IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v14y2022i21p13748-d951300.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

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

Author

Listed:
  • Songyang Lyu

    (Department of Urban and Regional Development, Hanyang University, Seoul 04763, Korea)

  • Sungik Kang

    (Department of Urban and Regional Development, Hanyang University, Seoul 04763, Korea)

  • Ja-Hoon Koo

    (Department of Urban and Regional Development, Hanyang University, Seoul 04763, Korea)

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Songyang Lyu & Sungik Kang & Ja-Hoon Koo, 2022. "Social Capital Inequality According to Hukou in Unequal Economic Environments in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(21), pages 1-14, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:21:p:13748-:d:951300
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/21/13748/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/21/13748/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Eiji Yamamura, 2011. "How Do Neighbors Influence Investment in Social Capital? Homeownership and Length of Residence," International Advances in Economic Research, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 17(4), pages 451-464, November.
    2. Stephen Knack & Philip Keefer, 1997. "Does Social Capital Have an Economic Payoff? A Cross-Country Investigation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(4), pages 1251-1288.
    3. Hausman, Jerry A & Taylor, William E, 1981. "Panel Data and Unobservable Individual Effects," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 49(6), pages 1377-1398, November.
    4. Jonathan T. Rothwell & Douglas S. Massey, 2010. "Density Zoning and Class Segregation in U.S. Metropolitan Areas," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1123-1143, December.
    5. Michael McAleer & Hang K. Ryu & Daniel J. Slottje, 2019. "A New Inequality Measure that is Sensitive to Extreme Values and Asymmetries," Advances in Decision Sciences, Asia University, Taiwan, vol. 23(1), pages 31-61, March.
    6. Richard Blundell & Ian Preston, 1998. "Consumption Inequality and Income Uncertainty," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 113(2), pages 603-640.
    7. T. Paul Schultz & John A. Strauss (ed.), 2008. "Handbook of Development Economics," Handbook of Development Economics, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 4, number 5.
    8. Allan Williams & Vladimir Balaz, 2009. "Low-Cost Carriers, Economies of Flows and Regional Externalities," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(5), pages 677-691.
    9. Jason Hung, 2022. "Hukou System Influencing the Structural, Institutional Inequalities in China: The Multifaceted Disadvantages Rural Hukou Holders Face," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 11(5), pages 1-18, April.
    10. Tiantian Dai & Shenyi Jiang & Ang Sun & Sihong Wu, 2020. "Inequality and Social Capital: How Inequality in China’s Housing Assets Affects People’s Trust," Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 56(3), pages 562-575, February.
    11. Liu, Zhiqiang, 2005. "Institution and inequality: the hukou system in China," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 133-157, March.
    12. Jonathan T. Rothwell & Douglas S. Massey, 2010. "Density Zoning and Class Segregation in U.S. Metropolitan Areas," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 91(s1), pages 1123-1143.
    13. Kawachi, I. & Kennedy, B.P. & Lochner, K. & Prothrow-Stith, D., 1997. "Social capital, income inequality, and mortality," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 87(9), pages 1491-1498.
    14. repec:kap:iaecre:v:17:y:2011:i:4:p:451-464 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Kan, Kamhon, 2007. "Residential mobility and social capital," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(3), pages 436-457, May.
    16. Luo, Chuliang & Li, Shi & Sicular, Terry, 2020. "The long-term evolution of national income inequality and rural poverty in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    17. Yao, Shujie & Wei, Kailei, 2007. "Economic growth in the presence of FDI: The perspective of newly industrialising economies," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 211-234, March.
    18. Strauss, John & Thomas, Duncan, 2008. "Health over the Life Course," Handbook of Development Economics, in: T. Paul Schultz & John A. Strauss (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 54, pages 3375-3474, Elsevier.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zhang, Yunhui & Zhao, Wei, 2024. "Social capital's role in mitigating economic vulnerability: Understanding the impact of income disparities on farmers' livelihoods," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 177(C).
