Part II Research Design
Appendix 14.1: Sample Distribution by Financial Support
15.3 Social Participation
Three variables were used to operationalize the concept of ‘social participation’, an element of the model component Financial Needs and Expectations. All three vari-ables record the frequency of engaging in a social activity, a frequency that is expected to be lower in a situation of economic vulnerability.
The variable cinema reports how often, on average, respondents go to see a movie or a theater play (Appendix 15.3). For this activity the sample population can roughly be divided into one third who never goes out for such cultural activities, a third who goes out once a year and another third who goes to see a movie or a play at least once a month. Only 5% consume this type of entertainment on a weekly basis.
Within the response categories, the proportions of vulnerable respondents are similar for the three measures: the rate of vulnerability by the perceived angle is above the sample total of 18% among those who ‘never’ go out (23%) and those who go out ‘at least once a year’ (20%), and it is clearly above average for the self-
Table 15.4 The three highest ranking vulnerability types in terms of the frequency of response category ‘a lot of pain/troubles’
Type/health symptoms: Lower members Upper members Back or kidney
BBB 1. 1. 3.
ABB 2. 2. 2.
ABA 3. 3. 1.
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assessed angle and the objective angle among those who ‘never’ go out (23% for objectively vulnerable people compared to the sample total of 15%, and 22% for the self-assessed vulnerable compared to the sample total of 14%).
Kendall’s tau-b and Kruskal’s Gamma were calculated to assess the strength of the relationship and they both indicated a statistically significant negative relation-ship with all three measures (p < 0.001). Given the high number of tied observations in the present contingency table, Gamma is more appropriate: effect sizes are mod-erate, the strongest one being recorded for the association between cinema and obj_ev (γ = − 0.36), followed by sa_ev (γ = − 0.31) and lastly perc_ev (γ = − 0.28).
The variable trip is based on two survey questions about the frequency of taking a trip or a short holiday of at least 1 day (Appendix 15.4). Most retirees in our sample take a short vacation or trip at least once a year (48%), or at least once a month (32%).
Among those respondents who never take a trip, self-assessed vulnerability is much more prevalent at 30%, which is more than twice the rate found in the overall sample (16%). On the other side of the spectrum, among respondents who take a trip ‘at least once a week’ only 4% are vulnerable according to the self-assessed angle. The vulnerability rates for respondents who ‘never’ travel is of a comparable size for the objective angle and the perceived angle (25% and 28%, respectively);
both are above sample proportions by some 10% points.
As expected from looking at the percentage rates, the effect size measured by the gamma coefficient is strongest for the Self-Assessed Measure (γ = −0.45), the Objective Measure taking the second (γ = −0.32) and the Perceived Measure the third rank (γ = −0.26). These effect sizes are of a moderate strength and statistically highly significant (p < 0.001).
The variable restaurant gives insight into the habits of going out for a meal or something to drink, an activity that costs money while being indicative of a person’s participation in social life (Appendix 15.5). For a minority (13%) of the Swiss pop-ulation aged 65–84 this is a daily habit, while the majority (40%) goes out on a weekly basis. 30% go to a restaurant or a coffee shop at least once a month and 18%
say to go out ‘at least once a year’ or ‘never’.
The distribution of ‘vulnerable’ versus ‘non-vulnerable’ within each response category of restaurant indicates, that the Objective Measure has the strongest effect on the frequency of going out: Even more than for cinema and trip, there is a strong concentration of the frequency of going to a restaurant ‘never’ or only ‘once a year’
among those who are below the poverty line. Self-assessed and perceived economic vulnerability also seems to have an impact. The effect size measures confirm the pattern that is discernable from looking at the contingency table but this time, the measures of association are only significant for the Objective and the Self-Assessed Measures (p < 0.001). Gamma indicates a moderate effect between the frequency of going to a restaurant and objective vulnerability (γ = −0.29) and a barely moderate effect for self-assessed vulnerability (γ = − 0.20). No noticeable effect size is regis-tered for the relationship between the variable restaurant and economic stress.
