What Matters for Well-Being: Individual Perceptions of Quality of Life Before and After Important Life Events

In recent decades, what matters for individual quality of life (QoL) has increasingly been the focus of empirical social science research. However, individuals are rarely asked directly what is important for their quality of life as part of large-scale surveys. The present analysis studies perceptions of what matters for QoL in a largescale longitudinal dataset – the British Household Panel Survey – which includes an open-ended question on QoL in three waves spanning ten years. We find that concepts of QoL change over the life course and differ between men and women.We hypothesize that changes in perceptions of QoL are related to important life events, such as the birth of a first child and retirement. These life events constitute ’turning points’ after which individuals often shift their priorities of what matters for their QoL.We further explore whether such shifts in priorities are stable or disappear more than five years after the life event

The Partner Pay Gap – Associations between Spouses’ Relative Earnings and Life Satisfaction among Couples in the UK. ESRI WP642, November 2019

Despite women’s recent gains in education and employment, husbands still tend to out-earn their wives. This article examines the relationship between the partner pay gap, i.e. the difference in earned income between married, co-resident partners, and life satisfaction. Contrary to previous studies, we investigate the effects of recent changes in relative earnings within couples as well as labour market transitions. Using several waves of the UK Household Longitudinal Study, we reveal that men exhibit an increase in life satisfaction in response to a recent increase in their proportional earnings. For women their proportional earnings had no effect on life satisfaction in one model, and in a model that accounted for their recent employment changes, women exhibited decreased life satisfaction. We also find secondary-earning husbands report lower average life satisfaction than primary-earning men, while such differences were not found for women. The analysis offers compelling evidence of the role of gendered norms in the sustenance of the partner pay gap

Panel data and open-ended questions: Understanding perceptions of quality of life

This paper describes the burgeoning interest in quality of life studies and suggests that as well as expert definitions, we need to consider people’s own perceptions of what matters. Using openended questions from the 1997 and 2002 waves of the British Household Panel Survey we analyse both quantitatively and qualitatively how perceptions of quality of life differ for men and women across the life course. Qualitative analysis reveals that key domains such as health, family and finances often refer, not to self, but to others. Longitudinal analysis demonstrates that people’s perceptions of quality of life change over time, particularly before and after important life transitions. Thus our findings challenge overly individualistic and static conceptions of quality of life and reveal quality of life as a process, not a fixed state

Analyzing Fragmentation of Simple Fluids with Percolation Theory

We show that the size distributions of fragments created by high energy nuclear collisions are remarkably well reproduced within the framework of a parameter free percolation model. We discuss two possible scenarios to explain this agreement and suggest that percolation could be an universal mechanism to explain the fragmentation of simple fluids.Comment: 12 pages, 11 figure

Partial energies fluctuations and negative heat capacities

We proceed to a critical examination of the method used in nuclear fragmentation to exhibit signals of negative heat capacity. We show that this method leads to unsatisfactory results when applied to a simple and well controlled model. Discrepancies are due to incomplete evaluation of potential energies.Comment: Modified figures 3 and

Logic and theory of representation

Underlying the theory of inferences, a primary task of logic is language analysis. Such a task can be understood as depending on a general theory of representation, taking as a starting point the idea that some entities (`` representations '') can present some entites (`` contents ''). We outline a theory of representation accounting for the capacity of representational systems to access universes that extend beyond an immediate presence. We define three logical properties that any adequate representational system should have: completeness, faithfulness, coherence. We show that logical laws are laws of representation. Finally, it appears that logic can be considered as the abstract theory of representation

Beyond Mutexes, Semaphores, and Critical Sections

International audienceThe traditional approach to multitasking synchronization has been to use Mutexes, Semaphores, and Critical sections. However, those primitives can lead to inefficiency or, even worse, to error conditions such as, for example, dead or live locks or priority inversion. The problems with those primitive are particularly vivid with real-time systems. Also, with the rapid deployment of multi-core systems, those traditional mechanisms are showing new classes of issues. This talk will discuss how the use of non-blocking algorithms through atomic and barrier operations can lead to more robust, deterministic and higher performance systems

Job quality and women’s labour market participation

Policies aimed at further deregulation of employment have potentially detrimental effects on fertility levels and also on female employment rates after childbirth since they adversely affect job quality. The fact that job creation during the recent recession has occurred mainly in the form of non-standard employment contracts may entail a long-term negative impact in terms of fertility and female labour market participation rates. The EU should therefore concentrate on putting job quality back on to the policy agenda. This could be achieved through increased use of employment indicators, in particular job quality indicators, in the process of monitoring social and employment developments. The formulation of policy guidelines and of objectives in the area of job quality in the form of concrete targets could ensure that job quality will be given a higher profile and will become an explicit component of national trajectories and of key measures recommended for attaining the targets