流动的社会资本——传统宗族文化是否影响移民就业?

Flowing Social Capital:Can Traditional Clan Culture Affect Migrants' Employment in Modern Society?

人口城市化和城乡融合是新型城镇化的核心内容,也是未来经济增长的重要动力。本文研究宗族文化对移民城镇就业的影响,考察传统社会资本在现代城市社会中的作用及其影响机制。基于2005年全国1%人口抽样调查数据,以大姓占比作为宗族文化的代理变量,本文实证研究了作为社会资本的宗族文化与移民就业选择之间的关系。研究发现,宗族文化对移民就业有重要影响,它显著提高了移民进入低端服务业的概率,但没有提高移民进入高端服务业的概率,说明以宗族文化为代表的传统社会资本在低端服务业中依然可以发挥作用,对高端服务业发展则影响有限,这些结论在控制了城市间物理、行政距离和迁出地经济社会信息后依然成立。结合2010年中国综合社会调查和2012年北京大学中国家庭和个人跟踪调查数据对其作用机制的进一步研究发现,宗族文化并非简单地通过同姓之间的社会网络和社会关系影响移民就业,信任才是关键渠道。本文的政策含义在于,以现代服务业为基础的城乡融合不能仅依托于传统社会资本,构建现代契约社会下的信任文化是新型城镇化顺利推进的重要保障。

Summary： As a core aspect of urbanization, the integration of urban and rural areas provides an important impetus for economic growth in China. Neo-urbanization, which regards humans as its essence, mainly depends on the comprehensive integration of migrants and urban society. Specifically, neo-urbanization requires three types of migrant transformations： from agriculture to non-agriculture in working industries, from rural to urban in living areas, and from peasants to citizens in identification. At present, the institutional obstacle to neo-urbanization is hukou, which limits labor flow using different welfare systems. Due to new government policies, this obstacle will gradually disappear. Thus, culture discordance will become the major hindrance to integration. People who have lived in rural areas are familiar with traditional clan culture and informal institutions, which conflict with the contract system used in urban cities. This paper focuses on the impacts of traditional clan culture on migrants＇ employment, and explores the mechanism of traditional social capital that affects people＇s behavior in modern society. Using the ratio of large family names as an index of clan culture, this paper studies the relationship between clan culture and migrants＇ employment based on data from the 2005 population census. This paper reveals that clan culture has a significant impact on migrants＇ employment. It increases the probability of migrants entering the low-skill service sector, but not the high-skill service sector, which implies that traditional social capital plays a role in low-skill sectors but not high- skill ones. These results are robust to alternative measurements of clan culture and various model specifications. Combining the census dataset with the 2010 Chinese General Social Survey and 2012 China Family Panel Studies datasets, we investigate the mechanism through which clan culture affects migrants＇ employment. We identify two main possible mechanisms： social networks based on consanguinity, and social trust based on geographical relationships. We find that the main mechanism is social trust, not social networks. In urban cities, kinship contacts only include a small group of people. However, the mechanism should influence the general trust between individuals, which extend from relatives to fellows, neighbors and friends. Clan culture places emphasis on general trust and information sharing, both of which make it possible to meet the diverse labor demands of the service sector and increase the possibility of entering the service sector. The difference of this paper from the existing literature and its contribution to the field is mainly demonstrated in the following four ways. First, this paper offers a new city development perspective to explore the impact of clan culture on migrants, which breaks through the limitations of clan culture research only on rural societies and points out one significant problem with integration. Second, the object of this culture and economic development study is transmigrants; however, this paper also refers to interregional migrants in China. Third, we use the ratio of large family names as the proxy for clan culture to overcome the endogenous problems in social capital research. Fourth, the existing literature mainly focuses on how clan networks influence peasants, but we emphasize that clan culture is an important mechanism that affects migrants. Normally, the high-skill and low-skill service industries tend to evolve correspondingly. Thus, traditional clan culture could exert a positive impact on the service industry overall as it promotes the low-skill service industry. However, as shown by Grief ＆ Tabellini （2010）, clan culture might hinder urbanization in the long run because it cannot affect the high-skill service industry. Our research reveals that social trust, rather than social networks between people sharing the same family name, is key to interpreting the impact of clan culture on migrants＇ employment. In conclusion, service-industry-based integration should not only focus on traditional social capital, but should also concentrate on social trust, conforming to current contractual society.