职业选择、职业内在价值与福利的代际传递

Occupational Choice,Occupational Intrinsic Qualities and the Intergenerational Mobility of Welfare

职业的非货币特质,或称为职业的内在价值,是反映就业质量的重要因素,与个人福利水平密切相关。本文使用中国家庭追踪调查和中国综合社会调查数据,构建了从社会、体力、智力、自主控制和安全等五个层面衡量职业内在价值的指标,并发现父辈收入越高,子辈选择职业的内在价值越高。进一步分析显示,只有当父辈收入高于某一门槛值时,才会对子辈选择职业的内在价值水平产生显著的正向影响。这些发现表明,父辈除去通过影响子辈的收入和教育等显性特征并进而影响可用货币度量的福利外,还会影响子辈以舒适性、安全性、受尊重程度等职业内在价值为代表的非货币福利。因此,传统的收入代际流动系数可能会高估社会流动性,将职业的内在价值纳入代际传递的研究视野,对全面理解社会流动性问题有重要价值。

Non-pecuniary aspects,also known as intrinsic qualities of occupations,are important factors reflecting job qualities and are closely related to individual welfare.This paper uses data from the China Family Panel Studies and Chinese General Social Survey to construct indicators that measure the intrinsic qualities of occupations from five aspects:society,physics,intelligence,autonomy,and safety.It is found that the higher the parental income is,the higher the intrinsic qualities of their children's occupations are.Further analysis shows that there is a significant positive impact on the children's occupations􀆳intrinsic qualities only when the parental income is above a certain threshold.These findings indicate that,in addition to influencing the explicit characteristics such as income and education of the children and thus affecting the welfare measured in monetary terms,parents also affect their children's non-monetary welfare,represented by the intrinsic qualities of occupations such as comfort,safety,and respect.Hence,traditional intergenerational mobility coefficients of income may overestimate social mobility.Incorporating the intrinsic qualities of occupations into the research scope of intergenerational mobility is of great importance for a comprehensive understanding of social mobility issues.