Risk, Inequality, and Support for Social Insurance Reform in China

Abstract

Building on the policy feedback literature and the risk-based perspective of the welfare state, this study examines the causal link between policy and opinion in a non-democratic setting. I argue that the distinct distributional profiles of social insurance benefits and risks in the current system generate different feedback effects on public demands for social insurance reform. Drawing on original individual-level survey data collected in China between 2022 and 2023, I find that high financial risk in social insurance significantly increases individuals' support for cross-region integration of social insurance. In contrast, high inequality in the current social insurance has no such effects. The findings suggest that, given the looming financial pressure in China's fragmented and stratified social insurance system, citizens' support for cross-region integration of social insurance aligns with the government's strategy of prioritizing cross-region redistribution over cross-group redistribution. This policy feedback explains why the Chinese government can engage in “hard redistribution” without causing significant political and social instability driven by distributive conflicts.