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Previous research shows differences between women and men in utilization of facilities of health care (FHC) across the general population in a number of countries. In this chapter, we focus on the capability to use FHC, because it refers to an individual freedom to choose between alternative FHC directed to restore or to improve own health in situations of health needs. Based on several empirical studies and on the insights of the capability approach, we propose that there are cross-national differences between women and men in the capability to use FHC, and that these differences are due to gender differences in the extent of educational skills, and due to differences in the extensiveness of social security policies across countries. The objective of this study was to question these propositions.

We tested the hypotheses using the data from the European Social Survey (in a sample of 38,992 respondents from 22 countries) which we analyzed performing multilevel analyses.

The findings show that in Central, North, West, and East European countries, women have more capabilities to use FHC than men. They suggest that the low-skilled women in Central, North, and West European countries have higher level of the capability to use FHC than women with more educational skills.

The findings do not specify which particular social program or policy is more effective in enhancing women’s capability to use FHC.

This chapter focuses on women’s freedom or the capability to use FHC.

The evolution of European Union (EU) toward a real political integration cannot omit the importance of building a European civic culture. Generating civic virtues is directly linked to the establishment of associative networks. In this sense, voluntary organizations, as “schools of democracy,” work as one of the main channels and mechanisms, from liberal tradition as well as republican one, to improve the quality of democracies.

Some works have already argued that involvement in voluntary organizations presents positive effects on several elements that shape political culture in a country, by increasing political interest in public affairs, growing individual political efficacy, encouraging people to put in practice a broader socio-political activism, etc. Only by this way, it is possible to create a genuine “European public sphere,” where public debate and independent judgements can exist beyond EU institutions.

From that theoretic framework, this document expounds the connections between socio-political participation in voluntary organizations and some elements of political culture linked to civic skills. The first wave of the European Social Survey (2002–2003) will be used as the main data source for a comparative analysis among more than twenty European countries.

The aim of the chapter is a comparative analysis of the level of labour market security in four countries representing different social models: the United Kingdom, Germany, Poland and Ukraine. For this purpose, Eurostat, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), European Social Survey (ESS) and European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS) data were used. They allowed to show significant differences which occurred in 2004–2017 in the situation of the employees in the analysed countries. The analysis showed that employees in both the United Kingdom and Germany are characterised by a relatively high level of labour market security, but such security is provided in two different ways – in the former country employment security is more important, while job security prevails in the latter. Despite a significant improvement in employment conditions in Poland and Ukraine, the objective and subjective situation of employees there remains much worse than is the case in Germany and the United Kingdom. All the differences between the studied countries confirm the thesis regarding the flows of migrant workers seeking a satisfactory level of labour market security.

The chapter focuses on how higher education (HE) influences the construction of social trust. Social trust is defined as one of the most important subjective aspect of people’s well-being. The analysis refers to impersonal trust and institutional trust, and uses various indicators for measuring the two, such as generalized trust, generalized fairness, trust in parliament, and trust in the legal system. The study covers 19 European countries and explores the problem at both aggregate and individual level. It draws on data from the European Social Survey (2006–2010), applying descriptive statistics and multilevel modeling for the analysis of data. The chapter argues that the higher the educational level of people is, the more trustful they are. Our findings clearly show that, at the individual level, HE influences positively the degrees of both impersonal and institutional trust. The results also suggest that the relationship between HE and trust differs substantially across European countries. As regards impersonal trust, the impact of HE is stronger in countries where people without HE have lower average levels of impersonal trust. However, with respect to institutional trust, HE tends to have a strong positive impact in countries with high levels of institutional trust among people without HE. Furthermore, both impersonal and institutional trust among HE graduates is greater in countries with full democracy than in those with a flawed democracy. This fact raises once again the question whether social trust is a characteristic of individuals or of social systems.

This chapter critically assesses the assumption that the European Union (EU) is undergoing a crisis of legitimation. Using survey data, it shows that support of the EU and European integration is solid and that it plays a small role in the rise of populist parties. Then, it shows that Europeans favor increasing European cooperation but are reluctant to transfer national sovereignty to the EU. Finally, it traces this reluctance to the primacy of national over European identification.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate factors that affect progression to university education across Europe.

The data used are obtained from the fourth round of the European Social Survey (2008).

