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This study examines the extent and causes of differences in information communication technologies (ICT) usage in five countries: the U.S., Sweden, Japan, South Korea and Singapore. We focus on cross-countries differences in ICT access, use and skills with regards to gender, age, education and income and how any such differences have evolved over time. Our results indicate that there is digital inequality in all five countries, but the gaps in ICT usage tend to be more prevalent in the three Asian nations than in the U.S. and Sweden. Digital inequality has narrowed over time along some dimensions but not all. Our findings generally suggest that gaps in ICT usage along demographic and socioeconomic dimensions reflect the extent of pre-existing inequality in other areas of the economy and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For years work sociologists have discussed a phenomenon known as the gender paradox in job satisfaction: women do not fare as well as men in the workplace, yet they report levels of satisfaction that are comparable to and often exceed those of men. I hypothesize that this paradox exists because men and women hold different work values and experience different job rewards in the workplace. This study analyzes the gender paradox in job satisfaction through an international analysis, using data from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) for Japan, the United States at two time points, and Sweden. I find that there is a gender gap in job satisfaction for all three countries. When controlling for work values and job rewards the effect of gender on job satisfaction becomes non-significant for Swedish and Japanese workers, although Swedish mothers are significantly more satisfied than Swedish fathers. However, the gender gap in job satisfaction in the United States persists even after controlling for work values and job rewards. The results suggest that for the United States, work values and job rewards alone do not account for all variability in job satisfaction between the genders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rectangularization of the survival curve refers to a process by which deaths are increasingly compressed with respect to age. This has been observed in many different populations in the past 50 years, but the individual components of this process are not well known. Using data from the United States, Japan, and Sweden, I evaluate the shape of the cancer survival curve and the age-distribution of cancer deaths with two measures. Given that the age-pattern of cancer mortality is highly distinct from that of other causes of death primarily cardiovascular diseases, we might expect large differences in the compression of mortality as well. Since 1970, cancer deaths have become more compressed with respect to age while the modal age at death from cancer increased. This runs contrary to the argument that the compression of mortality signaled that we were approaching the upper limit to human longevity. Cancer deaths show less compression than other causes of death; the overall amount of compression differs between Japan/Sweden and the United States, but the cause-specific pattern is rather similar. As cancer becomes an increasingly large contributor to overall mortality in the next few decades, it is likely that compression will stagnate. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]