Social diversity and social cohesion in Britain.

We use data from a large-scale and nationally representative survey to examine whether there is in Britain a trade-off between social diversity and social cohesion. Using six separate measures of social cohesion (generalised trust, volunteering, giving to charity, inter-ethnic friendship, and two neighbourhood cohesion scales) and four measures of social diversity (ethnic fractionalisation, religious fractionalisation, percentage Muslim, and percentage foreign-born), we show that, net of individual covariates, there is a negative association between social diversity and most measures of social cohesion. But these associations largely disappear when neighbourhood deprivation is taken into account. These results are robust to alternative definitions of neighbourhood. We also investigate the possibility that the diversity--cohesion trade-off is found in more segregated neighbourhoods. But we find very little evidence to support that claim. Overall, it is material deprivation, not diversity, that undermines social cohesion.

Anywheres, Somewheres, local attachment, and civic participation.

We use data from Understanding Society to evaluate several claims advanced by David Goodhart in The Road to Somewhere. We show that geographically mobile individuals are indeed more likely to support Remain in the EU referendum, as Goodhart suggests. But Remainers are no different to Leavers in how attached they are to their local community. And people reporting higher level of civic participation or those who are more trusting are actually less supportive of Brexit. Our findings suggest that the dichotomy between cosmopolitan Anywheres and communitarian Somewheres is a misleading one. Cosmopolitan Anywheres are just as communitarian as Somewheres, if not more so.

Understanding the social and cultural bases of Brexit.

We use data from a large scale and nationally representative survey to evaluate two narratives about the social bases of Brexit. The first narrative sees Brexit as a revolt of the economically left-behinds. The second narrative attributes Brexit to the resurgence of an English nationalism. There is some, albeit not always consistent, evidence that people in relative poverty or those living in areas that have seen greater Chinese import penetration are slightly more pro-Leave. People living in economically deprived neighborhoods are not more pro-Brexit. Using the Weberian class-status distinction, it is social status, not social class, which stratifies Brexit support. Individuals for whom being British is important are more pro-Leave. But those who see themselves as British rather than English, and those reporting omnivorous cultural consumption are less supportive of Brexit. Overall, there is empirical support for both narratives. But the weight of the evidence suggests a strong cultural dimension in Brexit support.

Family size and educational attainment in England and Wales.

In this paper, we use linked census data from England and Wales to investigate whether having a large number of siblings leads to lower educational attainment. There is a large literature suggesting that with large sibship size, parental resources will be diluted and this, in turn, will lead to lower educational attainment. Using twin births and the sex composition of the sibling group as instrumental variables, we find that the evidence of a family size effect on educational attainment is rather uncertain. Similar results are obtained when we use occupational attainment as the dependent variable. We also demonstrate the confounding of birth order and family size effects, and show that an adjusted birth order index proposed by Booth and Kee provides an effective solution to this estimation problem.

Understanding cultural omnivores: social and political attitudes.

In this paper, I use data from the British Household Panel Survey and Understanding Society to investigate the social and political attitudes of cultural omnivores. I report a threefold typology of cultural consumption in the domains of music and visual arts that is consistent with previous research. Then by linking data across the two panel surveys, I show that cultural omnivores have quite a distinctive profile of social attitudes. Specifically, omnivores are more trusting and risk-taking. They hold more favourable views about the European Union, and they tend to eschew subnational identities. Omnivores are politically more engaged. But they are not more 'class conscious', nor are they particularly left-wing or right-wing on distributional issues. When asked what is important to the sense of who they are, the two most important status-conferring attributes, that is, profession and education, are not more salient to omnivores than to others. But omnivores are more extravert and open to new experiences. Taken together, these results suggest that omnivorousness is an expression of cosmopolitan postmaterialism rather than a new form of distinction.

Do terrorist attacks affect ethnic discrimination in the labour market? Evidence from two randomized field experiments.

