The main aim of this study was to explore the longitudinal effects of the co-development of loneliness and internalizing difficulties on working-age population. A sample of 2,251 working-age population from the six waves spanning seven years of the Longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social Sciences (LISS panel) was therefore selected for the study. Unconditional latent growth curve models (Unconditional LGCM) were employed to analyze the trajectories of loneliness and internalizing difficulties, while parallel process latent growth curve models (PP-LGCM) explored their longitudinal associations. Conditional PP-LGCM and parallel process latent class growth analysis (PP-LCGA) further assessed how their co-developmental trajectories influenced subjective well-being. Key findings revealed that: (1) Both loneliness and internalizing difficulties decreased over time in the working-age population. (2) Initial levels and change rates of loneliness predicted internalizing difficulties’ trajectories, and vice versa. (3) Higher baseline loneliness and internalizing difficulties correlated with lower subjective well-being, whereas a steeper decline in internalizing difficulties was associated with greater well-being. (4) Three distinct trajectory groups emerged: a High Level-Declining Group, a Rising Internalizing Difficulties Group, and a Low Level-Declining Group, with significant well-being differences across groups. These findings enhance our understanding of how loneliness and internalizing difficulties jointly impair well-being, offering practical insights for interventions targeting working-age populations.
This study examines the gender gap in job satisfaction in Italy, focusing on whether and to what extent women report higher satisfaction than men, despite often having lower-quality jobs - a phenomenon known as the “paradox of contented female worker”. The concept of job satisfaction is considered from a multidimensional perspective, analysing eight distinct dimensions of job satisfaction. Italy represents a compelling backdrop to study the job satisfaction gender gap: indeed, in the light of its peculiar institutional and cultural characteristics, women in Italy face a severe penalization in working conditions, and this country is characterized by marked objective gender inequalities in the labor market. The study finds that women, on average, report higher job satisfaction compared to men. However, the gender gap is narrower for younger, more educated women and those living in northern Italy. Nuances of these findings are presented, and implications are discussed.
In this paper we extend the Exploratory Graph Analysis (EGA) framework by replacing the Pearson correlation matrix with a Nonparanormal (NPN) estimator derived from Spearman rank correlations, which recovers the latent Gaussian dependence under a broader model that accomodates for skewed and heavy-tailed marginals. We further enhance robustness and interpretability by combining bootstrap EGA with Non-Euclidean Fuzzy Relational Clustering on a dissimilarity matrix derived from consensus over output partitions, producing fuzzy rather than crisp assignments that capture overlaps and ambiguity. We apply the full pipeline to 37 indicators from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) dataset covering 179 countries in 2024, coming from five different theoretical democracy indices. The recovered structure validates the theoretical indices while revealing some meaningful discrepancies.
Since its inception, China’s public pension system has been organized into distinct schemes for the public and private sectors, resulting in a pension gap that has spurred various social challenges. In an effort to establish an equitable and unified system, the Chinese government launched a ten-year integration reform in 2014. Drawing on data from retired individuals in the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) from 2016 to 2022, this study examined the impact of the integration reform on subjective well-being during the reform’s transitional period. The findings indicated that the reform substantially improved the subjective well-being of retired employees in the private sector compared to those in the public sector. Both absolute and relative income effects emerged as key mechanisms through which the reform influenced subjective well-being. Moreover, further analysis revealed that the policy effects were particularly pronounced in rural areas and central-western regions. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of how pension system reforms can promote institutional equity and enhance subjective well-being among the elderly.
This article proposes a framework for the distributionally sensitive evaluation of wellbeing mobility in a population and the further analysis of mobility disparities between subgroups. Changes in population wellbeing are assessed in terms of differences in the chances of its members experiencing an improvement rather than a decline in personal wellbeing, which provides a relative approach to mobility evaluation as in prospect theory. Equity concerns are addressed by placing greater weight on the wellbeing prospects of individuals with lower initial wellbeing using two novel approaches, one based on a hierarchical set of nonparametric statistical preference conditions to rank comparable mobility matrices and the other on a parametric family of mobility evaluation indices. Mobility disparities are broken down into effects due to differences in initial wellbeing profiles and in transition processes. A study of the differential impact of the second COVID-19 wave in the UK by gender and age shows women, particularly younger women, experienced a larger decline in wellbeing than men even after controlling for differences in initial profiles, while also identifying the unusual persistence of low wellbeing among older men as an issue.
