Differential acculturation: a study of well-being differences in intergenerational social mobility between rural and urban China

Zhao, Yizhang ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2399-9569 and Li, Yaojun 2019. Differential acculturation: a study of well-being differences in intergenerational social mobility between rural and urban China. Sociology 53 (4) , pp. 724-743. 10.1177/0038038518818405

PDF - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (174kB)

Abstract

This article examines the effects of China’s household registration (hukou) system, which divides the population into rural and urban sectors with differential benefits and entitlements, on the link between intergenerational social mobility and people’s well-being. Using China General Social Surveys of 2005 and 2011, we find that upward mobility has a similarly positive effect in the urban and the rural sectors but downward mobility has a markedly negative effect chiefly in the rural sector. We propose a thesis of ‘asymmetrical permeability’ to account for the findings. In the context of rapid economic development and staggering institutional reform, the upwardly mobile in both sectors enjoy ample socio-economic resources as provided by the advantaged destination classes whereas the downwardly mobile depend very much on the hukou status they have. In the urban but not rural sector, families in advantaged positions are able to protect the downwardly mobile offspring in their well-being. It is therefore the differences in the hukou system that explain the differential acculturation.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Social Sciences (Includes Criminology and Education)
Additional Information:	This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
Publisher:	SAGE
ISSN:	0038-0385
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	11 March 2020
Date of Acceptance:	1 January 2018
Last Modified:	03 May 2023 13:10
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/130311

Citation Data

Cited 5 times in Scopus. View in Scopus. Powered By Scopus® Data

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item