Search

How did China achieve remarkable expansion in social insurance coverage in recent years? The significant social insurance coverage expansion in China since the mid-first decade of the twenty-first century appears to counter the findings of a substantial segment of the policy implementation literature, which portrays local governments as lacking enforcement capabilities and incentives. This study argues that firm compliance plays a crucial role in driving social insurance coverage expansion. It employs a novel strategy to verify the aforementioned argument by investigating informal sector workers' social insurance enrolment status. Analysis of nationally representative survey data reveals that firm compliance emerges as a key factor. Although this study shows that state enforcement does not directly impact coverage expansion, it also establishes that the likelihood of firm compliance increases with the anticipated severity of government sanctions. These findings enhance the understanding of the roles of the state and firms in the expansion of social insurance coverage in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent literature on education and work well recognises the 'crowding-out perspective' of how higher education expansion impacts the labour market experience of young people with different educational levels. However, the relationship between the labour market experience and young people's self-reported happiness remains less well understood. This paper examines whether a 'crowding out' effect occurs amongst post-secondary degree-holders on the self-reported happiness of young people (aged 16-34) amidst increasing difficulties during their school-to-work transition. Drawing on a city-wide online survey in a leading global city, Hong Kong, statistical analysis shows that contrary to the mainstream 'crowding out perspective', self-reported happiness is lower amongst young people with high rather than low educational attainment. However, in the absence of a 'happiness premium' of educational attainment, young people in Hong Kong with secondary degrees or below are much more sensitive to adverse labour market experiences, such as unemployment, high job pressure and long working hours. No similar moderating effect of educational attainment is found on the relationship between the self-reported happiness of young people and regular work shifts. The implications of these findings on the 'crowding out perspective' for youth development policy within East Asia and Hong Kong productivist welfare paradigm are discussed.

In the last two decades, we have witnessed a rapid expansion of higher education in Mainland China and Taiwan, recording a significant increase in higher education enrolments in these two Chinese societies. The massification of higher education in China and Taiwan has inevitably resulted in an oversupply of university graduates, with growing social concerns for skills mismatches being found in the labour market, stagnant graduate employment and social mobility. This article critically examines how university students and graduates in these two Chinese societies reflect upon their employment experiences. Human capital theory predicts that other things being equal, raising participation in higher education will initially increase inequality as rates of return rise, and then it will reduce inequality as expansion reaches mass levels and rates of return decline. If the output of graduates outpaces the demand for their skills, which appears to be the current case in many countries, then supply and demand pressures reduce the pay premium for degrees and lower income inequalities. However, this study clearly demonstrates that the massification and the universalisation of higher education in Mainland China and Taiwan, respectively, have actually intensified inequality.

