HOMMERICH CAROLA

Abstract People who are socioeconomically better off tend to report higher levels of well-being, with inconsistent roles ascribed to objective socioeconomic status (SES), subjective SES (SSES), and personal relative deprivation (PRD)—depending on the predictors, facets of well-being, and countries under study. We tested a comprehensive model of social status indicators as determinants of subjective well-being by a) including PRD, SSES, income, and education as predictors, b) assessing subjective well-being as well as interdependent happiness (happiness in relation to significant others), c) testing the model in Japan, Germany, and the US—countries with comparable societal structure (e.g., educated, industrialized, rich, democratic) but diverging cultural dimensions, and d) testing an explanatory variable: feeling excluded from society. Cross-culturally (N = 2,155), PRD and SSES independently and strongly predicted well-being, while income and education exhibited negligible direct effects. SSES emerged as the predominant predictor in Japan compared to the US and Germany, whereas PRD was the predominant predictor in the US compared to Germany and, to a lesser extent, Japan. This was largely accounted for by culture-specific links of social status with perceived social exclusion—the extent to which people feel unable to keep up with society as a whole. Perceived social exclusion was more strongly linked to SSES in Japan compared to Germany and the US, and more strongly linked to PRD in the US than in Germany. The role of perceived social exclusion as an explanatory variable in the relationship between social status and subjective well-being merits further investigation within and between countries.

Since the economic boom of the 1970s, Japan was generally discussed as a mass middle-class society. This image was based less on objective status indicators and more on the fact that over 90% of Japanese self-identify as middle class. Even with an increase in income inequality and the onset of the discourse on Japan as a gap society since the mid-2000s, the distribution of self-identification has hardly changed. However, this does not mean that the objective shifts in Japan’s social structure have gone unnoticed by the population. The way objective changes have impacted evaluations of individual social status is simply more subtle: what has changed is not the distribution of how people self-identify, but rather the way their objective social status (measured via education, occupation and income) impacts their self-evaluation. Added up, the share of the population that places itself in the middle has not remarkably changed. But, whereas there was no clear concept of what it meant to be upper or lower middle in the mid-1980s, resulting in rather arbitrary self-placement, there now seems to be more awareness of distinctions also within the middle. As a result, self-placement has bec

While previous studies have established social capital as an important determinant of subjective well-being (SWB), the broader social context people are living in has not received much attention in terms of SWB. To address this issue, we propose the concept of social affiliation, measuring the feeling of belonging to the social whole, of being a respected and valued member of society. In contrast to standard concepts of social capital, social affiliation is not related to an individual’s direct environment (‘Gemeinschaft’), but concerns one’s relation to society (‘Gesellschaft’). Such a subjective evaluation of how an individual feels within a broader societal context is neither covered by traditional concepts of social capital nor by the concept of social cohesion which focuses on the macro level. A perception of oneself as living on the margins of society, of not being a respected member of society, is very likely to diminish subjective well-being. At the same time, it can be expected to not be completely unrelated to individual resources of social capital. Drawing on unique survey data from Japan, we analyze the triangle relationship between social capital, social affiliation and subjective well-being applying a structural equation model. Our results have two main implications. First, we show that social affiliation has an effect on subjective well-being that is independent from the effect of standard measures of social capital. Second, we find that social capital influences social affiliation, and thereby also has an indirect effect on subjective well-being. In terms of theory building our results suggest that social embeddedness has two elements which should be measured separately: a community dimension usually measured as social capital in terms of trust, personal networks and norms, and a societal dimension of being and feeling part of a ‘Gesellschaft’, measured as social affiliation.

<p>Within the booming field of research on subjective well-being, happiness and unhappiness have so far been treated as two ends of a continuum with causes and mechanisms being the same for both. Still, this is not self-evident. We here use the SSP2015 survey data to investigate whether happiness and unhappiness have the same determinants. To do so, we classify the respondents into three well-being groups: the "happier than average," the "average," and the "less happy than average." We conduct a multinomial logistic regression analysis to disentangle the effects of education depending on the level of happiness. Our results imply that (1) more education promotes happiness of unhappy people. At the same time, however, we find that (2) an increase in education reduces the happiness of happy people. This means that the impact of education on happiness is by no means straightforward, but that it can have opposing effects depending on the happiness level. This supports our hypothesis that some determinants have different effects on different happiness levels. It also implies that an enhancement of subjective well-being cannot be achieved in the same way for happy and unhappy people. Therefore, happiness and unhappiness turn out not to be two sides of the same coin.</p>

This paper analyzes the role of social connectedness in motivating citizens to take an active interest in society and to engage in communal activities. Japan is used as an example of a society which has been diagnosed with a weakening of social bonds, as well as with an increase in social inequality and precarity in recent years. Structural equation modeling was applied to data of a nationwide survey from 2009, to test the assumption that feelings of disconnectedness from society exert a negative effect on civic engagement that needs to be differentiated from effects of general social trust. Results support this hypothesis and further indicate that it is not socioeconomic precarity per se that lowers chances for civic engagement, but its negative impact on the subjective evaluation of both the quality of social networks and one's belonging to and value for society. As precarity, however, enforces the negative effects of low social capital, this implies that specially the socially disadvantaged are less likely to participate.

This paper presents preliminary results of an analysis of trust in governmental institutions and social networks after the disaster of 11 March 2011, as well as an investigation of the implication of such trust resources for subjective well-being. Using data from a postal survey carried out in the Tōhoku and Kanto region in September 2011, differences in trust resources are explored by regional proximity to the disaster area as well as by personal affliction. Levels of social trust prove to be generally high, whilst trust in governmental institutions is low, especially when personally affected by the disaster. Trust resources are shown to contribute positively to subjective well-being and thus to constitute an important asset in the process of coping with disaster. © 2012 The Japan Sociological Society.

With a period of economic recession, rising numbers of unemployed and an increase in non-regular employment, the situation on the German and the Japanese labour market has undergone a change over the past two decades. At the beginning of the twenty-first century a generation of newcomers entered working life under changed conditions. In this paper, I will analyse whether the individual perception of worsening chances on the labour market will have an effect on the attitudes to and expectations of work prevalent amongst young entrants to the labour market drawing upon Ronald Inglehart's theory of value change as a theoretical base. An analysis of qualitative interviews with Japanese Furita and members of the German 'Generation Internship' will explore whether patterns of work values can be identified that call for an extension of Inglehart's value concept of "materialist" versus "post-materialist", namely suggesting the existence of a 'precarious post-materialist'. The discussion concludes with a short analysis of quantitative data, to see whether this new value type might also be identified in a broader context.