We proceed to assessing the differences in social participation by vulnerability type. Figures 15.4 and 15.5 depict the frequency distribution of seeing a movie/
15.3 Social Participation
theatre play or going to a restaurant/coffee shop. The representation of a percentage distribution by a line graph is unusual, however, we find that it paints an easily read-able ‘picture’ that is helpful for taking stock of the general trend: while the fre-quency distribution of each type remains visible, the stacking of the lines allows to see which response categories (e.g. within the variable restaurant) are most frequent and whether response patterns are similar across vulnerability types. The most homogeneous response pattern is found for the frequency of taking a trip: across all types, most respondents travel at least once a year (figure not shown).
The frequency distribution of the variable cinema reflect two trends that distin-guish types AAB and AAA from all other types: for most types, responses are most concentrated in ‘never’, while among these two types, most respondents go to see a movie or a play at least once a year if not once a month. It is noteworthy that among these two types, respondents of AAB (who are worried about current finances),
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
never at least once a year at least once a
month at least once a week
BBB BBA BAB ABB BAA ABA AAB AAA Total
Fig. 15.4 Frequency distribution of going to the movie theater/seeing a theater play, by vulnera-bility type
Fig. 15.5 Frequency distribution of going to a restaurant or coffee shop, by vulnerability type
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clearly distinguishes themselves from the non-vulnerable type AAA by going out less frequently.
Type ABA also reveals an unusual frequency pattern with two response items of similar size, ‘never’ at 39% and ‘at least once a month’ at 34%, which is in fact equivalent to the response rates for the same categories of type AAA. This could be seen as another clue for a pattern we already discovered when analyzing the variable
‘wealth’, namely that there are indeed two distinct groups within this type, one that resembles non-vulnerable type AAA, and one with a tight budget and little or no savings for a rainy day.
The habit of eating out or going to a coffee shop (figure below) is unequally distributed across vulnerability types. Going to a restaurant ‘at least once a week’ is the most frequent response for generic types XAX (AAA, AAB and BAA). Here, type BAA is especially interesting: this group only slightly diverges from groups
‘above the poverty line’ with regard to this social activity. Overall we see that for half of the vulnerability types, respondents tend to eat out at least once a week.
Types ABA, BAB and BBA have their peak in ‘at least once a month’.
In order to examine our hypothesis concerning the effect of economic ity on social participation, it is interesting to consider the ranking of the vulnerabil-ity types with the lowest rates of participation in social activities (Table 15.5). BBB, BAB and ABB share most of the highest ranks among themselves. They share in common that they are worried about their financial situation (generic type XXB), plus one other dimension of vulnerability (sa_ev or obj_ev). BAA is the exception to this pattern with as many as 17% who never go out to eat. This stands in contrast to the relatively high frequency (35%) of individuals who go out once a week. These results indicate that group BAA is relatively heterogeneous, with some who have gotten used to a more modest life and others, whose social participation behavior is similar to type AAA.
Going out to a restaurant or to a coffee shop being such a prevalent activity, add-ing up the lowest two frequencies (respondents who say they go to a restaurant
‘never’ or ‘at least once a year’) can shed further light on those groups who tend to have a low level of social participation: BBA (40%), BBB (38%) and BAB (36%) are the types where it is most common to never or very rarely eat out; in contrast, these responses are only recorded in 14% of respondents for type AAA and 9%
for AAB.
On the other side of the spectrum, it is noteworthy that among type ABB, as many as 25% (highest frequency among all types) go to a coffee shop or a restaurant on a daily basis. This finding needs to be integrated with the previously reported
Table 15.5 Ranking of the three vulnerability types with the highest frequency of respondents who ‘never’ participate in the social activity
Rank Restaurant Cinema Trip
1. BBB (22%) BAB (57%) ABB (41%)
2. BAB (21%) ABB (54%) BBB (38%)
3. BAA (17%) BBB (51%) BAB (32%)
15.3 Social Participation
evidence that group ABB also stands out as having a below average endowment of socioeconomic resources (e.g. lower than average educational attainment levels, higher than average rates of financial support and supplementary benefits, low rate of home ownership and wealth, etc.). At the same we need to keep in mind that type ABB by definition encompasses a large range of income categories (every category except less than 2400) thus the heterogeneity of available resources in this group is great. For this reason ABB also represents those pensioners who are sensibly affected by the drop of income at retirement and who are worried about not being able to continue the same lifestyle as before.
