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Fuel taxes are seen as an important instrument in the fight against climate change, including in the European Green Deal. From a social-ecological policy perspective, it is important to understand current high levels of public opposition to fuel taxes. If social disadvantage is an important driver of opposition, this would strengthen arguments that fuel taxes need to be designed in a fairer way. However, it remains unclear how important social disadvantage – here defined as a combination of low income, fuel poverty risk, low education, low occupational status and job insecurity – is for explaining opposition compared to factors such as political trust and climate change attitudes, and how the role of social disadvantage varies with welfare regimes in Europe. In this article, we examine how strongly social disadvantage is associated with opposition to fuel taxes once political trust and climate change attitudes are controlled for, and we compare results across welfare regimes. The article uses data from the 2016 European Social Survey and employs logistic regression and decomposition analysis. We find that social disadvantage contributes nearly as much to fuel tax opposition as climate change attitudes and political trust together, with 10.9 and 16.6 percentage points respectively. However, the role of social disadvantage varies by welfare regime. It matters most in Southern and Eastern Europe, where opposition is particularly high, as are poverty and inequality. We discuss implications for social-ecological policy strategies that aim to increase public acceptability of fuel taxes in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regional peripheralisation has been repeatedly described as a process resulting in the combination of regional structural and social disadvantage. In theory, peripheries are characterised by the interdependence of these two types of disadvantage. Few studies have examined this interdependence in rural peripheries across several countries. In this study, we operationalise rural peripherality combining poor opportunity structures that constrain the social and economic opportunities of the local population, and increased concentrations of social disadvantage and decreased quality of life. Comparing Czech and eastern German regions, we uncovered intercorrelated spatial patterns of low education, poor employment quality, deficient labour market opportunity and accessibility to medical, educational and other services, which together represent key aspects of rural peripherality from the perspective of disadvantage. Although there is a clear coincidence of structural and social disadvantage in rural peripheries, neither increased levels of poverty nor long‐term unemployment are typical of these areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do individuals deal with group disadvantage when their fellow in-group members conceive it as legitimate? Integrating research on the normative conflict model (Packer, 2008, Pers. Soc. Psychol. Rev., 12, 50) and collective action, we expect high identifiers to reject the in-group norm of legitimacy that justifies the inequality, and to assert that the group is actually able and willing to contest the disadvantage by collective means. In Study 1 and Study 2, we tested this hypothesis in different intergroup contexts. The results confirmed our predictions and also showed one boundary condition for high identifiers, namely that the content of the social identity supports resistance. In Study 3, we found support for our hypothesis using artificial groups and manipulating identification experimentally. These results show that even when a disadvantaged group appears to accept its situation, high identified in-group members will still contest this and, moreover, expect other in-group members to support them in this endeavour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Objective: To compare self-reported perception of weight with biomedically measured body mass index in different socioeconomic and cultural groups. Method: Of the original North West Adelaide Health (Cohort) Study (n =4060) 68.5% (n =2780) underwent a computer assisted telephone interview (CATI) answering additional questions related to their social and health status. The participants were asked “In terms of your weight, do you consider yourself to be… too thin, a little thin, normal weight, a little overweight or very overweight”. The self-perception of weight was compared to biomedically measured BMI (body mass index). Binary logistic regression was used to compare those participants who were obese (BMI≥30) with the self-perceived weight status of ‘a little overweight’. The outcome measures included the Socioeconomic Indexes for Areas Index of Relative Socioeconomic Disadvantage (SEIFA IRSD), country of birth and household income. Results: Of those that were underestimating their obese weight status, 41.5% were male and 32.2% female. The highest misclassification was for those who considered their weight to be ‘a little overweight’, with 59.6% biomedically measured with a BMI of over 30. The odds of being biomedically measured obese (BMI≥30) were compared to those who considered themselves to be ‘a little overweight’. Those that misreported their weight status and were biomedically obese, were more likely to be living in the lowest quintile of disadvantage, have a household income of less then $20,000 or be born in Eastern or Western Europe. Conclusion: There are psychosocial, sociocultural and social environmental influences related to the perception of weight status. Future research will need to understand the processes whereby people are not aware they have a weight problem. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this article a range of national and international policies, many tied to electronic business and electronic government initiatives, are reviewed from the much older perspective of the Information Society. As a concept, the Information Society has retained a form of residual currency but while not quite dormant, it has been overshadowed by what are essentially techno-economic New Economy perspectives. Although these techno-economic priorities can be viewed as contributing to the ultimate development of an Information Society, this contribution continues to fall somewhat short of what would be deemed sufficient. The shortfalls are particularly evident in the case of socially disadvantaged members of the community. In reviewing such developments mainly in Europe but with examples drawn from elsewhere, progress towards Information Society status is assessed in a social context that illustrates the gap that exists between aspiration and achievement in this regard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Ethnic minority groups in Western countries face an increased risk of psychotic disorders. Causes of this long-standing public health inequality remain poorly understood. We investigated whether social disadvantage, linguistic distance and discrimination contributed to these patterns., Methods: We used case-control data from the EUropean network of national schizophrenia networks studying Gene-Environment Interactions (EU-GEI) study, carried out in 16 centres in six countries. We recruited 1130 cases and 1497 population-based controls. Our main outcome measure was first-episode ICD-10 psychotic disorder (F20-F33), and exposures were ethnicity (white majority, black, mixed, Asian, North-African, white minority and other), generational status, social disadvantage, linguistic distance and discrimination. Age, sex, paternal age, cannabis use, childhood trauma and parental history of psychosis were included as a priori confounders. Exposures and confounders were added sequentially to multivariable logistic models, following multiple imputation for missing data., Results: Participants from any ethnic minority background had crude excess odds of psychosis [odds ratio (OR) 2.03, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.69-2.43], which remained after adjustment for confounders (OR 1.61, 95% CI 1.31-1.98). This was progressively attenuated following further adjustment for social disadvantage (OR 1.52, 95% CI 1.22-1.89) and linguistic distance (OR 1.22, 95% CI 0.95-1.57), a pattern mirrored in several specific ethnic groups. Linguistic distance and social disadvantage had stronger effects for first- and later-generation groups, respectively., Conclusion: Social disadvantage and linguistic distance, two potential markers of sociocultural exclusion, were associated with increased odds of psychotic disorder, and adjusting for these led to equivocal risk between several ethnic minority groups and the white majority.