Terrorist attacks are known to influence public opinion. But do they also change behaviour? We address this question by comparing the results of two identical randomized field experiments on ethnic discrimination in hiring that we conducted in Oslo. The first experiment was conducted before the 2011 terrorist attacks in Norway; the second experiment was conducted after the attacks. In both experiments, applicants with a typical Pakistani name were significantly less likely to get a job interview compared to those with a typical Norwegian name. But the ethnic gap in call-back rates were very similar in the two experiments. Thus, Pakistanis in Norway still experienced the same level of discrimination, despite claims that Norwegians have become more positive about migrants after the far-right, anti-migrant terrorist attacks of 2011.

Social mobility and the well-being of individuals.

Several papers published in recent years have revived interest in Sorokin's dissociative thesis: the view that intergenerational social mobility has detrimental effects on the social relationships and wellbeing of individuals. In this paper, I test the dissociative thesis using data from the British Household Panel Survey and Understanding Society. On a wide range of indicators that measure participation in civic associations, contact with parents, close personal relationships, social support, subjective wellbeing, etc. individuals who have achieved long-range upward mobility (i.e. those who move from working class origin to salariat destination) tend to fare better than those who are immobile in the working class. Those who have experienced long-range downward mobility (moving from salariat origin to working class destination) do about as well as second-generation members of the working class. Overall, there is no support for Sorokin's thesis.

Residential proximity of parents and their adult offspring in the United Kingdom, 2009-10.

Using data from a large household survey representative of the UK population, we studied how closely parents and adult children live to each other. We show that residential mobility over the life course tends to increase with the physical distance between the homes of parent and child. There are large differences in intergenerational proximity between the foreign-born and UK-born, and between ethnic groups. The determinants of intergenerational proximity from the parent's viewpoint are not identical to those from the child's viewpoint. Contrary to the findings of some earlier studies, intergenerational proximity, from the child's viewpoint, does not vary with the number of siblings. But from the parent's viewpoint, having more children is unambiguously associated with a higher probability of living close to at least one child. We end with a brief discussion of some possible implications of several long-term demographic trends in the UK for intergenerational proximity.

Psychometric testing of the Chinese quality of recovery score.

BACKGROUND: We evaluated a Chinese translation of the quality of recovery (QoR) score for measuring health status in patients after surgery and anesthesia. METHODS: The Chinese QoR score was developed by a panel of linguistic experts using a series of forward and backward translations. We then compared the psychometric performance of the Chinese QoR score with the original English version in bilingual Chinese patients undergoing a variety of surgeries. Using a crossover design, 210 patients were randomly assigned to complete both versions of the QoR score, 1 h apart, in the morning after surgery according to one of the two sequences: Chinese followed by the English QoR score or the reverse order. Test-retest and interrater reliabilities were calculated by comparing scores administered 6-8 h later and those completed by the patients and duty nurses, respectively. RESULTS: Patient responses to the Chinese QoR score agreed well with the English version (weighted kappa statistic, kappaw=0.92). Both QoR scores correlated with patient satisfaction scores (Chinese version, rho=0.82; English version, rho=0.79) confirming convergent validity. There was also significant negative correlation between the QoR scores and female gender, duration of hospital stay, or magnitude of surgery (discriminant construct validity). We found the Chinese QoR score has good internal consistency (Cronbach's rho=0.91), interobserver (kappaw=0.77), and test-retest reliability (kappaw=0.83). These values were similar to those of the original English version (Cronbach's rho=0.89, interobserver kappaw=0.84, test-retest reliability kappaw=0.88). CONCLUSION: The Chinese QoR score is conceptually, semantically, and operationally equivalent to the English version. Both scales provide valid, reliable, and responsive assessment of the QoR after surgery and anesthesia.

Proximity of couples to parents: influences of gender, labor market, and family.

We use household survey data from the UK to study how close middle-aged men and women in partnerships live to their parents and their partner's parents. We find a slight tendency for couples to live closer to the woman's parents than the man's. This tendency is more pronounced among couples in which neither partner has a college degree and in which there is a child. In other respects, proximity to parents is gender-neutral, with the two partners having equal influence on intergenerational proximity. Better-educated couples live farther from their parents. And although certain family characteristics matter, intergenerational proximity is primarily driven by factors affecting mobility over long distances, which are mainly associated with the labor market, as opposed to gender or family circumstances.