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Forms of large‐scale change, such as the regiona l re‐distribution of clinical services, are an enduring reform orthodoxy in health systems of high‐income countries. The topic is of relevance and importance to medical sociology because of the way that large‐scale change significantly disrupts and transforms therapeutic landscapes, relationships and practices. In this paper we review the literature on large‐scale change. We find that the literature is dominated by competing forms of knowledge, such as health services research, and show how sociology can contribute new and critical perspectives and insights on what is for many people a troubling issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is argued that far‐right (FR) populism in the West is fuelled by inequality. In this paper, we argue that three social psychological processes are central to explaining these phenomena. We suggest that these processes are recursive although we do not specify their temporal order. Drawing on the social identity tradition, we first examine how inequality is linked to reduced social trust and cohesion, which has consequences for both low‐ and high‐income groups. We examine the known effects of perceived threat in amplifying tensions between groups and consolidating identity positions. Second, we argue that national identity consolidation is a particularly likely response to inequality, which, in turn, reduces tolerance of cultural diversity as an associated consequence. Finally, we consider the value of these strengthened national identities to those who harness them effectively to gain political ground. In this way, those who offer FR populist rhetoric aligned with nationalism can blame immigrants, "foreign" powers, and mainstream politics for both the lack of social cohesion and reduced economic circumstances of many. We conclude that FR populist leaders not only tap into the negative social consequences of inequality, their policy positions also fail to address and may even compound the situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Objectives Reverse mortgages are loans that allow older homeowners to borrow from their home equity with no repayment due until the borrower dies or moves out of the home. We currently know very little about how homeowners evaluate and experience reverse mortgages as solutions to their financial and housing needs in later life. Furthermore, despite an increasingly diverse population of reverse mortgage borrowers, we know little about how social inequalities may contribute to reverse mortgage decisions and their outcomes. In this paper, we examine reverse mortgage decision-making and experiences in a racially and economically diverse sample of older US homeowners. Research Design and Methods We conducted 44 in-depth interviews with older homeowners who were considering or who had obtained a reverse mortgage loan. We inductively and iteratively developed a thematic coding scheme that was applied to all interview transcripts. Results Our analysis produced a dichotomous schema of reverse mortgage decision making that was shaped by social and economic opportunities and constraints. For some participants, reverse mortgages represented strategic tools used to maximize home equity and its benefits. For others, it was an option of last resort to which participants turned when faced with the imminent loss of their home. Discussion and Implications Focusing on reverse mortgages, our analysis suggests way that social inequalities may be reproduced through financial decisions and the unequal landscapes of opportunity in which they are made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information about a person’s income can be useful in several business-related contexts, such as personalized advertising or salary negotiations. However, many people consider this information private and are reluctant to share it. In this paper, we show that income is predictable from the digital footprints people leave on Facebook. Applying an established machine learning method to an income-representative sample of 2,623 U.S. Americans, we found that (i) Facebook Likes and Status Updates alone predicted a person’s income with an accuracy of up to r = 0.43, and (ii) Facebook Likes and Status Updates added incremental predictive power above and beyond a range of socio-demographic variables (ΔR2 = 6–16%, with a correlation of up to r = 0.49). Our findings highlight both opportunities for businesses and legitimate privacy concerns that such prediction models pose to individuals and society when applied without individual consent. [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]

In this paper we analyze the non-instrumental dimension of social capital and its effects on subjective well-being. In the first part, we define the characteristics of production and consumption of relational goods. The second section analyses the influence of the different expressions of relational goods and social capital on individual subjective well-being. In the third, we test the explanatory power of this variable on the Easterlin's paradox using the results of a survey on individual social capital in Spain. The main findings from the empirical analysis for Spanish society allow us to strengthen the hypothesis. We found a weak explanatory capacity of income or educational level or instrumental dimensions of social capital (expert mobilization) while a strong link between expressions of relational goods (domestic mobilization, household stability, partnership, trust and security in the environment) was found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws upon literature from economics, and the human capital and equity fields in order to present a theoretical framework for a new multidimensional measure of poverty for Australia. Poverty is about having low living standards; but its measurement has traditionally focused only on an individual's income or on other dimensions of living standards that are not appropriate for