Psychological cost in transitional economies : state-to-nonstate job mobility and subjective well-being in urban China, 1992-2008

Abstract

Situated in China’s market transition, this study adds new evidence to existing literature concerning the costs of transition by examining the effects of intragenerational job mobility across economic sectors on individuals’ subjective well-being. Based on pooled data analysis of restricted urban samples from the China General Social Survey (CGSS) in 2003, 2006 and 2008, the effects of two kinds of state-to-nonstate job mobility are highlighted: voluntary state-to-nonstate mobility and involuntary state-to-nonstate mobility, and their potential underlying mechanisms are further explored. Consistent results from ordered logit regressions suggest that both voluntary and involuntary mobility significantly decrease individuals’ subjective well-being, and their effects tend to prevail over an extended period of time as well as across different social groups. Institutional segmentation in terms of distinctive allocation of social welfare benefits, rather than psychosocial factors, plays an important role as a nexus linking state-to-nonstate mobility to subjective well-being. On the one hand, voluntary mobile individuals experienced a trade-off by enjoying higher paid-off while losing a sense of security. On the other hand, involuntary mobility per se as a kind of downward mobility leaves long-term psychological scars to those who experienced layoff or unemployment after controlling for social welfare benefits. Results from robustness checks indicate that neither observed nor unobserved confounding factors, if any, would affect our conclusions.

Date of Award	2013
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology