Search

How do family arrangements affect subjective well-being? We investigate this issue using data pooled from the IsssA and HILDA, both large, representative national samples of Australia (pooled n = 38 447). Our regression analysis of cross-sectional and panel data examines how large are the differences in life satisfaction according to marital status and cohabitation. We find that women and men in formal marriages experience higher levels of life satisfaction than do people in other family arrangements. Moreover, both multiple tests in the cross-section, and tests controlling for prior happiness in the panel analysis, suggest that this is a causal relationship. Aggregating up the levels of life satisfaction generated by different marriage and cohabitation arrangements across a lifetime, suggests that a life-long marriage is the most satisfying. Early divorce followed by an enduring second marriage is little worse (because little time is spent outside the married state). But divorce without remarriage, or long lasting cohabitation without formal marriage, reduce the lifetime sum of subjective well-being by 4-12% for both women and men.KEY WORDS: cohabition, divorce, life satisfaction, marriage, subjective well-being

To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6237.2010.00738.x Byline: M. D. R. Evans (1), Jonathan Kelley (2), Clayton D. Peoples (1) Abstract: Objectives. We investigate social consensus and dissensus within and between nations in three important justifications for pay differences: family needs, performance on the job, and education/authority. Methods. Data are from 31 nations and 66,777 individual respondents analyzed using structural equation and multilevel regression methods with multiple imputation of missing data. Results. In poor countries, but not in rich, most believe that family needs legitimate higher pay. Within countries-particularly English-speaking ones-low SES groups endorse family needs, but high SES groups reject them. Valuing performance and effort is widespread throughout the world and throughout all segments of society, high and low. Education and authority are widely valued, more in poor nations than in rich, with some demographic differences but few socioeconomic cleavages. Conclusions. There is conflict both within nations and between them as to whether need and education/authority justify unequal pay, but consensus that performance on the job does justify it. Author Affiliation: (1)University of Nevada, Reno (2)International Survey Center and University of Nevada, Reno

Much research suggests that the disruption of marriage through parental death or divorce imposes a small but significant educational disadvantage on American children, although the most recent and comprehensive analysis casts serious doubt on this claim. What is the situation in Australia? Using representative national samples (n = 29,443) and OLS and logistic regression with robust standard errors, we estimate models controlling many potentially confounding variables. We find that divorce in Australia costs seven-tenths of a year of education, mainly by reducing secondary school completion. Importantly, divorce has become more damaging in recent cohorts. Keywords: family breakdown, family structure, schooling, trends, Introduction Divorce rose dramatically throughout the Western world in the 1960s and 1970s and Australia was no exception. In earlier years, divorce was rare and difficult in Australia, with a [...]

In societies where the populace exhibits a wide range of religiosity, social conservatives (religiously devout or socially traditional) feel their beliefs and way of life threatened, even where others in their society (secular, or socially liberal) have no desire to threaten them, or to discriminate against them, or even to proselytize. Examples include devout English Pilgrims in liberal 16th century Holland and devout Muslims in liberal 21st century Western Europe. We suggest that this is because diversity in religiosity itself poses a threat to conventional personal morality (attitudes on abortion, divorce, euthanasia, suicide, prostitution). The consequences of societal diversity in religiosity (the centrality of religion to one's life) for individuals' endorsement of conventional personal morality have been neglected in prior research. This paper shows that diversity in religiosity at the national level undermines individuals' endorsement of conventional personal morality, net of an individual's own religiosity, net of the average levels of religiosity and socioeconomic development in the individual's society, and net of key individual‐level controls. Data are pooled from the World Values Surveys/European Values Surveys, 1981–2008, with 90 countries, 200+ surveys, and 300,000+ individual respondents. Analysis is by multilevel methods (variance components models with fixed effects and random intercepts, estimated by generalized least squares [GLS]). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People's subjective images of class and class conflict reflect a mixture of both materialist forces and the vivid subjective images of equality and consensus among family, friends, and coworkers. These reference group processes distort perceptions of class: They make most people think they are middle class, thereby weakening the link between objective class and subjective perceptions of class and class conflict, fostering consensual rather than conflictual views of class relations, and attenuating the links between class and politics, particularly in Central European nations. Maximum-likelihood analyses of large, representative national samples from six Western democracies support the argument.