contemporary Australian society, such as calorie intake. There are two additional capabilities individuals require for adequate living standards: health and education. Each of these is required for basic functioning within modern society, but have traditionally been ignored by measures of poverty. This paper argues that health is a basic capability people need for a fulfilling life, allowing individuals to participate in activities essential in modern society, and that education can also be seen in this light. As such it is vital that health and education be included in measures of poverty. In order to move Australian poverty measurement forward and build upon the work of the past, poverty measurement must move its focus away from only looking at low income, and take a holistic focus on the living standards of individuals by incorporating assessments of health and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A common policy approach to reducing childhood obesity aims to shape the environment in which children spend most of their time: neighborhoods and schools. This paper uses richly detailed data on the body mass index (BMI) of all New York City public school students in grades K-8 to assess the potential for place-based approaches to reduce child obesity. We document variation in the prevalence of obesity across NYC public schools and census tracts, and then estimate the extent to which this variation can be explained by differences in individual-level predictors (such as race and household income). Both unadjusted and adjusted variability across neighborhoods and schools suggest place-based policies have the potential to meaningfully reduce child obesity, but under most realistic scenarios the improvement would be modest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper asks whether where someone lives bears any association with their attitudes to inequality and income redistribution, focusing on the relative contribution of neighbourhood income, density and ethnic composition. People on higher incomes showed higher support for redistribution when living in more deprived neighbourhoods. People with lower levels of altruism had higher levels of support for redistribution in neighbourhoods of higher density. People living in more ethnically mixed neighbourhoods had higher levels of support for redistribution on average, but this support declined for Whites with low levels of altruism as the deprivation of the neighbourhood increased. Current trends which sustain or extend income and wealth inequalities, reflected in patterns of residence, may undermine social cohesion in the medium- to long-term. This may be offset to some extent by trends of rising residential ethnic diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Introduction: Understanding the social determinants of child health is a prominent area of research. This paper examines the measurement of socioeconomic position in a sample of families of children with cancer. Socioeconomic position is difficult to measure in pediatric health research due to sensitivity of asking about finances when research is conducted in health care delivery settings, financial volatility associated with periods of pediatric illness, and difficulty recruiting fathers to research. Methods: Caregivers of children with cancer (n = 76) completed a questionnaire that included the MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status (SSS). SSS was measured using two 10-rung ladders with differing referent groups: the US and respondents’ communities. Respondents placed themselves on each ladder by placing an X on the rung that represented their social position in relation to the two referent groups. Individuals’ SSS ratings and discrepancies in SSS ratings within couples were examined, and associations with objective social status measures were evaluated using Pearson correlations or t-tests. Results: Parents’ placement on the US and community ladders was positively associated with their income, education, wealth, household savings, and household savings minus debt. On average, respondents placed themselves higher on the US ladder compared to the community ladder. There was an average intra-couple discrepancy of 1.25 rungs in partner’s placements on the US ladder and a 1.56 rung difference for the community ladder. This intra-couple discrepancy was not associated with gender. Discussion: Results offer insight into the use of subjective social status measures to capture a more holistic assessment of socioeconomic position and the measurement of socioeconomic position in two-parent families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper shows that the positional bias underscored by is an experimental artifact. Quoted authors highlighted the importance of positional concerns by finding that people prefer to earn a fewer absolute amount of income but to earn a higher income than others. Why do people prefer to earn more than others? The proposed explanation is that people have a preference for status. This conclusion might be wrong due to their particular design. We conjecture that subjects, by indicating to prefer a state of the world in which they earn more than others, in reality signal a preference for equality. We replicated the same design as in and added a new option so as to disentangle positional concerns from egalitarian ones. We observe that most subjects express egalitarian preferences rather than positional ones. