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The spirit level : why greater equality makes societies stronger

TLDR
The strong version of Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett's argument in The Spirit Level implies that President Obama's fight to reform health care was pointless as discussed by the authors, and that extending the availability of health insurance cannot substantially improve Americans’ health.
Abstract
The strong version of Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett’s argument in The Spirit Level implies that President Obama’s fight to reform health care was pointless. Extending the availability of health insurance cannot substantially improve Americans’ health. Instead, the president would make us all happier, healthier, and longer-lived, their logic suggests, if he could get the richest, say, 5 percent of Americans to leave the country.

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Boys' friendships during adolescence: Intimacy, desire, and loss

TL;DR: This paper found that while boys often had intimate male friendships during early and middle adolescence, they typically lost such friendships by late adolescence, even though they continued to want them, suggesting a need to revise our conceptions of boys' friendships as well as of boys themselves.
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Avoiding the Limits to Growth: Gross National Happiness in Bhutan as a Model for Sustainable Development

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss Meadows et al. and their work in the context of the literature on sustainable development and well-being as well as the development trajectory of Bhutan.
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Generational Precarity, Education, and the Crisis of Capitalism: Conventional, Neo-Keynesian, and Marxian Perspectives

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors draw on analytical resources from critical sociology of education and heterodox political economy in order to critique orthodox economic diagnoses of generational precarity as a human capital problem, and argue that while neo-Keynesian accounts provide an important corrective to certain aspects of conventional (neoclassical/neoliberal) viewpoints, they ultimately fall short of the explanatory power of Marxian analysis.
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A Framework for Intentional Cultural Change.

TL;DR: A framework for a pragmatic science of cultural evolution is presented, briefly sketching advances in scientific understanding of the influences on individual behavior and principles that could guide efforts to influence groups and organizations.
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The gamification of risk: how health apps foster self-confidence and why this is not enough

TL;DR: It is found that users’ risk management was based on a mixed method that combined quantification and gamification, that is, rationality and emotions, which provides the ‘rational’ basis for dietary regimes, while gamification provides the emotional support needed to maintain motivation and continue with the diet.
References
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Book

Happiness: Lessons from a New Science

TL;DR: In this new edition of his landmark book, Richard Layard shows that there is a paradox at the heart of our lives as discussed by the authors, which is not just anecdotally true, it is the story told by countless pieces of scientific research.
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Disease and Disadvantage in the United States and in England

TL;DR: The US population in late middle age is less healthy than the equivalent British population for diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, myocardial infarction, stroke, lung disease, and cancer.
Posted Content

Cross-Country Determinants of Life Satisfaction: Exploring Different Determinants Across Groups in Society

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore a wide range of cross-country determinants of life satisfaction exploiting a database of 90,000 observations in 70 countries and show that only a small number of factors, such as openness, business climate, postcommunism, the number of chambers in parliament, Christian majority, and infant mortality robustly influence life satisfaction across countries.
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Social Trust and Fractionalization: A Possible Reinterpretation

TL;DR: In this paper, the importance of fractionalization for the creation of social trust is examined and the determinants of trust can be divided into two categories: those affecting individuals' trust radii and those affecting social polarization.
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Do Neoliberal Economic Policies Kill or Save Lives

TL;DR: The authors found that open international trade policies, low-inflation macroeconomic environments, and market-oriented property rights regimes promote human development across the world, even when controlling for countries' economic performance.