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Monthly Archives: March 2012
An Emotional Rollercoaster: Trends in Subjective Wellbeing During the Economic Downturn
Since 2008 Gallup has polled a random sample of 1,000 Americans daily (link here) about their subjective well-being. The data provide a rich basis for examining the short-run effects of the economic recession on self-reported happiness, life evaluation, and stress. … Continue reading
Posted in Blog posts
Tagged economic downturn, ethics, happiness, public opinion, subjective wellbeing
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The harms of hidden research – Part II
Last week I wrote about the need for transparency in inequalities research – how hidden research both reduces the truthfulness of its claims, and how it works against the collective nature of social science. This week I want to finish off my … Continue reading
Bringing Religion Back into the Study of Health Inequality
It’s a story that is recounted in every introductory sociology course: in the 1890s Emile Durkheim conducted a groundbreaking study to understand the variations and causes of suicide within industrializing French society. As Durkheim discovered, religious affiliation was a major … Continue reading
Posted in Blog posts
Tagged health, religion, social determinants of health, theorising inequality
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The harms of hidden research
It’s all about the ‘killer facts’. If you want to get social science into policy, then – as Alex Stevens’ wonderful covert ethnography of high-level policymaking shows – killer facts are the name of the game. And we try hard on … Continue reading
Does College Make You Liberal?
“President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob… There are good decent men and women who go out and work hard every day and put their skills to test that aren’t taught … Continue reading
Posted in Articles
Tagged education, political attitudes, politics of inequality, public opinion
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The mysterious non-claiming unemployed
Throughout the financial crisis there’s been a puzzle gnawing at me, which seems critically important – yet has been barely mentioned. It’s glaringly obvious when looking at the BBC news reports after every release of the unemployment figures, the latest … Continue reading
Why don’t we want to pay unemployment benefits? Pt.2
This is part two of my duo of posts on why support for unemployment benefits seems to have crashed over the last 15-20 years. Last time I focused on what’s been going on in people’s heads. I argued that people … Continue reading
Income, health, and payday deaths
It’s hardly news that poorer people have worse health on average – but teasing apart the link of income and health is harder. The income-health gradient could be because people lose income when they have health problems, or it could … Continue reading
