IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecanpo/v80y2023icp701-715.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Can social insurance contributions boost labor share?—Evidence from China’s social insurance law

Author

Listed:
  • Yu, Jingyuan
  • Zhao, Heyun
  • Mo, Longjiong

Abstract

Improving the factor income distribution is a crucial issue in the field of income inequality. Using large-scale data from China’s National Tax Survey from 2008 to 2016, this paper examines the impact of the implementation of the Social Insurance Law on firms’ labor share and its mechanisms. The results show that the Social Insurance Law significantly reduces firms’ labor share. Although it increases the firms’ social insurance rate and total amount of social insurance contributions, firms respond by reducing the number of employed labors and net wages to mitigate rising labor costs, as well as adopting alternative technological advancement patterns and capital deepening behavior, leading to a reduction in labor share. The weakening effects of Social Insurance Law primarily exist in non-SOEs, and MSEs, and firms faced with higher financial constraints and located in lower judicial quality areas. Our study suggests that stronger social security collection could account for the decline in labor share worldwide.

Suggested Citation

  • Yu, Jingyuan & Zhao, Heyun & Mo, Longjiong, 2023. "Can social insurance contributions boost labor share?—Evidence from China’s social insurance law," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 701-715.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecanpo:v:80:y:2023:i:c:p:701-715
    DOI: 10.1016/j.eap.2023.09.016
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0313592623002230
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.eap.2023.09.016?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Social security; Social insurance law; Labor share; Technical progress; Substitution effect;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E25 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Aggregate Factor Income Distribution
    • P24 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist and Transition Economies - - - National Income, Product, and Expenditure; Money; Inflation
    • J32 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Nonwage Labor Costs and Benefits; Retirement Plans; Private Pensions
    • H55 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Social Security and Public Pensions

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecanpo:v:80:y:2023:i:c:p:701-715. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/economic-analysis-and-policy .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.