Xu, Hongwei, and Yu Xie. “
The Causal Effects of Rural-to-Urban Migration onChildren’sWell-being in China”.
European Sociological Review 31.4 (2015): ,
31, 4, 502-519. Print.
AbstractChina’s rural-to-urban migration has affected 12.6 million school-age rural children who have migrated with their parents and another 22 million who have been left behind by their migrant parents. Not enough is known, either theoretically or empirically, about the causal impact of migration on the well-being of this large number of Chinese children affected by migration. Propensity score matching methods are applied to estimate the effects of migration in children 10–15 years old from a 2010 national survey (N = 2,417). Children’s migration has significant positive effects on their objective well-being but no negative effects on their subjective well-being. There is little difference between the left-behind and non-migrant children across multiple life domains. The Rosenbaum bounds tests indicate that the causal effects of child migration are sensitive to hidden bias for certain outcomes, but not for others.
xu-xie2015_esr.pdf Xie, Yu, and Yongai Jin. “
Household Wealth in China”.
Chinese Sociological Review 47.3 (2015): ,
47, 3, 203-229. Print.
AbstractWith new nationwide longitudinal survey data now available from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), we study the level, distribution, and composition of household wealth in contemporary China. We found that the wealth Gini coefficient of China was 0.73 in 2012. The richest 1 percent owned more than one-third of the total national household wealth, while the poorest 25 percent owned less than 2 percent. Housing assets, which accounted for over 70 percent, were the largest component of household wealth. Finally, the urban-rural divide and regional disparities played important roles in household wealth distribution, and institutional factors significantly affected household wealth holdings, wealth growth rate, and wealth mobility.
xie-jin2015.pdf Xie, Yu. “
Editor’s Comments”. 2015: n. pag. Print.
AbstractWe are living through an extraordinarily interesting period, historically. The world has largely been peaceful since the end of the Second World War. The Cold War ended in the unambiguous victory of the West. Economic development and industrialization have been happening in many parts of the world, beyond Europe and Northern America. The world has become increasingly globalized, connected by internet technology, inexpensive air travelling networks, and English as the de facto international language. This is a fortunate time to be a sociologist. While technological advances and economic prosperity are sure to continue predictably, social issues studied by sociologists are becoming more prominent, requiring serious research, both for policy making and for public discourse.
xie_2015_cjs_editors_comments.pdf Wang, Jia, and Yu Xie. “
Feeling good about the iron rice bowl: Economic sectorand happiness in post-reform urban China”.
Social Science Research 53 (2015): ,
53, 203-217. Print.
AbstractSituated in China’s market transition, this study examines the relationship between economic sector and a worker’s happiness in post-reform urban China. Using datasets from the Chinese General Social Surveys 2003, 2006 and 2008, we find that workers in the state sector enjoy a subjective premium in well-being – reporting significantly higher levels of happiness than their counterparts in the private sector. We also find that during a period when a large wave of workers moved from the state sector to the private sector, those remaining in the state sector reported being significantly happier than did former state sector workers who had moved, whether the move was voluntary or involuntary. We attribute the higher level of reported happiness in the state sector than in the private sector to the disparity by sector in the provision of social welfare benefits. Those who made voluntary state-to-private moves experienced a trade-off in enjoying higher payoffs while losing job security, whereas involuntary mobiles experienced downward mobility and suffered a long-term psychological penalty.
wang-xie2015.pdf Liu, Airan, and Yu Xie. “
Influences of monetary and non-monetary family resourceson children’s development in verbal ability in China”.
Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 40 (2015): ,
40, 59-70. Print.
AbstractThis paper addresses the debate over the significance of family’s monetary versus non-monetary resources for children’s achievement and development, within the context ofcontemporary China. We use data from the 2010 baseline survey of the China Family PanelStudy to examine the relevance of several proposed determinants in Chinese children’s cog-nitive achievement. Our findings suggest that: (1) family income is significantly associatedwith children’s achievement, but family’s assets and direct measures of monetary resourcesare found to have little effect; (2) non-monetary resources, particularly parenting, are ofgreat importance to children’s achievement; (3) parenting practices do not vary greatly byfamily’s economic resources.
liu-xie2015.pdf Brown, Miranda, and Yu Xie. “
Between heaven and earth: Dual accountability in Han China”.
Chinese Journal of Sociology 11 (2015): ,
1, 1, 56-87. Print.
AbstractScholars have noticed that centrally-appointed officials in imperial China were not only beholden to their superiors but also acted as brokers of local interests.We characterize such a structural position as ‘dual accountability’. Although accountability to superiors is readily understandable within the Weberian framework of bureaucratic hierarchy, the reasons behind local responsiveness bear explanation. This paper attempts to explain such responsiveness by investigating the larger ideological, structural, and institutional contexts of the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE). We explore two existing explanations
– practical necessity and ‘Confucian’ or classical paternalism – and add a new explanation of our own: the emphasis on virtuous reputations in the system of bureaucratic recruitment and promotion. Our argument is supported by empirical evidence from a range of sources, including administrative records and inscriptions on ancient stelae.
More generally, we question Weber’s hypothesis that the Chinese imperial system of administration fit the ideal type of traditional bureaucracy, and we examine the rational bases underlying an ‘inefficient’ system that was in place for two millennia.
brown-xie2015.pdf “
Editorial”.
Chinese Journal of Sociology 11 (2015): ,
1, 1, 3-5. Print.
AbstractWe are living through an extraordinarily interesting period, historically. The world has largely been peaceful since the end of the Second World War. The Cold War ended in the unambiguous victory of the West. Economic development and industrialization have been happening in many parts of the world, beyond Europe and Northern America. The world has become increasingly globalized, connected by internet technology, inexpensive air travelling networks, and English as the de facto international language. This is a fortunate time to be a sociologist. While technological advances and economic prosperity are sure to continue predictably, social issues studied by sociologists are becoming more prominent, requiring serious research, both for policy making and for public discourse. Let me mention a few: social inequality, education, health, culture, family formation and dissolution, fertility and mortality, social cohesion and collective efficacy, public trust, social organizations and institutions, neighborhoods, social networks, racial and ethnic conflicts, gender relationships, domestic and international migration, feelings of happiness and alienation, crimes and deviant behaviors, and intergenerational relationships. I mention these topics not only because they figure prominently in past sociological research, but also because they are unlikely to have solutions that are solely, or even mainly, technological or economic in nature. Take divorce as an example. We know that divorce rates have risen in many countries since the end of the Second World War, coinciding with a period of rapid economic development and technological advances, as well as the large improvement of women’s social status relative to men, especially in education. In short, divorce is a social phenomenon, and understanding of its causes and consequences requires sociological research. The same can be said of other social phenomena. This is a particularly exciting time to conduct sociological research on China. After a ‘‘century of humiliation’’ between the Opium War that began in 1840 and the end of the Second World War in 1945, the China unified by the Communist Party in 1949 stayed poor, undeveloped, and isolated from the rest of the world until 1978, when a new era of the economic reform began. Since 1978, China has been undergoing a social transformation whose scope, rapidity, and significance in impact are unprecedented in human history. I hold the view that China’s ongoing social transformation since its economic reform is a watershed event in long-term world history, comparable in significance to the Renaissance that began in 14th-century Italy, the Protestant Reformation in 16th-century Germany, and the Industrial Revolution in 18th-century Britain.
chinese_journal_of_sociology-2015-xie-3-5.pdf