Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques

A Treatise on the Family. G. S. Becker. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1981. Gary Becker is one of the most famous and influential economists of the second half of the 20th century, a fervent contributor to and expounder of the University of Chicago free-market philosophy, and winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in economics. Although any book with the word "treatise" in its title is clearly intended to have an impact, one coming from someone as brilliant and controversial as Becker certainly had such a lofty goal. It has received many article-length reviews in several disciplines (Ben-Porath, 1982; Bergmann, 1995; Foster, 1993; Hannan, 1982), which is one measure of its scholarly importance, and yet its impact is, I think, less than it may have initially appeared, especially for scholars with substantive interests in the family. This book is, its title notwithstanding, more about economics and the economic approach to behavior than about the family. In the first sentence of the preface, Becker writes "In this book, I develop an economic or rational choice approach to the family." Lest anyone accuse him of focusing on traditional (i.e., material) economics topics, such as family income, poverty, and labor supply, he immediately emphasizes that those topics are not his focus. "My intent is more ambitious: to analyze marriage, births, divorce, division of labor in households, prestige, and other non-material behavior with the tools and framework developed for material behavior." Indeed, the book includes chapters on many of these issues. One chapter examines the principles of the efficient division of labor in households, three analyze marriage and divorce, three analyze various child-related issues (fertility and intergenerational mobility), and others focus on broader family issues, such as intrafamily resource allocation. His analysis is not, he believes, constrained by time or place. His intention is "to present a comprehensive analysis that is applicable, at least in part, to families in the past as well as the present, in primitive as well as modern societies, and in Eastern as well as Western cultures." His tone is profoundly conservative and utterly skeptical of any constructive role for government programs. There is a clear sense of how much better things were in the old days of a genderbased division of labor and low market-work rates for married women. Indeed, Becker is ready and able to show in Chapter 2 that such a state of affairs was efficient and induced not by market or societal discrimination (although he allows that it might exist) but by small underlying household productivity differences that arise primarily from what he refers to as "complementarities" between caring for young children while carrying another to term. Most family scholars would probably find that an unconvincingly simple explanation for a profound and complex phenomenon. What, then, is the salient contribution of Treatise on the Family? It is not literally the idea that economics could be applied to the nonmarket sector and to family life because Becker had already established that with considerable success and influence. At its core, microeconomics is simple, characterized by a belief in the importance of prices and markets, the role of self-interested or rational behavior, and, somewhat less centrally, the stability of preferences. It was Becker's singular and invaluable contribution to appreciate that the behaviors potentially amenable to the economic approach were not limited to phenomenon with explicit monetary prices and formal markets. Indeed, during the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, he did undeniably important and pioneering work extending the domain of economics to such topics as labor market discrimination, fertility, crime, human capital, household production, and the allocation of time. Nor is Becker's contribution the detailed analyses themselves. Many of them are, frankly, odd, idiosyncratic, and off-putting. …

