This paper clarifies what causal conditions result in “suicide by overwork” instead of “death by overwork.” It conducts crisp-set qualitative comparative analyses (csQCA) of 58 judicial precedents on claims for worker’s accidents and damages in Japan. Both “suicide by overwork” and “death by overwork” can be caused by various combinations of conditions. Yet we focus on identifying which combinations cause “suicide by overwork” instead of “death by overwork.” The result reveals that the combination of “inability to attain assigned quota” (the most fundamental condition) and “problems with human relations in the workplace” has the dominant influence on “suicide by overwork.” This finding indicates that “suicide by overwork” occurs when people face problems of human relations in the workplace, such as insulting and berating based on assigned quota rather than overwork.

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Using wave 1 of the Japanese Life Course Panel Surveys, we consider the possibility that educational attainment differently influences two dimensions of women’s attitudes toward marriage: positive/negative and more/less interest. The women’s independence hypothesis predicts that women with higher educational attainment have negative attitudes toward marriage. According to the assortative mating hypothesis, higher educational attainment could affect women’s attitudes in two directions: (1) highly educated women have positive attitudes toward marriage and (2) highly educated women are less interested in marriage but do not have negative attitudes. Our dependent variable is marital aspiration with three attitude categories toward marriage: negative, need not marry (i.e., less interested in marriage), and positive. Results from the regression analysis suggest that women with higher educational attainment are less likely to choose the “negative” category. However, there is no significant difference between the “need not marry” and “positive” categories based on educational attainment. In effect, highly educated women are less interested in marriage. Our findings highlight the importance of higher educational attainment in enabling women to not be interested in marriage.

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The purpose of this study is to formalize a generative model for income and capital inequality by focusing on the accumulation process of human and network capital. Using this model, we attempt to provide theoretical explanations to three empirical questions. First, why is the relationship between economic growth and income inequality expressed as an inverted U-curve? Second, why does societal relative deprivation increase when economic growth rises (the so-called China puzzle)? Third, why is income inequality stable despite the reduction of human capital inequality? The model assumes that people in a society experience repeatedly random chances of gaining capital interest with a success probability p. People gain additional capital as an interest when they succeed and incur a cost when they fail randomly. We show that the capital distribution approaches a lognormal distribution, and as an output of Cobb-Douglas production function, income distribution is also subject to a lognormal distribution. Analyzing the Gini coefficient and the average income as a function of parameters of the model, we derive the following implications. 1) The inverted U-curve is realized by the expansion of success chance. 2) The China puzzle occurs because the increase of average income and Gini coefficient are simultaneously followed by the expansion of success probability p under the range p∈(0,0.5). 3) The income inequality is stable, though human capital inequality decreases because of human and network capital elasticity and network capital diminishes the impact of human capital equalization on income inequality.

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We focus on “inequality of process”. Process means the process of labor and inequality of process means that workers' efforts are evaluated unbiasedly. Many Japanese companies have introduced the performance system since the burst of bubble economy. However many of them have some troubles. We analyze the relationship between such biased evaluations, that is, inequality of process and the consequences. Thus we analyze the elementary models in which workers decide an optimal effort level when there are biased evaluation and heterogeneity of abilities. As a result, workers with high ability choose high effort while workers with low ability choose low effort. When effort levels are interpreted as working hours, the result suggests that biased evaluation and heterogeneity of abilities lead working hour difference.

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The purpose of this article is to show that we should consider micro-macro linkages to make mathematical sociology contribute to the study of social inequality. For this purpose the article points out problems of prior quantitative and qualitative studies in the field, reviews and examines the logical structure of several mathematical models, and, as a result of the examination, argues that they adequately analyze the transition between macro and micro levels. Prior quantitative studies have made important findings using sophisticated statistical models, but they have not clearly studied social mechanisms that created the findings. Prior qualitative studies, in contrast, have analyzed the mechanisms in detail, but it is unclear whether their findings can be generalized to other cases. A possible solution to the problems is to study social inequality with mathematical models. Against these academic backgrounds this article examines the logical structure of the relative risk aversion model, the model of the emergence of status hierarchy, and the agent-based model of trust and inequality, and shows that their logical structure is based on micro-macro linkages. Mathematical models with this theoretical orientation would contribute to the study of social inequality.

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In this note, we examine theoretical foundations of analytical sociology based on the argument of Peter Hedström. Analytical sociology criticizes empirical research that emphasizes associations of variables by survey data to identify the causal relationship. In contrast to this variable-oriented approach, analytical sociology explains the process through which social consequences bring about (the variable-oriented approach fails to explore this process and leaves it as a black box) by individual actions and interactions. This note argues that analytical sociology focuses on the role of actions, interactions, and concatenations of interactions based on a framework of desire, belief, and opportunity. After introducing basic concepts of analytical sociology, this note then compares it to two disciplines (statistical causal inference and rational choice theory) that share the same research interests but pursue their goals in different ways. In conclusion, this note discusses the analytic strategy of this discipline to propose an alternative approach to survey data.

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This paper empirically applies analytical sociology. We treat cultural activities, such as art museums and novels, as a case to examine whether people consume cultures in an omnivorous way or univorous way. According to DBO theory of analytical sociology, people desire (D) to act with a certain belief (B) under an objective constraint of opportunity (O). So, we hypothesize that people are more likely to be cultural omnivores when they believe that they have freedom to consume cultures and have enough high income. Using SSP 2015 data in Japan, we measure cultural omnivorousness by a geometric mean of high and middle cultures activities (subsample 2,769 respondents). As a result, (1) by the distribution, 52.5 % of them were omnivores. (2) By main effects of education and income in regression analyses, higher status promoted cultural omnivorousness. (3) By interaction effects of subjective freedom and income, coexistence of belief and opportunity promoted cultural omnivorousness. Therefore, cultural activities are not exclusive as Bourdieu argues. Analytical sociology enables us to clearly incorporate roles of belief.

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