Sex and Age Differences in Levels of Anomia of Latvian Inhabitants

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From Mobike to no bike in Greater Manchester: Using the capabilities approach to explore Europe's first wave of dockless bike share

Globally, bike share schemes are an element of a rapidly changing urban transport landscape. Whilst many docked schemes are now embedded in cities around the world, the recent explosion of dockless systems provides an opportunity to evaluate claims that this form of shared mobility has the potential to alleviate common barriers to cycling, relieve congestion, boost low carbon travel, get people active, and reduce social exclusion. Drawing on a mixed methods study of 2270 online survey respondents and 27 interviews, all living in, working in or visiting Greater Manchester during a trial of dockless bike share, we explore the ways in which the technological, spatial and practical configuration of bike share schemes relate to a city's infrastructure and existing cycling practices. We question assertions that bike share provision necessarily results in increased rates of cycling and enhanced social inclusion. By using a capabilities approach and utlilising the concept of ‘conversion factors’ to describe the differing capacities or opportunities that people have to convert resources at their disposal into ‘capabilities’ or ‘functionings’, we show how the practice of bike sharing can influence a population's propensity to cycle, as well as how bike share interacts with established barriers to cycling. We find that many established barriers to cycling remain relevant, especially environmental factors, and that bike share creates its own additional challenges. We conclude that bike share operators must recognise the role of personal and social conversion factors more explicitly and be sensitive to the social and physical geography of cities, rather than assuming that a ‘one size fits all’ approach is adequate. To do this they should engage more closely with existing bodies, including transport authorities and local authorities, in co-creating bike share systems. Using the capabilities approach enables us to identify ways in which it could be made relevant and accessible to a more diverse population

A shorter working week for everyone: How much paid work is needed for mental health and well-being?

There are predictions that in future rapid technological development could result in a significant shortage of paid work. A possible option currently debated by academics, policy makers, trade unions, employers and mass media, is a shorter working week for everyone. In this context, two important research questions that have not been asked so far are: what is the minimum amount of paid employment needed to deliver some or all of the well-being and mental health benefits that employment has been shown to bring? And what is the optimum number of working hours at which the mental health of workers is at its highest? To answer these questions, this study used the UK Household Longitudinal Study (2009-2018) data from individuals aged between 16 and 64. The analytical sample was 156,734 person-wave observations from 84,993 unique persons of whom 71,113 had two or more measurement times. Fixed effects regressions were applied to examine how changes in work hours were linked to changes in mental well-being within each individual over time. This study found that even a small number of working hours (between one and 8 h a week) generates significant mental health and well-being benefits for previously unemployed or economically inactive individuals. The findings suggest there is no single optimum number of working hours at which well-being and mental health are at their highest - for most groups of workers there was little variation in wellbeing between the lowest (1-8 h) through to the highest (44-48 h) category of working hours. These findings provide important and timely empirical evidence for future of work planning, shorter working week policies and have implications for theorising the future models of organising work in society

Can Active Labour Market Programmes Emulate the Mental Health Benefits of Regular Paid Employment? Longitudinal Evidence from the United Kingdom

Funder: Cambridge Political Economy TrustActive Labour Market Programmes (ALMPs), which form important components of employment support policies around the world, have been found to improve mental health and wellbeing of participants. However, it remains unclear how these health effects compare with the effects of different types of employment for men and women. Using 1991–2019 panel data in the UK, we find that unemployed women derive similar mental health benefits from ALMPs compared with employment. Unemployed men also benefit from ALMPs but obtain significantly more health benefits from formal employment. Such benefits are particularly pronounced in full-time, permanent and upper/middle-status jobs. Further analyses reveal that programmes that deliver human capital training have larger mental health benefits than employment assistance ALMPs. These findings provide a more nuanced understanding of the mental health impacts of ALMPs compared with different types of employment, and highlight the need for a more gender-sensitive design in labour market interventions

