In this study we raise the question how a nation's income inequality affects subjective well-being. Using information on 195,091 individuals from 85 different countries from the World Value Surveys and the European Value Surveys, we established that in general, people living in more unequal countries report higher well-being than people from more equal countries. This association however does not apply to all people similarly. First, the positive effect of a nation's income inequality is weaker when individuals express more social and institutional trust, and underscore egalitarian norms to a larger extent. Second, the positive association between national income inequality and subjective wellbeing is less strong for people from countries with high levels of social and institutional trust. So, our research predominantly indicates that there are far-reaching effects of an individual's and a nation's trust on people's well-being.

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We examine the link between family and personal networks. Using arguments about meeting opportunities, competition and social influence, we hypothesise how the presence of specific types of family members (i.e., a partner, children, parents and siblings) and non-family members (i.e., friends, neighbours and colleagues) in the network mutually affect one another. In addition, we propose that—beyond their mere presence—the active role of family members in the network strongly affects the presence of non-family members in the network. Data from the third wave of the Survey on the Social Networks of the Dutch, collected in 2012 and 2013, show that active involvement is of key importance; more than merely having family members present in one’s personal network, the active involvement of specific types of family members in the personal network is associated with having disproportionally more other family members and having somewhat fewer non-family members in the network.

A recent literature argues that the labour market returns to vocational education vary over the life cycle. Graduates with an occupation-specific educational degree have a smooth transition into the labour market but experience difficulties later in their career when their specific skills become obsolete. This life course penalty to vocational education is expected to be particularly strong in periods of rapid technological change. Existing literature has mostly studied this topic from the perspective of age effects but focused less on cohort and period effects. Moreover, it is unclear to what extent lower returns to vocational education in the late career vary across time periods. Using Labour Force Survey data for the Netherlands (1996–2012) we find that having a more occupation-specific educational degree increases the likelihood of being employed in early life and lowers the average job status. This initial advantage of a higher employment probability declines with age, and the disadvantage in job status increases as workers grow older. We find that these life-cycle effects have not, or only marginally, changed over time.

Summary One of the biggest challenges in the design of educational systems concerns how vocational education and training (VET) systems are best organized for the labour markets of tomorrow. Do we need more specialized craftsmen with practical and specific skills that tightly link to specific occupations, or do we need a shift towards broader craftsmen with more general skills? Using microdata from France, Germany, and The Netherlands, we show that there are different ways by which the VET sector establishes school-to-work linkages. Linkages between school to work are on average stronger in systems with a dual VET sector compared to a full school-based model. However, an important reason why linkages are stronger is because of compositional differences, as in dual VET systems more students tend to be enrolled in strongly linking educational programs. Moreover, VET systems are far from homogeneous, and there are large differences in how strong educational programmes link to occupations within and between countries. In general, employment is highest among the stronger linking programs, and this effect is strongest in dual VET systems. These results suggest that there is still room for occupationally oriented schooling.