We argue that the abortion controversy has one major source - religion - and two less important ones - attitudes towards sexual permissiveness and women's employment. Traditional Christianity promotes opposition to abortion using three distinct modes of moral reasoning: through deductive moral reasoning, by the Christian world view's implication that abortion violates the sanctity of life and is a rebellion against God's design; through authoritative moral reasoning by appeal to Catholic dogma; and through consequentialist moral reasoning, as a means of control over sexuality and as a means of confining women's activities to the home. Even aside from Christian belief, adherence to traditional morality promotes opposition to abortion on these consequentialist grounds. We posit a model in which religious belief, anti-feminism, sexual permissiveness, and attitudes towards abortion are distinct concepts (a four-factor model) rather than all simply aspects of a single conservatism factor. We develop reliable, multiple item attitude scales; show that our four-factor model fits the data much better than the one-factor alternative; and test our hypotheses on new data from a large, representative national sample of Australia (N=4540). Using maximum likelihood structural equation methods, we find that deductive reasoning from Christian belief is the most important source of opposition to abortion, with strong effects both direct and indirect. Exposure to the authority of the Catholic hierarchy is a real but weaker source of opposition. Consequentialist reasoning from traditional moral views on sex - partly buttressed by religion, partly independent of it - is also influential. But views on women's employment matter only a little, contrary to received wisdom.

We address several key hypotheses about the effects of socioeconomic development on women's labour force participation during the transition from agriculture to industrialism. To this end, we explore differences in women's labour force participation in Brazil by education, marital status, age, and urban or rural residence. We also show how socioeconomic development affects the overall level of women's participation and the differentials by education, etc. Our data are drawn from a large 1973 PNAD (Pequisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicilos) survey conducted by the Brazilian census bureau. Socioeconomic development in different parts of Brazil ranges from pre-industrial agriculture to heavy industry. Using logistic regression, we show that the general level of women's labour force participation does not change with the level of development. Highly educated women are much more likely than the less educated to be in the labour force (net of other influences); this difference is substantially greater than in post-industrial societies. Somewhat surprisingly, the influence of education is the same across the range of development levels in Brazil. Single women are more likely to be in the labour force than married women, and the difference grows during development. Age has a curvilinear relationship to labour force participation, and the old are much less likely to participate in more developed places. Rural women are slightly more likely to be in the labour force at all levels of development.

Based on reference group and cognitive bias considerations, we advance a theory, explicated via a computer simulation, to explain (1) people's perceptions of how equalitarian the class system is, (2) where people place themselves in the class system, (3) where people place others' occupations, and (4) people's estimates of the pay of different occupations. Using a new set of diagrammatic and verbal questions on class, we test our hypotheses on large, representative national samples in Australia (N = 6,177) and Hungary (N = 2,606). A full-information maximum-likelihood analysis strongly supports the hypotheses.

Introduction Early debate on the impact of immigration on women focused on the costs and benefits of life in poor agrarian or early industrializing societies from which many immigrant women [...]

The large-scale entry of married women into the workforce has been a striking feature of the postwar period, particularly in the United States, Britain, and other Anglo-Celtic nations. Theory implies [...]

Kelley CGE, Kelley SMC, Evans MDR, Kelley J. Attitudes toward home-based employment for mothers of young children: Australian evidence Int J Soc Welfare 2010: 19: 33–44 © 2008 The Author(s), Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare. People have mixed feelings about paid employment for mothers with young children. This might reflect opposition to women's work per se or, instead, fear that children are harmed by the mother's absence from the home. To find out, we developed new questions differentiating support for or opposition to mothers working for pay depending on whether the employment is home-based or outside the home. Data from a large representative national sample of Australia ( n= 1,324) show that public support for employment is about 30 percentage points greater if the mother works at home. Structural equation analyses show social differences in levels of support. Thus work at home provides a way of increasing labour force participation and earnings for mothers (with the welfare benefits that implies), which is congruent with public opinion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parental divorce imposes a small but significant educational disadvantage on American children. Does this generalize across nations and over time? We analyze representative national samples from Australia (n=29,443) and Canada (n=28,266), together with US General Social Survey data (n=32,380). Using OLS and logistic regression with robust standard errors, we estimate models controlling many potentially confounding variables. Divorce costs seven-tenths of a year of education, mainly by reducing secondary school completion. Importantly, it has become more damaging in recent cohorts. Because this holds in all three nations, the explanation probably lies in common circumstances of, and parallel changes in, modern industrial societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One Australian in five is an immigrant, and almost as many again are the children of immigrants. Most have done well in Australia, but some, particularly Mediterranean immigrants, have not. This paper examines whether this disadvantage reflects differences in education, labour force experience, and English proficiency or whether it is due to discrimination against immigrants. To answer this question we use the best data ever available: the public-use sam ple of the 1981 Census. We estimate a regression model separately for natives, for each of five immigrant groups, and for each of six groups of the second generation. Our model adjusts for education, labour force experience, and language skills. It allows for possible differences between education obtained in Australia and abroad, for differences in labour force experience in Australia and abroad, and for various curvilinear effects. Once differences in endowments are taken into account, we find no evidence of discrimination against immigrants. Further, both immigrants who came to Australia as children and the second generation do as well as longer established Australians, and perhaps better. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]