This article draws from an ongoing debate over explanations of homicide. Within this debate, we investigate the pro-social effects of civil society and social capital. Few cross-national studies explore whether elements of social capital either increase or decrease homicide. The cross-national work that does is often characterized by small,…

This study attempts to examine relative income effects on perceived happiness in three major Asian countries--China, Japan, and Korea--in comparison with the United Sates, on the basis of largely comparable nationwide surveys in these countries. Consistent with the results from previous studies in Western countries, comparisons with an…

Social capital has been studied by academics for more than 20 years and within the past decade there has been an explosion of growth in research linking social capital to health. This paper investigates social capital in Hamilton, Ontario by way of a telephone survey of 1,002 households in three neighbourhood groups representing high, mixed and…

Resilience is desirable for promotion as a resource for international students to sustain adjustment and withstand stress. A yet uncertain way for the promotion is the student's connectedness with host or local people. To ascertain the benefit of local connectedness, this study surveyed 215 sojourn students originating from Mainland China who…

How do we assess how happy we are? One theory is that we compare life-as-it-is with standards of how-life-should-be. In this view, happiness emerges from a cognitive evaluation that draws on socially constructed standard of the good life. Another theory holds that we rather infer happiness on the basis of how well we feel most of the time. In that…

Two studies investigate subjective wellbeing (SWB) homeostasis. The first investigates the contribution of job satisfaction (JS) and partner satisfaction (PS) to the homeostatic defense of SWB. The extant model of homeostasis does not include either variable. The second study investigates the relationship between Homeostatically Protected Mood…

The various forms of social solidarity are empirically uncharted, especially in relation to social harmony. With respect to resource exchange theory, inclusive solidarity or intergroup acceptance is more conducive to social harmony than mechanical, organic, distributive, and dialogic forms of solidarity. The theoretical prediction holds in the…

The concept of social capital has become very popular but its definition and measurement are still rather unclear. We frame our study in one of its components, social participation. In this article we develop an optimal measure for social participation based on the questions asked in the first round of the European Social Survey. Our analyses…

We analyze data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey waves 1-6, to investigate whether the housework and childcare contributions of coupled Australian men with one child affect the likelihood that their wives will have a second child. We find no evidence that the way housework or childcare is shared has an…

Sleep duration has figured into claims of two trends promoted recently as dysfunctional in the mass media. One is the observation that the population at large is sleeping less than before. The second is that the annual change from Standard Time to Daylight Savings (or summer) Time causes adverse effects, largely through the loss of an hour's…

This paper investigates the association between institutional quality and generalized trust. Despite the importance of the topic, little quantitative empirical evidence exists to support either unidirectional or bidirectional causality for the reason that cross-sectional studies rarely model the reciprocal relationship between institutional…

Perception surveys remain an important tool to measure corruption. However, most existing perception surveys only analyze corruption at the national or international level, and do not provide information about corruption at local levels. But it is corruption in local areas that really influences the everyday life of ordinary people. In order to…

We report the initial findings of an ongoing, long-term investigation into subjective quality of life in Macau, a Special Administrative Region of China. Data were collected via quarterly public surveys (2007 to 2009; n = 8,230), as part of the Macau Quality of Life Report. The main aims of the study were to: (a) ascertain the public's…

I investigate the relationship between the popular Mercer city ranking (livability) and survey data (satisfactions). Livability aims to capture "objective" quality of life such as infrastructure. Survey items capture "subjective" quality of life such as satisfaction with city. The relationship between objective measures of quality of life and…

The study investigates the health effects of subjective class position stratified by objective social position. Four types of subjective class were analysed separately for individuals with manual or non-manual occupational background. The cross-sectional analysis is based on the Swedish Level-of-Living Survey from 2000 and includes 4,139…