The population aged 65 years and above in Hong Kong is projected to rise from 15 per cent in 2014 to 38.4 per cent in 2069. Therefore, the quest for creating age-friendly conditions and the promotion of active ageing has become a priority for the Hong Kong Government and stakeholders in the city. Using a cross-national comparative framework for productive engagement in later life, this article examines the predictors of productive engagement (perceived voluntary engagement) in two districts (the Islands and Tsuen Wan) of Hong Kong – a typical productivist welfare regime in Asia. Data were collected through a social survey to ascertain the perception of an age-friendly city and active ageing in 2016 and 2018 from 1,638 persons aged 60 years and older. The results indicate some differences in the perception of the key determinants in both districts, but the factors associated with productive engagement were consistent, namely social atmosphere, social provisions and the built environment. The findings are discussed within the broader discourse on social gerontology, age-friendly cities and productivist welfare regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By 2036, about 31% of Hong Kong's population will be 65 or above. This situation triggers the need for an Age-Friendly City framework (AFC) to promote healthy ageing. In this paper, we present a study on how conscious and collaborative interventions affect the public's perception of various AFC domains and the implications for health-related well-being over time in Hong Kong's Islands District. As part of a territory-wide project, the study used a repeated cross-sectional design to gather data among older persons in 2016 and 2018. Findings showed significant improvements in five of the AFC domains after the interventions. Although health-related well-being was lower in 2018 than in 2016, perceived improvements in AFC domains, including community support and health services, social participation, respect and social inclusion as well as the overall AFC index were positively associated with health-related well-being. Thus, even in the face of declining health, the enhanced forms of certain AFC domains might improve the health-related well-being of older persons. The findings are discussed within the broader theoretical debate on ecological ageing. Implications for community-led social care are drawn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of individuals' social environment as an explanation for the 'happiness-income paradox', but also accounting for the negative relationship between income inequality and subjective well-being in macro-comparative perspective is now widely recognized. At the same time, however, debates are still ongoing about the specific role local communities play in moderating the relationship between personal income and subjective well-being. This article adds to this literature by examining cross-level interactions between individual- and district-level determinants of self-rated happiness using multilevel mixed regression techniques. Our findings suggest that living in wealthier districts in Hong Kong is a 'positive' for individuals on lower personal incomes, whereas the effect on those with higher incomes is more in line with arguments underlining the role of local communities as a 'negative'. While the overall effect of district-level poverty on self-reported happiness in Hong Kong is benign, this is not the case for individuals on low incomes who are most negatively affected if they live in districts featuring higher levels of deprivation. Governments across contemporary Asian global cities should recognize the important role of citizens' social environment and tackle existing structural barriers to greater self-reported happiness accordingly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's practice of contracting out social services raises two related questions. The first one seeks to determine "the contractual relationship" between the Chinese government and its third sector in a mixed welfare regime. The second one inquires whether China's commissioning welfare strategy has increased the power of its civil society. This study attempts to address these two issues based on the experiences of non‐governmental organisations (NGOs) in a Chinese city. It was found that the contracted NGOs were unable to obtain an equal status but were treated as assistants of local governments. The NGOs were also asked to do extra work that was not listed in the service contracts. Moreover, the service performance assessment criteria were unable to accurately evaluate the work of NGOs. Thus, the welfare participation of Chinese NGOs has not brought with them more political power. It is proposed that China's welfare reform needs to be backed up by its legal reform to put in place a mechanism that tackles the unequal power distribution between welfare purchasers and welfare providers. The study further illustrates that the Chinese government has adopted a pragmatic instrumentalism strategy by placing NGOs in a supplementary and subordinate role. This paper offers a conceptual discourse on analysing the state‐NGOs relationship against China's market reform and its search for a better welfare management strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The promotion and development of sustainable volunteerism is crucial for quality social services. Previous studies on the relationship between social trust and volunteering is mixed and inclusive. This article aims to investigate the effects of the particularized trust, generalized trust, trust differential (i.e., difference in levels between particularized and generalized trust) and radius of trust (i.e., difference in levels between in-group trust and out-group trust), on volunteering. By interviewing 1,170 Hong Kong Chinese in a territory-wide randomized household survey, this article reveals that generalized trust facilitates volunteering, whereas particularized trust exhibits an inverse effect. The radius of trust could not facilitate voluntary participation. This article distinguishes between the reverse contributions of generalized and particularized trust among Hong Kong Chinese, thereby providing a clear and precise explanation for social trust-volunteering relationships. Future research should focus on the conceptualization and operationalization of radius of trust and cross-cultural comparative studies on the effects of particularized and generalized trust using longitudinal data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past decade, the influence of global forces for public sector reforms through the involvement of third sector organizations in social service delivery in the form of contracting out of social services has been growing. Understanding that the state alone can have difficulties financing and providing good quality social services, the Chinese government has made attempts to engage non-governmental organizations to deliver them. This article critically examines how the contracting out social service policy adopted in China has enhanced social service delivery. This article also reflects upon the social governance reforms in China and its effects on the government-NGOs relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the early 21st century, the Chinese government has proactively expanded social protection by providing better benefits and broader coverage for its people. However, a new puzzle has emerged in the Minimum Living Standard Scheme, 'last resort of social protection' in China. Normally, when the benefit standard is set higher, relatively more people situated below this line are entitled to receive assistance. However, in reality fewer people than expected receive support. We study the case of Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong Province, to explain this phenomenon and analyse the social citizenship of marginalized groups in urban China. We reveal the decline in replacement rates and tighter conditionality applied to defining the 'deserving poor' by reviewing administrative data and policy documents from 1995 to 2016. Drawing on the longitudinal qualitative study conducted between 2009 and 2011, we further illustrate how the decreased replacement rate and tighter conditionality diminish the well-being of the poor. Our findings on policy changes and their outcomes in Guangzhou provide some important insights into poverty governance and social citizenship under China's social development in the past decade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Chinese government has recently expanded the scope of urban social insurance programmes. However, social protection for the labour force of the urban informal sector, which reaches about half the number of urban workers, lags significantly behind. This under-coverage may be due to institutional constraints, particularly the household registration system hukou, and self-selection behaviour related to the limited benefits of social insurance. Drawing on a recent nationwide individual-level survey and city-level statistics, this study examines these two explanations for the under-enrolment on the social insurance programme. First, results suggest that hukou and the intergovernmental fiscal system are major institutional constraints. Second, self-selection behaviour in programme enrolment is verified. Employers in the informal sector are likely to opt out of social insurance. More importantly, employers in the informal sector, with rural or non-local hukou, are likely to opt out of social insurance, which suggests that self-selection behaviour is constrained by institutions. Such findings have important implications for broad theoretical and policy debates on universal social protection. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]