Social Capital Inequality According to Hukou in Unequal Economic Environments in China

Abstract

China is experiencing an increase in socioeconomic inequality in comparison to the global trend. Employing the hukou registration as a focal point, this study seeks to examine social capital differences between developed and underdeveloped regions in China. As the data for the analysis were from the China Family Panel Studies, social capital was measured by social trust, participation, and networks. The Gini coefficient, a measure of economic inequality, was calculated for 25 different provinces in China in this paper. In light of the fact that these are panel data collected between 2014 and 2018, this study employed the random-effect model for panel analysis. The first finding is that individuals, in an environment characterized by high levels of economic inequality, have low levels of social capital levels in China. Second, the inverse relationship between economic inequality and social capital varies according to social capital element. Specifically, this inverse relationship was observed in social trust and social networks, but not in social participation. Third, hukou registration moderated the inverse relationship between economic inequality and social capital. The rural hukou registration revealed a stronger inverse relationship between economic inequality and social capital than its urban counterpart. This indicates that the negative impact of economic inequality on social capital resulted in additional inequality among rural hukou holders.

The buffering effect of social capital for daily mental stress in an unequal society: a lesson from Seoul

“…Although MacKinnon [ 74 ] and Preacher and Hayes [ 75 ] emphasize the causal relationship between independent variables and mediators in the mediation effect method, the relationship between economic inequality and social capital is ambiguous based on the social capital components. For example, Lyu et al [ 76 ] found that social trust and networks are lower in neighborhoods with greater economic inequality, but the effect is not statistically significant for social participation. As such, because the relationship between economic inequality and social capital tends to vary depending on the factors, this study analyzes daily mental stress according to economic inequality and social capital using moderation effects rather than mediation effects.…”

The Influence of Capital Deepening on Regional Economic Development Gap: The Intermediary Effect of the Labor Income Share

“…The inequality of economic development is of critical significance to economic development and is a concern for scholars worldwide. Since the 1980s, the foreign-related scholars' research literature on economic inequality has mushroomed [8][9][10][11][12][13], and then relevant domestic studies began to emerge rapidly. As indicated by the existing research results, numerous factors cause China's regional development gap to widen constantly, and they can roughly fall into two types.…”

“…If the Soviet Union aid project leads to a considerable amount of regional capital inflow, β 2 is significantly higher than zero. Model (10) represents the regression result of the second stage, and its setting is the same as that of Model (7), except that the core explanatory variable capital deepening refers to the estimated value of the regression of the first stage. The regression results of the two stages are listed in Table 3.…”