    2. Dan Wang & Zhen Qiao, 2022. "The Influence of Capital Deepening on Regional Economic Development Gap: The Intermediary Effect of the Labor Income Share," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(24), pages 1-16, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ivica Petrikova & Dhruv Chadha, 2013. "The Role of Social Capital in Risk-Sharing," Journal of South Asian Development, , vol. 8(3), pages 359-383, December.
    2. Yamamura, Eiji, 2008. "The role of social capital in homogeneous society: Review of recent researches in Japan," MPRA Paper 11385, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Sungik Kang & Ja-Hoon Koo, 2023. "Exploring Social Capital Level in Regions with Large and Increasing Wealth Inequality: Lesson from Seoul, South Korea," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 168(1), pages 165-183, August.
    4. Eiji Yamamura, 2011. "Homeownership and investment for social capital in Japan: Dynamic Panel approach," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 31(3), pages 2250-2259.
    5. Slater, Giulia, 2024. "The effects of social capital deprivation for wellbeing: Evidence from the Covid-19 pandemic," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    6. Stefano Bartolini & Francesco Sarracino, 2021. "Happier and Sustainable. Possibilities for a post-growth society," Department of Economics University of Siena 855, Department of Economics, University of Siena.
    7. Lay, Jann, 2010. "MDG Achievements, Determinants, and Resource Needs: What Has Been Learnt?," GIGA Working Papers 137, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies.
    8. Felipe Rivera, 2017. "Health opportunities in Colombia," Lecturas de Economía, Universidad de Antioquia, Departamento de Economía, issue 87, pages 125-164, Julio - D.
    9. Katherine King, 2013. "Jane Jacobs and ‘The Need for Aged Buildings’: Neighbourhood Historical Development Pace and Community Social Relations," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 50(12), pages 2407-2424, September.
    10. Mikucka, Malgorzata & Sarracino, Francesco & Dubrow, Joshua K., 2017. "When Does Economic Growth Improve Life Satisfaction? Multilevel Analysis of the Roles of Social Trust and Income Inequality in 46 Countries, 1981–2012," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 447-459.
    11. Urszula Markowska-Przybyła & David M. Ramsey, 2018. "Social Capital and Long-Term Regional Development within Poland in the Light of Experimental Economics and Data from a Questionnaire," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(9), pages 1-26, August.
    12. Eiji Yamamura, 2011. "Differences in the effect of social capital on health status between workers and non-workers," International Review of Economics, Springer;Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS), vol. 58(4), pages 385-400, December.
    13. Helliwell, John F., 2003. "How's life? Combining individual and national variables to explain subjective well-being," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 331-360, March.
    14. Wei Huang & Xiaoyan Lei & Geert Ridder & John Strauss & Yaohui Zhao, 2013. "Health, Height, Height Shrinkage, and SES at Older Ages: Evidence from China," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(2), pages 86-121, April.
    15. Stefan Dercon & Catherine Porter, 2014. "Live Aid Revisited: Long-Term Impacts Of The 1984 Ethiopian Famine On Children," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 12(4), pages 927-948, August.
    16. Fiorillo, Damiano & Sabatini, Fabio, 2015. "Structural social capital and health in Italy," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 17(C), pages 129-142.
    17. Samuelson Appau & Sefa Awaworyi Churchill & Russell Smyth & Quanda Zhang, 2022. "Social Capital Inequality and Subjective Wellbeing of Older Chinese," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 160(2), pages 541-563, April.
    18. Julie L. Hotchkiss & Anil Rupasingha & Thor Watson, 2022. "In-migration and Dilution of Community Social Capital," International Regional Science Review, , vol. 45(1), pages 36-57, January.
    19. Zubair, Maria & Khanum, Ayesha & Nasir, Marjan, 2018. "Transfer Of Behavioral Traits From Parents To Children: An Experimental Approach," MPRA Paper 92121, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Costa, Dora L., 2023. "Overweight grandsons and grandfathers’ starvation exposure," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    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:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:21:p:13748-:d:951300. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    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.