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Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- List of illustrations -- Figures -- Tables -- Preface -- Chapter 1: Introduction -- Societal problems as public bads -- A brief history of the problematic society -- When does a problem become a societal problem? -- Social norms and the organization of society -- A typology of goods -- A selection of ten societal problems -- Bibliography -- Chapter 2: Analytical framework -- Social scientific explanations -- Understanding individual actors -- Complex aggregations: How micro-level actions translate into macro-level outcomes -- Macro-micro-macro explanations using social mechanisms -- Authority structures: Principal-agent relations -- Problems due to information asymmetry: Moral hazard and adverse selection -- Recommended readings -- Bibliography -- Chapter 3: The promises and pitfalls of state intervention -- Varieties of state intervention -- The rise of industrial capitalism and growing state intervention -- Government expansion and the engineerability of society -- Challenges to state intervention: New demands and limitations -- Political processes and governments' toolkit -- Recommended readings -- Bibliography -- Chapter 4: Welfare states: Affordability and perverse incentives -- Worlds of welfare -- The development of the welfare state -- How different welfare states manage social risks -- The costs and effectiveness of welfare states -- Welfare states and the problem of perverse incentives -- Limits to the welfare state -- Future threats to the welfare state -- Recommended readings -- Bibliography -- Chapter 5: Population growth while fertility drops -- Population growth throughout the centuries -- The demographic transition model -- Explanations of fertility levels -- Shifting age distributions -- Rapid population growth and overpopulation -- Population ageing.

Studies of the influence of class and religion on politics often point to their gradual decline as a result of social change. Backed up by extensive evidence from 11 case studies and a 15-country pooled analysis, the editors argue instead that the supply of choices by parties influences the extent of class divisions: political choice matters.

AbstractThis study examines how the religious composition of a local U.S. population shapes an individual's religious involvement. We reconsider Berger's plausibility thesis and unpack its theoretical mechanisms by (1) conceptualizing religious diversity from each religious group's perspective, because a specific local religious environment has different implications depending on one's religion; (2) decomposing the diversity of the population into the religious outgroup's share and diversity; and (3) including non-affiliated as part of local religious contexts. Furthermore, we adjust for the detailed categories of religious family in a multilevel framework, which addresses the problem of non-substantive correlation and potential heterogeneity among religious groups. Focusing on Protestants, Catholics, and non-affiliated, the analysis reveals that although religious diversity, especially the share of the religious outgroup, tends to be associated negatively with an individual's religious involvement, there are important differences in how religious diversity is related to religiosity among different religious groups including Protestants and Catholics.

The Erikson Goldthorpe & Portocarero class scheme (EGP) has evolved to the Standard indicator of class positions in international research. Critique with respect to the EGP service class is related to criticism regarding 'The Constant Flux' (Erikson & Goldthorpe 1992). This work is mainly concerned with the classical theme of the shift from agriculture to industry and it neglects the important 'post-industrial' distinction between the industrial and service sector, This criticism particularly applies to the 'service class' as conceptualized by the EGP class scheme. It does not take important institutional changes in post-industrial society into account. Consequently, the life styles and beliefs of the 'service class' show a large amount of variation. We therefore propose to modify the EGP-class scheme by distinguishing the 'social and cultural specialists' within the service class. Using the Dutch Family Survey (1992/93) we show that this adjustment of the EGP-class scheme is an improvement with respect to the explanation of a variety of attitudes and behaviour. The finding that our results hold after controlling for relevant predictors such as education, signifies the importance of our revision of the EGP-class scheme.

RESEARCH ON AGGREGATE GENERATIONAL CHANGES IN POSTMATERIALIST VALUES INDICATES THAT COHORT AND LIFE CYCLE EFFECTS ARE PRESENT, BUT DOES NOT IDENTIFY PRECISELY THE CAUSES OF OBSERVED AGE DIFFERENCES. USING DATA FROM THE 8-NATION POLITICAL ACTION STUDY AND MACRO-LEVEL INDICATORS, THIS ARTICLE EXAMINES THE IMPACT OF BOTH INDIVIDUAL LEVEL AND CONTEXTUAL FACTORS ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN YEAR OF BIRTH AND POSTMATERIALISM. VALUE CHANGE IS FOUND TO BE IN THE MAIN ACCOUNTED FOR BY LEVELS OF EDUCATION AND SEVERITY OF WAR-TIME EXPERIENCE - VARIABLES WHICH HAVE NOT USUALLY BEEN GIVEN A CENTRAL ROLE IN INGLEHART'S THEORY, WHEREAS THE EFFECTS OF SEVERAL MEASURES OF FORMATIVE AFFLUENCE - A KEY ELEMENT OF THE THEORY - ARE NOT SIGNIFICANT. THESE RESULTS ARE TAKEN TO SUGGEST THAT THE POSTMATERIALISM SCALE DOES NOT MEASURE POST-"MATERIALISM," BUT INDEXES INSTEAD VALUES PERTAINING TO PROGRESSIVE LIBERALISM. IT FOLLOWS THAT THE POLITICAL CONSEQUENCES OF VALUE CHANGE ARE LIKELY TO DIFFER SOMEWHAT FROM THOSE PROPOSED BY THE THEORY.

An empirical test of hypotheses that explain Left/Right political preferences on the basis of economic self-interest or of status. The diagonal mobility models developed by Michael E. Sobel (see SA 30:3/82M2954) are applied to survey data from the Netherlands for 1970/71 & 1977. The hypothesis that yields the best fitting model is that based on the assumption that individuals behave according to economic self-interest, but with a time-lag before taking on the political preferences of a newly entered status category. Macro-effects on society can thus be expected to reflect net structural mobility rather than total mobility, as would be suggested by status hypotheses. 10 Tables, 30 References. Modified HA

AbstractHow are one's own education, father's education, and especially the combination of the two, related to self‐assessed health across European societies? In this study, we test hypotheses about differences in self‐assessed health between 16 post‐socialist countries in Central and Eastern Europe and 17 Western European countries. We find substantial cross‐national variation in the (relative) importance of own and father's education for self‐assessed health. Over 65 per cent of this cross‐national variation is accounted for by the East–West divide. This simple dichotomy explains cross‐national differences better than gross domestic product or income inequality. An individual's father's education is more important, both in absolute and relative terms, for self‐assessed heath in Eastern Europe than in Western Europe. Intergenerational mobility moderates the relative effects of one's own and one's father's education. In Eastern Europe the relative importance of one's father's education is greater than it is in Western Europe – particularly for those who are downwardly mobile and have a father with tertiary education. The results are sometimes contradictory to initial expectations; the theoretical implications are discussed.