Findings point to interesting age by gender and age by parental education interactions affecting the entrance to university. It demonstrates the disparity that exists across Europe whereby in some countries progression has been a smooth process for the past few decades while in others widening participation to higher education has only been a recent phenomenon.

The findings of this study are discussed with reference to social reproduction theories and have implications for wider European educational policies for enhancing access to university education.

In a globalised education market inequalities may be observed within countries but also between countries making the outcomes of policies for offering equal opportunities a complex one.

In times of crisis, the deterioration of living standards may also have direct consequences on civic culture of people and become dangerous for the health of democracy. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the extent to which the recent economic crisis directly influences the civic attitudes in some European democracies focusing on two questions: how much does crisis exposure affect civic attitudes? And what is the role played by expected social mobility on this effect?

Hypotheses are tested using data collected in the Western European countries included in the Life in Transition Survey II (France, Germany, Italy, Sweden and UK). To analyze the civic consequences of crisis exposure and to evaluate the moderating role of expected social mobility, multivariate regressions are conducted. The statistical analysis is performed using the Stata software.

The findings show that economic crisis exposure significantly affects civic attitudes. The results confirm that higher crisis exposure is associated with lower civic attitudes. Additionally, the present research rules out the possibility that crisis exposure affects attitudes in a specific way, depending on the expected mobility valence.

To evaluate the moderating factors of the civic consequences of economic crises is important for both academic research and policymakers. Analyzing these mechanisms may lead to understand under which conditions it is possible to limit deterioration processes in democratic fabric of a society.

This paper sheds light on the importance of analyzing the negative civic effect of economic crisis and on the critical role that the fear of social downgrading plays in determining this effect.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how factors including class position, education, social network membership and cultural capital contribute to the intergenerational transmission of class advantage for women and men in different European welfare states.

The paper analyses the European Social Survey round 1 data.

Education is the dominant institutional mechanism for reproduction of privilege, but social network membership plays an important subsidiary role. The contribution of membership is highly gendered, even in the overtly more open social democratic and liberal societies.

There were data limitations in ESS: no time‐series data, and no data on wealth.

The findings are of particular policy relevance at a time when reform programmes are stressing individual opportunity and shifting responsibility from state to citizen, so that informal pathways to the reproduction of privilege become more significant. These include network membership, contacts and cultural capital.

The research indicates the importance of social network membership and sheds light on how this works to the advantage of middle and upper class groups and men in different European countries.

No other studies have used these data to explore these issues to the author's knowledge, and one needs to understand more about these issues in the context of current concerns about inequality and opportunity.

This paper aims to understand the character of the relationship between tourism growth and residents’ social trust.

The study uses large-scale data to model the effect of tourism on generalized trust attitudes Among advantages to analyzing data from large-scale social surveys, extensive content and representative coverage of the population are probably the most appealing. The broad coverage of the population of the large-scale social surveys allows for a broader generalization of the study results as well as comparison of areas with very different tourist activity.

This study offers two key findings. First, the effect of tourist arrivals (as per capita) on social trust attitudes is stronger in poorer regions than in wealthier regions. Second, only domestic tourism positively affects trust.

This study delivered a straightforward analysis of large data to be able to generalize findings and make a significant theoretical contribution to tourism discipline. This goal was pursued at the expense of complex or in-depth explanation of the observed phenomenon.

Findings from this study indicate that there are at least two crucial criteria for tourism to be able to strengthen residents’ social trust. First, domestic tourism should be encouraged in destination regions in their early development stages and in more homogeneous regions. Perhaps, focus on domestic tourists before internationalization of a tourism product is the most effective way to promote tourism development that is supported by local residents. Second, tourism is likely to have stronger positive effect on social trust in poorer regions. Thus, tourism policy makers should take into consideration the actual economic need for tourism. Residents in wealthier regions may show less support for tourism simply because they don’t need it and they have no economic incentives to be involved. In fact, tourism in wealthier regions is likely to diminish residents’ social trust, and thus it disrupts local social and political processes that rely on high social trust.

Social trust is considered an important measure of social cohesion and it enables modern societies to thrive. Social trust has not been problematized in the context of contemporary tourism growth. This is the first study that uses large data social survey to model the effect of tourism on social trust in European destination regions.