The Impact of Social Capital on Wages of Rural Migrants and its Gender Difference in China

Abstract

The objective of this article is to study the impact of social capital on the wages of Chinese rural migrants and the gender difference of the effect. The empirical results show that both ''bridging'' and ''bonding'' social capital have positive effects on wages, but ''bridging'' has a more significant effect. Friendly relationships between migrants and local workers can help the migrants increase the probability of earning upper middle to high wages by 6.4%. Migrants whose jobs are introduced by friends or relatives have over 1.6% higher probabilities of earning a upper middle to high wage. In addition, gender differences exist in the social capital effect on wage. The ''bridging'' effect on male migrants' wage is significantly larger than the effect on female migrants' wage, while the ''bonding'' effect on female's wage is larger than the effect on male's wage. Some policy implications are discussed.

Marketing to Liminal Consumers

“…Our contribution to the literature is one of adding to the understanding of the migrant segment in urban China beyond what has been presented previously (Wang and Tian 2014;Wang, Zhou, and Zhang 2015). We will note many differences between our study and the Wang and Tian (2014) (the most similar study to ours in marketing).…”

“…The special issue editors (Polsa and Zheng 2015) of the issue on China in the Journal of Macromarketing explicitly called for more research on migrant well-being and services in migrant communities. Thus, our contribution to the literature is one of adding to the understanding of the migrant segment in urban China beyond what has been presented previously (Wang and Tian 2014; Wang, Zhou, and Zhang 2015). We will note many differences between our study and the Wang and Tian (2014) one (the most similar marketing study to ours).…”

“…The ties to family and hometown that were discussed in much depth in our interviews were not mentioned in Ustuner and Holt’s (2007) interpretations of their Turkish migrants’ experiences, though they played major roles in the other Chinese studies (Wang and Tian 2014; Wang, Zhou, and Zhang 2015). It may be likely that the greater amount of time spent in the urban area by the Turkish migrants facilitated the separation from their families in Eastern Turkey.…”

“…[Insert Table 1 about here] We have chosen to re-examine existing understandings of this market segment of withincountry migrant workers, which was also the context of the Wang and Tian (2014), Wang et al (2015), and Ustuner and Holt (2007) studies. Our study differs from those studies in important ways.…”

“…Both the studies in China investigated financial issues. Wang, Zhou, and Zhang (2015) investigated how different forms of social capital (bonding vs. bridging) affect migrant wages, whereas Wang and Tian (2014) investigated the issues that migrant cab drivers in Shenzhen faced in getting loans to pay the 200,000 RMB to lease their taxi. The Ustuner and Holt (2007) study investigated females’ lived experience in households that had migrated from Eastern Turkey to Ankara.…”