To help a (perhaps artificial) policy decider compare the performance of its (perhaps artificial) social agents, a type of abstract evaluation machine is presented that could be used in various concrete operative situations. Designed on a sequence of progressively more challenging objectives on the chain O_0,O_1,...,O_l… .,O_L , this machine, applied to any social agent A belonging to a given class, evaluates A’s performance taking into account the state x, provided that the gain scores ω _l|x:=Val_|x(O_l)-Val_|x(O_l-1) which regulate the machine have been assigned. A criterion is proposed that interprets gain scores in a probabilistic context, by invoking an intuitive principle of “intrinsic worthiness”. The specific question of interest concerns a structured, possibly automatable, approach to extract meaningful standardized gain scores ω _l|x , from the “reference training-data set” associated to the choice of reference agent A^* (eg a “ good practice”), conditional also on assumptions on modeling. An advanced (pseudo-Bayesian) approach is outlined in a Dirichlet-multinomial framework. A subspace ℳ_0 of Dirichlet distributions (viewed as a geometric submanifold) is modeled by assuming that hidden processes, related to progress along the goal chain, are driven by hidden transition probabilities dependent on state x, governed by a set of hyper-hyperparameters. Applying an orthogonality principle, it is searched for that specific configuration of the hyperparameters set such that a certain (pseudo-Bayesian) vector-operator of updating, given the current training data set, is orthogonal to the submanifold ℳ_0 ; thus tuning hyper-hyperparameters on the training-data set. Then, hidden gains scores could be backward recovered which enter evaluation machine
Assessing the well-being of older adults requires a multidimensional framework, yet combining dimensions into a single summary measure raises conceptual and methodological challenges. This study examines whether objective, subjective, and preference-based aggregation strategies identify the same individuals as worst-off when applied to the same dimensions. Using survey data from 813 individuals aged 50 and older in Flanders, Belgium, we compare well-being across health, social relations, income, leisure, engagement, and religion. The objective approach applied equal weights, the subjective approach relied on self-rated life vignettes, and the preference-based approach incorporated respondents’ priorities through a factorial survey experiment. The three methods yielded substantially different identifications of the worst-off. The greatest divergence was between the objective and subjective approaches, while the preference-based approach aligned somewhat more closely with the objective one but still differed. The objective and preference-based approaches tended to identify worst-off groups with lower educational attainment and greater disadvantages in physical health, whereas the subjective approach identified a group with relatively higher educational attainment but poorer mental health outcomes. These findings highlight that the choice of aggregation strategy crucially shapes well-being comparisons and the identification of vulnerable groups in later life.
Various theoretical frameworks for inclusive and competence-based education increasingly emphasise the development of soft skills. Commonly conceptualised as multidimensional constructs encompassing knowledge, abilities, and attitudes, these competences enable individuals to act effectively across different contexts while supporting employability, social participation, and lifelong learning. Building on this, the present contribution explores the mechanisms by which different types of informal peer relationships contribute to the development of students’ soft skills at school. Data were collected through a survey conducted across 28 high schools in Southern Italy, involving approximately 1,500 final-year students grouped into 91 classes. The questionnaire administered included both a validated soft skills psychometric scale and network-based questions related to different types of connections among classmates, from friendship to appraisal support. A two-step analytical approach was implemented. First, graded response models were used to derive students’ soft skill scores. Then, network autocorrelation models were applied to estimate the extent to which peer relationships shape individual competences. The results show how friendship and emotional support encourage self-confidence, openness, empathy, collaboration and problem solving, while task-oriented connections mainly reinforce commitment and curiosity. These findings can support educators and policymakers in identifying new intervention strategies, underscoring the importance of integrating peer-based and guided learning activities that embed social interactions.