A Treatise on the Family

/pdf/the-precariat-the-new-dangerous-class-3tq7b7h7fg.pdf

The Precariat. The New Dangerous Class

Poverty in the United Kingdom

1 Introduction.- 2 The Concept of Happiness.- 2/1 The various meanings of the word happiness.- 2/2 Happiness defined.- 2/3 Components of happiness.- 2/4 Adjacent concepts.- 2/5 Synonyms of happiness.- 2/6 Summary.- 3 Can Happiness be Measured?.- 3/1 Validity problems.- 3/2 Reliability problems.- 3/3 Problems of comparison.- 3/4 Summary.- 4 Indicators of Happiness.- 4/1 Indicators of overall happiness.- 4/1.1 Direct questions.- 4/1.2 Indirect questions.- 4/1.3 Ratings by others.- 4/2 Indicators of hedonic level of affect.- 4/2.1 Direct questions.- 4/2.2 Indirect questions.- 4/2.3 Ratings by others.- 4/3 Indicators of contentment.- 4/4 Composites.- 4/5 Do the three kinds of indicators tap different phenomena?.- 4/6 Summary.- 5 Gathering the Available Data.- 5/1 Searching empirical happiness studies.- 5/2 The studies found.- 5/3 Presenting the findings.- 5/4 Limitations of the data.- 5/5 Summary.- 6 Happiness and Living Conditions.- 6/1 Happiness and society.- 6/1.1 Economic conditions.- 6/1.2 Political conditions.- 6/1.3 Peace and war.- 6/1.4 Some regional differences in happiness.- 6/2 Happiness and one's place in society.- 6/2.1 Gender.- 6/2.2 Age-differences.- 6/2.3 Minority status.- 6/2.4 Income.- 6/2.5 Education.- 6/2.6 Occupational prestige.- 6/2.7 Global social rank.- 6/3 Happiness and work.- 6/3.1 Having a job or not.- 6/3.2 Occupation.- 6/3.3 Voluntary work.- 6/4 Happiness and intimate ties.- 6/4.1 Marriage.- 6/4.2 Children.- 6/4.3 Friends and relatives.- 6/5 Summary.- 7 Happiness and Individual Characteristics.- 7/1 Happiness and personal resources.- 7/1.1 Physical health.- 7/1.2 General mental effectiveness.- 7/1.3 Specific abilities.- 7/1.4 Activity level.- 7/1.5 Richness of mental life.- 7/2 Happiness and some personality traits.- 7/2.1 Perceived fate control.- 7/2.2 Defensive strategies.- 7/2.3 Tendencies to like things.- 7/2.4 Time orientation.- 7/3 Happiness and lifestyle.- 7/4 Happiness and longings.- 7/5 Happiness and convictions.- 7/5.1 Happiness and ethical values.- 7/5.2 Religion.- 7/5.3 (Un)-conventionality of outlook.- 7/5.4 Views on happiness.- 7/6 Happiness and appreciations.- 7/6.1 Appreciation of oneself.- 7/6.2 Appreciation of other people.- 7/6.3 Appreciation of society.- 7/6.4 Appreciation of one's social position.- 7/6.5 Appreciation of one's work.- 7/6.6 Appreciation of leisure.- 7/6.7 Appreciation of one's living environment.- 7/6.8 Appreciation of one's health.- 7/6.9 Which global life-aspect-satisfactions are most closely related to happiness?.- 7/7 Summary.- 8 Antecedents of Happiness.- 8/1 Happiness and earlier living conditions.- 8/1.1 Conditions in youth.- 8/1.2 Earlier conditions in adulthood.- 8/2 Happiness and earlier personal characteristics.- 8/3 Summary.- 9 Conclusions.- 9/1 Conditions of happiness.- 9/1.1 Which correlates represent causes?.- 9/1.2 Variations in correlations.- 9/1.3 The correlates in context.- 9/1.4 Some lines for further research.- 9/2 Myths about happiness.- 9/2.1 The myth that modern western society is a sink of unhappiness.- 9/2.2 Myths about things that make for happiness in western societies.- 9/2.3 The myth that living conditions do not matter.- 9/2.4 The myth that happiness is not a significant matter.- References.- Author index.

Conditions for Happiness

https://local.disia.unifi.it/wp_disia/2014/wp_disia_2014_08.pdf

Is temporary employment damaging to health? A longitudinal study on Italian workers.

The generalized and relatively homogeneous fertility decline across European countries in the aftermath of the Great Recession poses serious challenges to our knowledge of contemporary low fertility patterns. In this paper, we argue that fertility decisions are not a mere “statistical shadow of the past”, and advance the Narrative Framework, a new approach to the relationship between economic uncertainty and fertility. This framework proffers that individuals act according to or despite uncertainty based on their “narrative of the future” – imagined futures embedded in social elements and their interactions. We also posit that personal narratives of the future are shaped by the “shared narratives” produced by socialization agents, including parents and peers, as well as by the narratives produced by the media and other powerful opinion formers. Finally, within this framework, we propose several empirical strategies, from both a qualitative and a quantitative perspective, including an experimental approach, for assessing the role of narratives of the future in fertility decisions.

/pdf/a-reflection-on-economic-uncertainty-and-fertility-in-europe-4v687o6a3q.pdf

A reflection on economic uncertainty and fertility in Europe: The Narrative Framework.

Environment, environmental protection and sustainability policies play a key role in social development and in the economic competitiveness of industrialized countries. Most European citizens are aware of the importance of environmental issues, both as a priority for the socio-economic system as a whole, and as a relevant factor in influencing quality of life. At the same time individual environmentally friendly behaviour is not widespread. In this framework, our question is: to what extent are positive attitudes strictly related to eco-friendly lifestyles? By applying a hierarchical logit model to recent Eurobarometer data (survey 68.2-2008), which provide information concerning the 27 European Union member countries, we focus on individual attitudes towards environmentally friendly behaviour with a threefold aim. Firstly, we will verify how this attitude changes in relation to socioeconomic characteristics. Secondly, we will investigate European citizens’ opinions on whether environmental defence is a personal responsibility of each individual or an institutional and political task, thus highlighting discrepancies between what individuals say and what they do. Thirdly, we will point out if differences in individual attitudes towards environmental protection exist among European Union countries, and if so which the main social, economic and cultural factors involved are.

https://ijer.ut.ac.ir/article_292_8cc44350030e3e3b0626a6f949966815.pdf

Eco-Friendly Attitudes: What European Citizens Say and What They Do

Explanations for fertility decisions based on structural constraints—such as labor, housing condition, or income—do not account for the contemporary fertility downturn faced by many countries in Europe. In this paper, we posit that the rise of uncertainty is central for understanding contemporary fertility dynamics. We propose a theoretical framework (the Narrative Framework) for the study of fertility decisions under uncertain conditions based on expectations, imaginaries and narratives. Relying on the idea of future–oriented action, we argue that uncertainty needs to be conceptualized and operationalized taking into account that people use works of imagination, producing their own narrative of the future. Narratives of the future are potent driving forces helping people to act according to or despite uncertainty. We present the different elements of the Narrative Framework and address its causal validity. We conclude by highlighting the advantages of taking into account the narratives of the future in fertility research.