In order to verify this hypothesis, which taps into the phenomenon of ‘expensive taste’, we consider two additional variables that ask respondents to compare the current frequency of doing a given activity with how frequently they used to do the same activity at age 45. The underlying survey question is of a likert-type, with four response options (‘did not do it at 45’, ‘yes, less often than now’, ‘yes, more or less the same’, ‘yes, more often than now’). We posit that by looking at past habits of social participations we will see that members of group ABB are economically vul-nerable by subjective standards because of the perceived ‘price’ they had to pay by substantially reducing their customary levels of social participation.3
Figure 15.6 shows how much, for each vulnerability type, the reduced frequency (less often than at age 45) of going to a restaurant or to the movies deviates from the sample average. The sample average of respondents saying they are less frequently
3 Of course there are also other reasons why individuals may have reduced the frequency of certain activities, for example, because of changes in daily routines after retirement or as a result of health problems. However, these reasons should affect other vulnerability types in a similar manner and therefore should not significantly distort our results.
20.5
14.4
11.5
8.8
6.9
4.5 3.0
-3.5 24.0
11.9
26.4
10.5
19.6
13.9 12.7
6.7
BAB BBA ABB ABA BBB AAB BAA AAA
Restaurant Cinema
Fig. 15.6 Percentage points above sample proportion for going less frequently to a restaurant or to a movie than when aged 45 years, by vulnerability type
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going out is 33% for restaurant and 43% for cinema; in group ABB, 45% have reduced the frequency of going out to eat and as many as 60% are not going as often to the movies as they used to.
Two other types stand out from the sample average: congruently with the ranking shown in Table 15.5, types BAB and BBB also record very high shares of respon-dents who report a decrease in the frequency of engaging in these social activities.
In combination with previous findings, we can begin to sketch a profile for (the theoretically unlikely) type BAB: respondents of this type seem to have made con-siderable adjustments towards a more modest life style, not least by reducing their social activities, to a point where they are now making ends meet easily, though not without the experience of economic stress. The previous finding that this group has above average scores of neuroticism reinforces this impression. BBA, which fea-tured highest among those who never or rarely go to a restaurant, records the second to highest share (14.4%) of respondents who report a reduction in the frequency of going out to eat compared to when they were 45 years old. This suggests that for members of this group, reducing the money spent on social participation may be a functional coping strategy that effectively reduces economic stress.
The analysis of three variables of social participation provides a complex picture yet one that confirms the relevance of the model component Financial Needs and Expectations for understanding subjective economic vulnerability. Among the three measures, the Objective Measure is most strongly correlated with the frequency of going to the movies and to a restaurant, while the Self-Assessed Measure is most strongly correlated with the frequency of taking a trip. With regard to the Vulnerability Typology, several incongruences between measurement angles are reflected in the different habits of current and/or past habits of social participation.
Appendices
Appendix 15.1: Percentage Distribution of Vulnerability Types by Socio-professional Category, Without Type AAA
Socio-professional Category
Vulnerability type
BBB BBA BAB ABB BAA ABA AAB Total
1. Top executive/academ. 12.7 12.8 17.9 23.6 18.1 31.7 34.1 23.7
2. Self-empl./farmers 23.6 20.5 14.3 5.6 19.0 8.3 12.1 14.3
3. Intermed.Prof. 7.3 2.6 3.6 11.1 6.9 15.0 15.9 10.4
4. Non-manual 9.1 20.5 10.7 16.7 17.2 21.7 13.6 15.7
5. Skilled manual 34.6 33.3 28.6 34.7 25.9 16.7 22.0 26.7
6. Unskilled 12.7 10.3 25.0 8.3 12.9 6.7 2.3 9.2
Total 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
(continued) Appendices
Socio-professional Category
Vulnerability type
BBB BBA BAB ABB BAA ABA AAB Total
1. Top executive/academ. 5.9 4.2 4.2 14.3 17.7 16.0 37.8 100
2. Self-empl./farmers 18.1 11.1 5.6 5.6 30.6 6.9 22.2 100
3. Intermed.Prof. 7.7 1.9 1.9 15.4 15.4 17.3 40.4 100
4. Non-manual 6.3 10.1 3.8 15.2 25.3 16.5 22.8 100
5. Skilled manual 14.2 9.7 6.0 18.7 22.4 7.5 21.6 100
6. Unskilled 15.2 8.7 15.2 13.0 32.6 8.7 6.5 100
Total 11.0 7.8 5.6 14.3 23.1 12.0 26.3 100