This paper analyses functional income inequality at the individual level using data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) for 19 Eurozone countries over the period 2008–2022. It integrates the personal and functional distribution of income by developing a typology of income groups based on women’s and men’s relationships to production and distribution processes, including state intervention and inter- and intra-family transfers. To address the limitations of equivalised income measures from a gender perspective, the paper proposes individualising income through four stylised income-sharing scenarios, ranging from full pooling to complete individualisation. The results show that official income measures tend to underestimate poverty rates for both men and women and that both within- and between-income group inequalities represent important dimensions of economic disparity.
This study explores the impact of increasing wives' market value, quantified as wage, on intra-household tradeoffs using evidence in Japan. Employing a Difference-in-Difference approach, this study assesses the effects of minimum wage hikes on wives' relative income and time allocation within households. Analysis of the Japanese Household Panel Survey reveals that raising the minimum wage reduces the gender wage gap by encouraging wives, especially those with young children, to enter the labor force and work longer hours. Wives without young children increase their employment and reduce investments in home production, while those with young children sacrifice leisure time. In contrast to wives, husbands display limited responsiveness to the minimum wage hikes. The study underscores that narrowing the gender wage gap alone, without addressing disparities in areas like home production, could disproportionally burden women, emphasizing the need for comprehensive policy interventions.
Can welfare institutions affect the quantity of human life? While the question may seem grandiose, years of welfare state retrenchment and the COVID-19 pandemic have refocused attention on government intervention in people’s lives. Scholars have long been concerned with the impact of the welfare state on different outcomes, primarily economic and social. More recent focus has shifted to the impact of welfare policy on human well-being. Still, this literature suffers from at least two drawbacks: an overriding focus on high-income countries and emphasis on subjective well-being. In this article, we try to address these drawbacks by examining multiple dimensions of human longevity, including life expectancy, life expectancy inequality, maternal mortality, and healthy life years, using a panel dataset covering countries at varying levels of development over multiple decades. We begin by documenting global trends in these outcomes and in welfare regimes over time (1990–2023). We then assess the relationship between welfare institutions and longevity indicators using pooled panel models and specifications with two-way fixed effects (2006–2022). Finally, we discuss some illustrative cases. Our findings indicate that more generous welfare regimes are associated with higher levels in the quantity of life overall. Implications for the study of the relationship between the welfare state and well-being are discussed.
With growing workplace flexibility, an increasing number of studies highlight the pivotal role of work schedules and location in understanding the resources and constraints for working families. This paper uses Latent Class Analysis (LCA) on data from the 2019 Korean Time Use Survey (KTUS) to identify a typology among heterosexual dual-earner couples in South Korea, by investigating multidimensional aspects of working time, encompassing working hours (number of hours worked), schedules (daytime vs. evening/night) and location (on-site vs. working from home). We identified four working time patterns: (1) “dual-standard”, (2) “dual-ideal”, (3) “mismatch”, and (4) “neo-traditional”. Our results show that women’s work adaptations, through reduced hours, evening/night schedules, or working from home, largely drive the differences between couple types. The presence of preschool children significantly alters couple dynamics, often pushing mothers out of the ‘ideal worker’ market and encouraging strategic desynchronisation of schedules between partners to manage childcare. By moving beyond the traditional part-time/full-time dichotomy, this paper provides a new way of approaching couples’ working patterns, which can potentially improve our understanding of work and family well-being.
We propose a novel methodology that allows to fully rank distributions of bundles of multidimensional ordinal attributes that contribute either positively or negatively to social welfare. Given the incomparability of some of the ordinal attributes, we rely on concepts borrowed from the partially ordered set (poset) and fuzzy set theories to address the measurement challenges arising from the incomplete orderings of attribute profiles. We incorporate a rank-based fuzzification technique into Hammond-type distribution function. This methodology takes into account the inherent incomparability among some attribute profiles and compare distributions using two dominance criteria: an extended Hammond dominance, which is sensitive to within-distribution inequality and social welfare dominance which also embeds concerns for efficiency. We illustrate our methodology using two applications: one on individual health and the other on household amenities using data from selected developing countries.
