Despite the scientific consensus that humans have dramatically altered the global environment, we have a limited knowledge of the specific forces driving those impacts. One key limitation to a precise understanding of anthropogenic impacts is the absence of a set of refined analytic tools. Here we assess the analytic utility of the well-known IPAT identity, the newly developed ImPACT identity, ...

Social science research finds that the only group to have experienced real economic gains over the past four decades is the top 20 percent of the income distribution. This finding, along with greater awareness of growing inequality, has renewed interest in mobility research that identifies how individuals and their progeny move into and out of upper versus lower income categories. In this study...

by over fivefold (figure), and the rises were larger in middle and older age than in children and young adults.3 This discrepancy therefore indicates that the rises in asthma mortality cannot simply be related to increased incidence or prevalence of severe asthma requiring hospital admission. Assuming that data on asthma mortality are satisfactorily reliable, and that the determinants of hospit...

Data from the Gallup World Poll highlighted the differential relations between perceived stress, well-being, and wealth at the individualversus nation-level. At the nation level, stress was a distinct concept from negative affect (NA). It correlated positively with well-being (positive affect, life satisfaction, and domain satisfaction) and wealth (as measured by income, gross domestic product,...

The author explores how the gender gap in aspirations for scientific, technical, engineering, and mathematical (STEM) work changes with societal affluence. Over-time data on cohorts of eighth graders in 32 countries reveal that aspirations for mathematically related work become more gender differentiated as societal affluence grows. This relationship holds controlling for students’ social class...

This study examined the possibility that there is a curvilinear relationship between income and subjective well-being in China. This study also investigated whether this curvilinear relationship is moderated by social class and mediated by respondents' material affluence. The study was conducted in China, and the sample consisted of 900 blue-collar workers and 546 white-collar workers. The resu...

Research on socioeconomic differences in overweight and obesity and on the ecological association between income inequality and obesity prevalence suggests that relative deprivation may contribute to lifestyle risk factors for obesity independently of absolute affluence. We tested this hypothesis using data on 25,980 adolescents (11-15 years) in the 2010 Canadian Health Behaviour in School-aged...

Following the Kyoto Protocol, the European Union obligated itself to lower its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions 20% below their 1990 level, by the year 2020. Carbon dioxide is the major GHG. To fulfill this obligation, the nations must meet the sustainability challenge of countering rising population plus affluence with the dematerialization of less energy per GDP plus the decarbonization of less...

Prior research on social class differences in adult mental illness suggests that relative differences in affluence impact mental health and well-being more than absolute affluence. However, it is unclear whether relative deprivation also relates to adolescent mental health and to both internalizing and externalizing dimensions of mental health. This study examined the association between relati...

Objectives To examine health behaviors among Korean adolescents with a focus on both individual and school-based factors, specifically in relation to predictors of high-risk groups. Methods Secondary data analysis was conducted with data from the 8th Korea Youth Risk Behavior Web-Based Survey, using descriptive statistics, t tests, χ2 test, and multilevel logistic regression analysis. Health ...