Publication Status

E-pub ahead of print

Document Type

Journal article

Department / Unit

School of Graduate Studies

Journal Title

Journal of Social Policy

Publication Date

8-1-2017

Language

English

Volume

47

First Page

335

Last Page

357

Abstract

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.

DOI

10.1017/S0047279417000563

ISSN

0047-2794

Fulltext file version

Accepted author manuscript

Comment

The individual-level data used in this paper are sourced from the China Labor-force Dynamics Survey (CLDS) conducted by the Center for Social Science Survey at Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China. We express our sincere gratitude to the Center

Pure ID

10957508

Pure UUID

b0f37e16-68a3-4b34-9a13-e6b48b930054

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