This study examines whether cross-national differences in adolescents’ financial literacy are associated not only with structural economic conditions but also with broader cultural value orientations. Using data from 20 countries and economies participating in the PISA 2022 financial literacy assessment, multilevel models were estimated that incorporated Hofstede’s six cultural dimensions, along with national economic (GDP per capita and GINI) and student-level indicators (socioeconomic status and gender). In the initial model, long-term orientation was positively associated with adolescent students’ achievement in financial literacy. After accounting for these economic and student-level indicators, uncertainty avoidance and indulgence were positively associated with financial literacy outcomes, whereas the association of long-term orientation was attenuated. The findings suggest that cultural indicators are linked to between-country variation in adolescent financial literacy, even when accounting for a broad range of socio-structural factors. By conceptualizing adolescent financial literacy as a developmental social indicator, this study contributes to research on social stratification, inequality, and cross-national differences in early-life economic capability. Cross-national examination of adolescent financial literacy using PISA 2022 data. Cultural dimensions were associated with variation in financial literacy across participating countries and economies. Uncertainty avoidance showed the most robust association across models. Cultural values were linked to between-country differences beyond economic conditions. Findings highlight adolescent financial literacy as a potential early-life social indicator.
This study empirically examines the underlying dynamics of Inglehart’s Silent Revolution in South Korea. Previous research indicates that shifts in postmaterialist values can be explained by three theoretical frameworks—the life cycle hypothesis, the issue-salience hypothesis, and the socialization hypothesis—which respectively correspond to age, period, and cohort (APC) effects. Accurately evaluating the complex mechanisms of this value shift requires decomposing these effects. To overcome the inherent APC identification problem, this study applies bounding analysis, which makes its identifying assumptions explicit and transparent rather than relying on conventional arbitrary statistical constraints. Furthermore, the empirical analysis draws upon a pooled dataset combining the World Values Survey and representative nationwide survey data spanning over three decades (1990–2025). The findings reveal dual dynamics in value change. First, regarding the linear cohort effect, a consistently positive trajectory was identified, supporting the premise of the Silent Revolution that cumulative modernization drives a long-term directional shift. Second, however, this linear trend is complicated by a distinct nonlinear inverted U-shaped cohort effect. The younger generation, facing existential threats, shows a regression toward materialist values related to survival. Consistent with the life cycle hypothesis, materialist tendencies were found to increase with age. These results suggest that while the underlying momentum of the Silent Revolution is firmly active in South Korea, it is significantly refracted by distinct historical experiences and the existential threats faced by specific cohorts.
Rising life expectancy and population ageing necessitate a better understanding of quality of later life in rapidly ageing societies like India. As this country undergoes a rapid demographic transition, it is anticipated to have a significantly higher proportion of older adults in the future. This study tries to shed light on the well-being of the older-adult population in India and its major states by employing the novel ‘Years of Good Life’ (YoGL) indicator. According to the YoGL approach, a person-year is counted as ‘good’ if spent simultaneously out of poverty, free from severe activity limitations and cognitive impairments, along with positive life satisfaction. Thus, rather than focusing merely on the fulfillment of material wants and needs, this index is based on ‘capabilities’. Our YoGL estimates for Indian states reveal substantial sub-national variation in well-being by gender and place of residence. Despite enjoying higher life expectancy, females can expect to enjoy considerably fewer good years than males. At age 60, YoGL for rural women is 4.6 years (less than one fourth of their remaining life expectancy), while YoGL for urban males is 10.2 years (around half of their remaining life expectancy). Decomposition analyses reveal that males are losing good life to poor functional health while females are being penalized in YoGL-terms due to cognitive impairment. We conclude that YoGL can be an effective socio-demographic tool for measuring and monitoring human well-being at the sub-national level to provide potential inputs for policy framing in India.
