The Chinese Dream: Hukou, Social Mobility and Trust in Government

• In Event: Government Trust in China: Determinants, Trends and Methodology

Abstract

Social mobility is important for political stability. Yet, the evidence linking social mobility and political support is surprisingly sparse especially in non-democracies. The oversight of China in previous research on social mobility and political attitudes is unfortunate, given that approximately one fifth of the world’s population lives under Chinese authoritarian rule and have experienced remarkable social mobility in the past decades, with profound impacts on their political attitudes. This paper attempts to fill this gap in the literature by leveraging China’s hukou (household registration) reforms to study social mobility and the public’s trust in government. First, I argue that hukou plays a key role in determining social mobility in China. Using China General Social Survey (CGSS) data for 2010 and the entropy balancing (EB) method for causal effects, I find that individuals with rural-to-urban hukou change are more likely to experience upward mobility, while individuals with nonlocal-to-local hukou change are more pessimistic about their prospects of upward mobility. This finding shed light on the characteristics of social stratification and inequality in contemporary China. Second, I argue that hukou status changes have significant yet disparate effects on trust in government. Using CGSS 2010 data with EB, I find that rural-to-urban hukou change increases trust in the central government, while nonlocal-to-local hukou change increases trust in the local government. The distinction of hukou changes’ effects between central and local governments is probably because policy design for the two hukou status changes is different: the nonlocal-to-local hukou change policy is more decentralized and localized than the rural-to-urban hukou change policy. This paper not only uncovers the complexity of social mobility, but also provides empirical evidence explicitly from an authoritarian country for the political impacts of social mobility.

Author

• Xian Huang, Rutgers University