Are American attitudes toward economic inequality different from those in other countries? One tradition in sociology suggests American “exceptionalism,” while another argues for convergence across nations in social norms, such as attitudes toward inequality. This article uses International Social Survey Program (ISSP) microdata to compare attitudes in different countries toward what individuals in specific occupations “do earn” and what they “should earn,” and to distinguish value preferences for more egalitarian outcomes from other confounding attitudes and perceptions. The authors suggest a method for summarizing individual preferences for the leveling of earnings and use kernel density estimates to describe and compare the distribution of individual preferences over time and cross-nationally. They find that subjective estimates of inequality in pay diverge substantially from actual data, and that although Americans do not, on the average, have different preferences for aggregate (in)equality, there is evidence for:

Job-Search Strategies in Canada 349 Analysis of which fish is "big enough" to keep (if you can only keep one) can be seen as similar to a discussion of the determinants of the reservation wage in job search-indeed, the "job-search" literature tends to emphasize this issue (see Jones 1988). In models such as those of Lippman and McCall (1979) or Narendranathan and Nickell (1985), job offers simply "arrive" at an exogenously determined rate. Indeed one might more accurately describe such models as theories of "job acceptance" rather than "job search," since they pay little attention to the process that generates job offers. Although the total effort that is devoted to job search has been discussed by authors such as Mortenson (1986), analysis of the process of job search has been "comparatively neglected" (Jones 1989, p.277). Devine and Kiefer (1991, chap. 7) comprehensively survey the literature on search strategies and offer arrival rates and conclude that "there are definite advances to be made in studying the process by which workers get offers (on the job or otherwise)" (1991, p. 308). An individual's choice of alternative job-search strategies can be seen as analogous to the choice of lure and location by which fishermen seek to maximize their chances of catching an acceptable fish. Analysis of the payoff in job-finding success to job-search strategies is complicated by the fact that individuals have different levels of skill and possess different resources, while fish (jobs) of various types are known to respond to different strategies. Moreover, if the government provides one type of gear free but bigger fish are usually caught by other methods, one can expect that those who use the free gear will typically be those whose alternative options are relatively poor. In all industrialized countries, the state intervenes directly in the process by which jobs and workers are matched by providing the services of public employment agencies. However, it has long been recognized (see Rees 1966) that relatively good jobs are usually found through "informal information networks" of personal contacts. Public employment agencies, by contrast, typically list jobs paying below average wages. Analysis of the social returns to state intervention is therefore greatly complicated by sample selectivity in job-search strategy choice. As well, job-search strategies may change over the business cycle. Cyclical dependency in the level and type of job-search effort expended arises because one can expect the jobless to change their search strategies in response to changes in the labor market constraints that they face. These changes in job-search strategies imply that the cost/benefit appraisal of public employment agencies will also vary over the business cycle. In this article, Section II discusses the process of job-search strategy choice. Section III describes briefly the characteristics of the microdata used here for analysis of job search in

Per capita gross domestic product (GDP) is a poor indicator of economic well–being. It measures effective consumption poorly (ignoring the value of leisure and of longer life spans) and it also ignores the value of accumulation for the benefit of future generations. Since incomes are uncertain and unequally distributed, the average also does not indicate the likelihood that any particular individual will share in prosperity or the degree of anxiety and insecurity with which individuals contemplate their futures. We argue that a better index of economic well–being should consider: current effective per capita consumption flows; net societal accumulation of stocks of productive resources; income distribution; and economic security. The paper develops such an index of economic well–being for the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, Norway and Sweden for the period 1980 to 1999. It compares trends in economic well–being to trends in GDP per person. In every case, growth in economic well–being was less than growth in GDP per capita, although to different degrees in different countries.

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractWe hypothesize that an individual's time use choices are contingent on the time use choices of others because the utility derived from leisure time often benefits from the presence of companionable others inside and outside the household. We develop a model of time use, and demonstrate that its consistency with the behaviour of British working couples in the 1990s. We present evidence of the synchronisation of working hours by spouses and report estimates indicating that propensities to engage in associative activity depend on the availability of Suitable Leisure Companions outside the household. Our results indicate the importance of externalities in the working time decisions of individuals. JEL classification numbers: D13, I31, J221

This paper estimates the impact of economic insecurity on the mental health of Australian adults. Taking microdata from the 2001-2011 HILDA panel survey, we develop a conceptually diverse set of insecurity measures and explore their relationships with the SF-36 mental health index. By using fixed effects models that control for unobservable heterogeneity we produce estimates that correct for endogeneity more thoroughly than previous works. Our results show that exposure to economic risks has small but consistently detrimental mental health effects. The main contribution of the paper however comes from the breadth of risks that are found to be harmful. Job insecurity, financial dissatisfaction, reductions and volatility in income, an inability to meet standard expenditures and a lack of access to emergency funds all adversely affect health. This suggests that the common element of economic insecurity (rather than idiosyncratic phenomena associated with any specific risk) is likely to be hazardous. Our preferred estimates indicate that a standard deviation shock to economic insecurity lowers an individual's mental health score by about 1.4 percentage points. If applied uniformly across the Australian population such a shock would increase the morbidity rate of mental disorders by about 1.7%.