (HR) for alcohol related illness or death in young adulthood. The CHD measure consisted of seven indicators: parental alcohol/drug misuse, mental health problems, criminality, death, divorce, social assistance, and child welfare interventions. Childhood socioeconomic position (SEP) was indicated by parental occupational status. Outcomes were alcohol related inpatient hospital care, specialised outpatient care or deaths. Using the highest socioeconomic group without CHD experience as a reference, those in the same socioeconomic group with one indicator of CHD had HRs of 2.1 [95% CI: 1.7–2.5], two CHD indicators 5.6 [4.4–7.1], three or more indicators 9.4 [7.1–12.4] for retrieving inpatient care. Socioeconomic disadvantage further increased the risks–those with low socioeconomic background and three CHD indicators or more had a HR of 12.5 [10.9–14.3]. Testing for interaction suggests that the combined HRs deviates from additivity [Synergy index: 1.6, 95% CI: 1.4–1.9]. The results for outpatient care were similar, but not as pronounced. In conclusion, this Swedish national cohort study shows that childhood household dysfunction is strongly and cumulatively associated to alcohol related illness later in life and that it interacts with socioeconomic disadvantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After 1989, class appeared to be everywhere and nowhere. The messy consequences of the emergence of new classes and new types of economic inequalities were plain for all to see, but no one uttered the term "class." The concept appeared illegitimate because of associations with the old regime, even though it always had more success explaining developments in the capitalist world east Europe was entering than the state socialist world it was leaving. The media and academy adopted a discourse of "normality" instead: New rules resulted not from policy choices empowering certain groups at the expense of others but from necessity, and people just had to adapt. Because the economic collapse nevertheless elicited much anger and frustration, the absence of class talk contributed to a proliferation of nationalist talk, and thus had political consequences. The paper rehearses reasons for the decline of class analysis in the region, and notes the post-1989 fascination with the "middle class." It explores the evolution of class analysis during the communist period, culminating in the embrace of a stratification theory that resisted discussion of power, which made sense at the time but became a burden after 1989. Several critical class analyses of state socialism, from the 1930s to today, are then introduced, demonstrating both their relevance and their unfortunate absence from debates. New types of class analyses promoted by younger scholars and activists are emerging, however, and are discussed in the summaries of the other essays in this collection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Musical skills and expertise vary greatly in Western societies. Individuals can differ in their repertoire of musical behaviours as well as in the level of skill they display for any single musical behaviour. The types of musical behaviours we refer to here are broad, ranging from performance on an instrument and listening expertise, to the ability to employ music in functional settings or to communicate about music. In this paper, we first describe the concept of ‘musical sophistication’ which can be used to describe the multi-faceted nature of musical expertise. Next, we develop a novel measurement instrument, the Goldsmiths Musical Sophistication Index (Gold-MSI) to assess self-reported musical skills and behaviours on multiple dimensions in the general population using a large Internet sample (n = 147,636). Thirdly, we report results from several lab studies, demonstrating that the Gold-MSI possesses good psychometric properties, and that self-reported musical sophistication is associated with performance on two listening tasks. Finally, we identify occupation, occupational status, age, gender, and wealth as the main socio-demographic factors associated with musical sophistication. Results are discussed in terms of theoretical accounts of implicit and statistical music learning and with regard to social conditions of sophisticated musical engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women experiencing greater childhood adversity exhibit faster reproductive trajectories. One possible psychological mechanism underlying this phenomenon is an increased interest in infants. Interest in infants is thought to be an adaptation important for successful rearing as it motivates the acquisition of caretaking skills. We investigated the relationships between childhood adversity, intended reproductive timing and interest in infants in a sample of English adolescent girls. Specifically we sought to investigate the relationship between 1) childhood adversity and intended reproductive timing; 2) childhood adversity and interest in infants; and 3) intended reproductive timing and interest in infants. Additionally we explored different methods of measuring interest in infants using self-reported fondness for babies, a forced choice adult versus infant paper-based preference task and a novel computer based attention task using adult and infant stimuli. In total 357 girls aged nine to 14 years participated in the study, which took place in schools. Participants completed the two interest in infants tasks before moving on to a childhood adversity questionnaire. Girls with more childhood adversity reported earlier ideal ages at parenthood. We found some evidence that, contrary to our predictions, girls with less childhood adversity were more interested in infants. There was no relationship between intended reproductive timing and interest in infants. The different measurements for interest in infants were only weakly related, if at all, highlighting the complexity of measuring this construct. Our findings suggest that rather than interest in infants being a mechanism for the effect of childhood adversity on early reproductive timing it might instead be an indicator of future reproductive strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is believed to be a ‘beauty premium’ in key life outcomes: it is thought that people perceived to be more physically attractive have better educational outcomes, higher-status jobs, higher wages, and are more likely to marry. Evidence for these beliefs, however, is generally based on photographs in hypothetical experiments or studies of very specific population subgroups (such as college students). The extent to which physical attractiveness might have a lasting effect on such outcomes in ‘real life’ situations across the whole population is less well known. Using longitudinal data from a general population cohort of people in the West of Scotland, this paper investigated the association between physical attractiveness at age 15 and key socioeconomic outcomes approximately 20 years later. People assessed