/pdf/uncertainty-and-narratives-of-the-future-a-theoretical-33bdutltgm.pdf

Uncertainty and Narratives of the Future: A Theoretical Framework for Contemporary Fertility

Over the past decades, the number of couples who are cohabiting, or living together in an intimate union without marriage, has been increasing in many Western societies (Bumpass & Lu, 2000; Kiernan, 2002; Perelli-Harris et al., 2012). A central path of inquiry is whether there is a gap in the subjective well-being of cohabitors relative to married people, or a so-called cohabitation gap (Soons & Kalmijn, 2009). Some studies have reported that cohabitors have lower levels of life satisfaction and happiness and higher levels of depression than married people (Kim & McKenry, 2002; Kurdek, 1991; Soons & Kalmijn, 2009), and others have found that cohabitors are less committed to and satisfied with their partnerships than their married counterparts are (e.g., Brown & Booth, 1996; Nock, 1995; Stanley, Whitton, & Markman, 2004; Stutzer & Frey, 2006).There is evidence of spatial variation in the size of this cohabitation gap, however. Previous authors have shown that the gap is smaller in countries where cohabitation is more popular than in countries where this type of union is still a marginal phenomenon (Soons & Kalmijn, 2009; Wiik, Keizer, & Lappegard, 2012). They explained these cross-national differences in light of the level of diffusion of cohabitation in a society: In countries where the practice of cohabitation is more common and accepted, differences in the satisfaction levels between cohabitors and spouses tend to be smaller. In a similar vein, the diffusion of cohabitation has been suggested to reduce differences in union dissolution risks across union types (Liefbroer & Dourleijn, 2006). So far, however, the evidence that this is the case has been only indirect, because inferences were made by comparing countries with different levels of diffusion of cohabitation.This study provides direct evidence to evaluate whether the size of the cohabitation gap declines as cohabitation diffuses in a single country, Italy, a place where cohabitation does not yet represent an integral part of family life but is rapidly becoming more common. We assess the cohabitation gap by focusing on family satisfaction, one domain of overall life satisfaction that is closely related to union satisfaction.This article has two main objectives. First, we examine whether marriage and cohabitation are associated with different levels of family satisfaction and whether this cohabitation gap has weakened over time. Second, we investigate whether the gradual closing of the cohabitation gap is attributable to the diffusion of cohabitation in Italian society. Our analysis is based on data from 20 cross-sectional, nationally representative surveys collected by the Italian Institute of Statistics (Istat) from 1993 to 2013.BACKGROUNDMechanismsPrevious authors have focused on overall life satisfaction, relationship satisfaction, or level of commitment between partners as measures of the cohabitation gap. Some of these scholars have suggested that differences in the social meanings and legal status of cohabitation and marriage can lead to differences in the satisfaction levels of the partners. Others have argued that these differences arise because of a selection effect rather than the relationship form per se. We assume that such mechanisms also apply to explain differences in the assessment of family satisfaction across union types.In most European countries, cohabitation and marriage are-to use a term favored by Nock (1995)-"qualitatively" different. Marriage is a recognized social institution, defined by a legal contract that delineates the mutual rights, responsibilities, and obligations of the partners (Kamp Dush & Amato, 2005; Musick & Bumpass, 2012; Nock, 1995). This is not necessarily the case for cohabitation (Perelli-Harris & Sanchez Gassen, 2012). The public and legally recognized nature of marriage may also reduce partners' feelings of uncertainty about the future of the relationship while reinforcing the principle that spouses should support each other. …

/pdf/changes-in-the-satisfaction-of-cohabitors-relative-to-4zcmb3z82j.pdf

Elena Pirani

Papers

Is temporary employment damaging to health? A longitudinal study on Italian workers.

A reflection on economic uncertainty and fertility in Europe: The Narrative Framework.

Eco-Friendly Attitudes: What European Citizens Say and What They Do

Uncertainty and Narratives of the Future: A Theoretical Framework for Contemporary Fertility

Changes in the Satisfaction of Cohabitors Relative to Spouses over Time