In the wake of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Poland has become a key destination for not only economic migrants (pre-war migrants), but also war refugees (post-war migrants) from Ukraine. This study attends to the levels and changes in their subjective well-being (SWB) in times of the war using data from two-wave surveys, of 932 Ukrainian migrants and of 941 Poles - collected in 2024. Employing a Cross-Lagged Panel Model, we assess reciprocal relations over time to better understand longitudinal links in SWB dynamics. Particularly, we examine how absolute and relative income contribute to SWB (disaggregated into life satisfaction, positive, and negative affects) among Ukrainian migrants versus Poles. Findings show that Ukrainians’ SWB is lower, less stable, and more strongly associated with income variables than Poles’ SWB. Both absolute and relative income emerged as temporal predictors of life satisfaction (but not affective SWB), particularly among pre-war migrants, with income comparisons to other migrants being more closely linked to their SWB than comparisons with Poles. For post-war migrants facing numerous non-economic challenges such as trauma and family separation, intangible factors seem to be more important for their SWB which is also lower than among pre-war migrants. Additionally, higher levels of negative affect predict a decline in relative income of post-war migrants, i.e., their social position in a migrant group. Our results highlight the complexity and importance of income comparisons for migrants’ life satisfaction acknowledging the smaller role of tangible factors in shaping SWB among forced migrants.
Establishing the features associated with eustress—the positive experience of a challenging situation—is essential for understanding and fostering eustress effectively in applied settings. Using the Situated Assessment Method, we conducted a pre-registered study in which 251 UK adults evaluated eustress in 20 real-life challenging situations (e.g., “Give a public speech in front of a large audience”). Participants also evaluated nine processes that potentially influence eustress in these situations, taken from the Comprehensive Hierarchical construct of Eustress, CHE (e.g., successful outcomes, fulfilment, positive affect). Finally, in a multilevel design, participants completed unsituated trait measures for eustress, distress, and stress mindset. Reliable individual differences were observed in average eustress judgments across situations (a trait-level measure), along with substantial situation effects and a large individual by situation interaction. The nine influential processes correlated strongly with eustress across situations, indicating high construct and content validity (explaining a median variance of 83
Rapid social transformation in China has reshaped everyday social interaction as mobility increases and encounters with unfamiliar others become more common, raising questions about how social trust influences subjective well-being. Existing research typically treats trust either as an individual disposition or as a contextual social resource, leaving unclear how changes in both individual and community trust relate to well-being. Using panel data from the China Family Panel Studies (2012–2020) and individual fixed-effects models, this study examines how changes in generalized and domain-specific trust relate to life satisfaction across urban and rural China. Results show that increases in individual generalized trust are consistently associated with higher life satisfaction, while the association for community-level generalized trust is more sensitive to contextual setting and model specification. At the individual level, trust in embedded relations and institutional actors is positively associated with life satisfaction, whereas trust in socially distant others exhibits less consistent and more context-dependent associations. At the community level, higher neighborhood trust was positively associated with life satisfaction, particularly in rural areas, whereas stranger trust tended to exhibit negative associations with life satisfaction, especially within rural samples and models accounting for other trust domains. The findings suggest that the well-being implications of trust vary systematically across relational domains and community contexts, indicating that different forms of trust may carry distinct well-being implications rather than uniformly functioning as supportive social resources in rapidly changing societies.
The present article investigates the interplay of tied migration, job quality, and subjective well-being. When partnered individuals move to a different country, one partner is often the driving force behind the migration, while the other might not have migrated if they had been single. The latter person, the so-called tied migrant, often faces considerable disadvantages after the move. In this context, this study investigates the effect of tied migration on job satisfaction and the extent to which this possible association might be explained by overeducation. Using the German Emigration and Remigration Panel Study (GERPS) with an analytical sample of 1,264 individuals, we estimate RE and FE models. We find a higher risk of overeducation as well as lower job satisfaction among tied migrants. However, results provide only little support that the lower job satisfaction among tied migrants works through a higher probability of overeducation. Considering different patterns over time, we find that lead migrants’ job satisfaction decreases faster than tied migrants’ job satisfaction. These results provide important insights into within-couple inequalities in the context of international migration from a privileged origin country, emphasizing the importance to consider both objective and subjective labour market outcomes.