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Economic theory that assumes personal income maximization predicts that a wife will under invest in her husband''s human capital. However, casual observation of real life marriages and experimental evidences show that outcomes are more efficient than the theoretical prediction. This paper argues that the gap between the theoretical prediction and experimental evidences is due to inappropriate assumptions in the theory. That is, the bias in the theoretical prediction is caused by the neglect of the non-material factors that play crucial roles in marriage and the neglect of the fact that individuals may behave altruistically in marital decisions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this paper I extend regional multiplier analysis by incorporating both spatial (neighbor) and geographical (place-contained) effects. Multipliers, taken as elasticities, are estimated by regression analyses of the associations between retail trade earnings by place of work and total income by place of residence (from earnings, property, and transfers) across New England's counties in 2002. The multiplier analyses are conducted in two basic forms, both estimated using a simultaneous autoregressive specification and both incorporating a spatial neighbor income variable. In one, geographical effects are treated as dummy variables alone, so their impact on a particular income multiplier coefficient is read only indirectly. In the other, geographical effects are allowed to interact with property and transfer income so that their multiplier coefficients in the region vary from county to county depending upon particular geographical characteristics. The spatial effect of neighboring county income is consistent across the two forms, and suggests a competitive effect in the region's retail sector. Further results indicate that the region's property income and transfer receipts tend to offset each other in geographical context in their impact on retail-trade income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to develop an alternative measure for relative poverty. The aim is to combine information both on the depth of poverty and the number of people living in poverty. We seek, moreover, to establish a yardstick that would be relatively simple and easy to understand, so as to facilitate the use of such a new method in sociological poverty research and political decision making. The Cumulative Poverty Index (CUPI) indicates how many times poorer on average the poor households are, compared to all households on average (or the other way round: the ratio of the mean income of poor households to the mean income of all households). The empirical analysis demonstrates that CUPI seem to reflect changes in the incomes of the poor more accurately than do head-count ratios based on median income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The subject of youth pastor salaries is interesting to researchers in at least two respects. First, to what extent the position of "youth pastor" is supported financially is an indicator of the perceived status by the local church, denomination, and culture. Second, as youth ministry education proliferates around the globe one might expect more and more individuals to sense God's calling into full lime youth ministry. The purpose, then, of this paper is to survey youth pastor salaries world wide and see this issue in terms relevant to ecciesiology and sociology.

Recent poverty research based on analyses of panel data have highlighted the importance of income dynamics. In this paper we study mobility into and out of relative income poverty from one year to the next using data for twelve countries from the European Community Household Panel Survey (ECHP). The ECHP has unique potential as a harmonized data set to serve as the basis for comparisons of income and poverty dynamics across EU countries, and here we begin exploiting this potential by analysing income poverty transitions from Wave 1 to Wave 2. As well as describing the extent of these transitions, we analyse the pattern by fitting log-linear and linear by linear models commonly employed in the analysis of social mobility. Moving from general to specific models we show the relative impact of hierarchy, immobility and affinity effects. Our analysis shows that cross-national variation in short-term poverty dynamics is predominantly a consequence of 'shift' rather then 'association effects'. Variation across countries in patterns of poverty persistence is extremely modest. Models that assume that the processes underlying poverty dynamics are constant across countries perform almost as well as those that allow for cross-national variability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taken as a whole, this paper is an exercise in critical sociology. The history of the sociology of housing is briefly assessed. It is then argued that to make sense of the subject matter a conception of domestic property is needed. Domestic property is defined by the ownership and control of the means and relations of life-support. Sketches of hierarchical aspects of the phenomenon are given. Neo-feudalism is said to be the cultural characteristic of domestic property and it indicates initial weaknesses in the concept. Further the concept is judged to be poor in the light of alternative perspectives on its features: income sources; property extensiveness and property rights. Nevertheless the concept is held to be useful because it cuts across the politics of self interest to which housing is currently subject. Finally the concept suggests an alternative approach to such politics, advocating that there be a guaranteed right to life-support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Non-welfarist approaches to well-being are often criticized for ignoring personal preferences and suffering from a dictatorial logic. This paper argues that welfarist approaches do not have a special quality of preference neutrality and that non-welfarist/non-dictatorial approaches to well-being and interpersonal comparison are possible. Utility is a function not of goods and preferences, but of goods and tastes, and the latter are decomposed into expectations and preferences. A theory of well-being based on choice is recommended. Choice is defined as a function of personal resources and arena options. A typology of measurement approaches is developed. Indirect measurement is recommended above direct measurement. Implications are discussed for income, social indicators, and capabilities in the measurement of well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]