Publication type
Journal Article
Author
Publication date
June 1, 2016
Summary:
This paper examines the intergenerational mobility trajectory (class) effects on social connection and, through this, on subjective well-being in contemporary UK society. Drawing on data from the United Kingdom Household Longitudinal Study, we measured four types of formal and informal social network (civic engagement, neighbourhood cohesion, diversity and size of social networks) and used three indictors for well-being. We find that social network does play a significant role on well-being but the impact is much smaller than that of class. We also find that class is more closely related to the formal than the informal domains of social network. Demographic attributes show some influences but social network, employment, and prior levels of well-being in particular, have more salient effects on well-being. Over and above all this, class as an indicator of cumulative advantages and disadvantages has a persistent and systematic influence. Overall, the analysis shows that while enriching social connection would contribute to well-being, reducing class-based inequality is of greater importance.
Published in
Contemporary Social Science
Volume and page numbers
Volume: 11 , p.222 -237
DOI
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21582041.2016.1190860
ISSN
21582041
Subjects
Notes
© 2016 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group Academy of Social Sciences
Open Access
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
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