as more physically attractive at age 15 had higher socioeconomic positions at age 36– in terms of their employment status, housing tenure and income - and they were more likely to be married; even after adjusting for parental socioeconomic background, their own intelligence, health and self esteem, education and other adult socioeconomic outcomes. For education the association was significant for women but not for men. Understanding why attractiveness is strongly associated with long-term socioeconomic outcomes, after such extensive confounders have been considered, is important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies of urban scaling show that important socioeconomic city characteristics such as wealth and innovation capacity exhibit a nonlinear, particularly a power law scaling with population size. These nonlinear effects are common to all cities, with similar power law exponents. These findings mean that the larger the city, the more disproportionally they are places of wealth and innovation. Local properties of cities cause a deviation from the expected behavior as predicted by the power law scaling. In this paper we demonstrate that universities show a similar behavior as cities in the distribution of the ‘gross university income’ in terms of total number of citations over ‘size’ in terms of total number of publications. Moreover, the power law exponents for university scaling are comparable to those for urban scaling. We find that deviations from the expected behavior can indeed be explained by specific local properties of universities, particularly the field-specific composition of a university, and its quality in terms of field-normalized citation impact. By studying both the set of the 500 largest universities worldwide and a specific subset of these 500 universities -the top-100 European universities- we are also able to distinguish between properties of universities with as well as without selection of one specific local property, the quality of a university in terms of its average field-normalized citation impact. It also reveals an interesting observation concerning the working of a crucial property in networked systems, preferential attachment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a simple mathematical model that shows how economic inequality between social groups can arise and be maintained even when the only adaptive learning process driving cultural evolution increases individuals' economic gains. The key assumptions are that human populations are structured into groups and that cultural learning is more likely to occur within than between groups. Then, if groups are sufficiently isolated and there are potential gains from specialization and exchange, stable stratification can sometimes result. This model predicts that stratification is favored, ceteris paribus, by (1) greater surplus production, (2) more equitable divisions of the surplus among specialists, (3) greater cultural isolation among subpopulations within a society, and (4) more weight given to economic success by cultural learners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Deep South has often been characterized as the poorest and most backward region in the United States. The Deep South is also unique in that it is the most racially diverse part of the United States and it has the powerful social history of chattel slavery. In this paper, we examine the relationship between race and poverty at the macro (rather than individual) level. Using county-level census data we examine the effects of social segregation on well-being. We find that indeed there is an extremely strong and significant relationship between the racial composition of a county and many measures of well-being (poverty, home ownership, educational attainment, infant mortality and so on). Second, our analysis tests for the effects of racial segregation for whites and African Americans separately. The poverty rate for whites varies little based on the racial composition of the county they live in whereas for African Americans, living in integrated or predominately white counties is significantly correlated with lower levels of poverty. Furthermore, the African American-white poverty gap is significantly lower in integrated and predominately white counties and significantly higher in counties that are racially segregated. Thus, our analysis demonstrates that racial segregation has a more negative and profound effect on the lives of African Americans than it does on whites. We conclude with a discussion of the illustration Hurricane Katrina provides of tins general pattern and we offer a set of suggestions for addressing this kind of structural poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces the contours of current, practical explanatory problems in stratification theory showing the similarity of issues in apparently diverse approaches, both Marxist and non- Marxist. There are two related purposes. The first is to show the specific nature of the current crisis, locating paninular explanatory failures. The second is to illustrate the more general issue of the way in which the central epistemology of self-conscious social science derives from and describes failures in social scientific practice. This is well illustrated in the response to current problems. Both purposes are served by Laying bare the procedures by which attempts are made to convert the contradictions inherent in explanatory failures into contradictory features of social experience which could be explained by consistent theories. Contradiction is thus, apparently, removed from its role in specifying the need for theoretical development, to encapsulating the processes by which current social arrangements are reproduced. However, we show that despite initial plausibility such attempts merely displace explanatory contradictions rather than solve them. The attempts are justified by an explicit or implicit action frame of reference which, though it is central to abstract discussions of the nature of social science, is invoked in practical social science only in circumstances of explanatory failure in an unproductive attempt to insulate the theories from the consequences of their failure. Productive social science is the resolution of contradictions in the transformation of theoretical objects and relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The gay disco has an important function within the gay cornmunity. It is a place where lesbians and gay men can meet and socialise with other rnembers of the gay community, in a fairly closed environment that offers seclusion and sheher from the outside (mainly heterosexual) world. This paper examines the way in which potential patrons of a gay disco, that is, those who were not known as regular patrons to the doorman and bouncers, were screened in an attempt to determine sexual identity. to ensure that as few heterosexuals as possible were allowed entrance into the club. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]