Civil Liberties and Volunteering in Six Former Soviet Union Countries

To contribute to the debate as to whether volunteering is an outcome of democratization rather than a driver of it, we analyze how divergent democratization pathways in six countries of the former Soviet Union have led to varied levels of volunteering. Using data from the European Values Study, we find that Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia—which followed a Europeanization path—have high and increasing levels of civil liberties and volunteering. In Russia and Belarus, following a pre-emption path, civil liberties have remained low and volunteering has declined. Surprisingly, despite the Orange Revolution and increased civil liberties, volunteering rates in Ukraine have also declined. The case of Ukraine indicates that the freedom to participate is not always taken up by citizens. Our findings suggest it is not volunteering that brings civil liberties, but rather that increased civil liberties lead to higher levels of volunteerin

Making It Stick: The UK Four-Day Week Pilot One Year On

One year on from the results of the world’s biggest ever four-day working week pilot which took place in the UK in 2022, companies that took part have reported significant and lasting success.The report offers new insight into the effects of a four-day week on workers over the longer term, as well as into the strategies used by organisations to fit shorter working hours to their particular circumstances

Gender segregation, underemployment and subjective well-being in the UK labour market

This article argues that gender segregation influences patterns of underemployment and the relationships that underemployment has with the subjective well-being of men and women. Previous studies have paid little attention to how gender segregation shapes underemployment, an increasingly prominent feature of the UK and European labour markets since the economic crisis of 2008. Using data from the UK Annual Population Surveys, this article examines time-related underemployment: people working part time because they cannot find a full-time job. The article asks whether there are gender differences in underemployment trends and in the links between underemployment and subjective well-being. The results suggest that the probability of underemployment is growing at a faster rate among women rather than men and that underemployment is most common in the jobs that women are more likely to perform, namely in femaledominated occupations, the public sector and small organizations. Underemployment is least common in male-dominated occupations and industries and in the private sector. Moreover, for employees with longer tenures, underemployment has more negative relationships with the subjective well-being of women than with that of men. These findings imply that gender segregation in labour markets is a crucial factor to consider when researching underemployment and its consequences

Rewarding work : cross-national differences in benefits, volunteering during unemployment, well-being and mental health

Due to increasing labour market flexibilisation a growing number of people are likely to experience unemployment and, as a consequence, lower mental health and well-being. This article examines cross-national differences in well-being and mental health between unemployed people who engage in voluntary work and those who do not, using multilevel data from the European Quality of Life Survey on unemployed individuals in 29 European countries and other external sources. This article finds that, regardless of their voluntary activity, unemployed people have higher levels of well-being and mental health in countries with more generous unemployment benefits. Unexpectedly, the results also suggest that regular volunteering can actually be detrimental for mental health in countries with less generous unemployment benefits. This article concludes that individual agency exercised through voluntary work can partially improve well-being but the generosity of unemployment benefits is vital for alleviating the negative mental health effects of unemployment

Violent and non-violent crimes against sex workers : the influence of the sex market on reporting practices in the United Kingdom

Previous research has shown that sex workers experience extremely high rates of victimization but are often reluctant to report their experiences to the police. This paper explores how the markets in which sex workers operate in the United Kingdom impact upon the violent and non-violent crimes they report to a national support organization and their willingness to report victimization to the police. We use a secondary quantitative data analysis of 2,056 crime reports submitted to the UK National Ugly Mugs (NUM) scheme between 2012 and 2016. The findings indicate that although violence is the most common crime type reported to NUM, sex workers operating in different markets report varying relative proportions of different types of victimization. We also argue that there is some variation in the level of willingness to share reports with the police across the different sex markets, even when the type crime, presence of violence, and other variables are taken into account. Our finding that street sex workers are most likely to report victimization directly to the police challenges previously held assumptions that criminalization is the key factor preventing sex workers from engaging with the police. Key words: sex work; violence; policing; reported victimizatio

Is there a subjective well-being premium in voluntary sector employment?

Previous studies have found that employment in the voluntary sector offers a so-called ‘job satisfaction premium’: despite lower salaries, voluntary sector employees are more satisfied with their jobs than workers in other sectors. This paper examines whether voluntary sector employees also experience a subjective well-being premium. Using data from the UK Annual Population Survey 2012/2013, we find that voluntary sector employees do have higher levels of subjective well-being but this subjective well-being premium is not evenly distributed between men and women. Men score higher on happiness and life satisfaction. However, women in the voluntary sector have lower levels of life satisfaction compared with their counterparts in the public sector. We discuss the implications of our findings for policy and practice in the voluntary sector in the UK