社会杂志 ›› 2017, Vol. 37 ›› Issue (2): 74-105.

• 专题二:收入分配、幸福感与社会分层 • 上一篇    下一篇

相对收入与主观幸福感:检验农民工的多重参照群体

吴菲1, 王俊秀2   

  1. 1. 复旦大学社会学系;
    2. 中国社会科学院社会学研究所
  • 出版日期:2017-03-20 发布日期:2017-03-20
  • 通讯作者: 吴菲 E-mail:haniawu@fudan.edu.cn
  • 基金资助:

    本研究获得国家社科基金重大项目“社会心理建设：社会治理的心理学路径”（16ZDA231）的资助。

Relative Income and Subjective Well-Being: Examining Multiple Reference Groups of Rural-to-Urban Migrant Workers in China

WU Hania1, WANG Junxiu2   

  1. 1. Department of Sociology, Fudan University;
    2. Institute of Sociology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
  • Online:2017-03-20 Published:2017-03-20
  • Supported by:

    This research is supported by the Major Project of the State Social Science Fund (16ZDA231).

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摘要：

尽管社会经济地位低于城市居民，农民工的主观幸福感却更高。这种客观经济地位与主观福利评判的不一致有两种解释：同质性参照群体假设和向上流动期望假设，暗示农民工在进行社会比较时会选择不同的参照群体。基于一项大规模全国代表性的调查数据，本文通过建构农民工的多个参照群体检验了上述假设，结果验证了同质性参照群体假设：控制个人收入后，同省其他农民的平均收入越高，农民工的生活满意度越低；加入农民的平均收入后，农民工相对于城市就业居民的生活满意度优势消失，甚至转为劣势。向上流动期望假设未获支持：城市就业居民的平均收入对农民工的生活满意度没有显著影响，而且这样的“零效应”可能并非由于向上流动期望的压抑影响造成的。

关键词: 社会比较, 多重参照群体, 农民工, 主观幸福感

Abstract:

In spite of their lower socioeconomic position in comparison to urban citizens, migrant workers usually report higher subjective well-being. Two interpretations address this inconsistency between objective socioeconomic status and subjective well-being judgement:homogeneous reference group hypothesis (HRG) and the prospect of upward mobility hypothesis (PUM). These two theories imply that migrant workers may choose different reference groups when engaging in social comparison. On one hand, HRG suggests that migrant workers may compare their income with that of other farmers in their origins, therefore their lower income status relative to urban workers won't hurt their evaluation of well-being. On the other hand, PUM suggests urban workers are migrant workers' reference group, acting as a signal of their income status in the future; thus the positive effect from expectation of upward mobility would overwhelm the negative influence of current lower income status. Based on large-scale nationally representative survey data, we test the above hypotheses by constructing multiple reference groups of migrant workers (i.e. farmers, migrant workers and urban workers). Our findings support the homogeneous reference group hypothesis:holding one's own income constant, the more other farmers in same province earn, the less satisfied migrant workers are, indicating migrant workers' higher income status relative to other farmers has a significant effect on their subjective well-being. Furthermore, the mysterious subjective well-being premium of migrant workers over urban citizens shrinks dramatically, even to negative, after including the average income of their rural peers. Nevertheless, the prospect of upward mobility hypothesis is not supported:the average income of other urban workers shows no significant influence, and it may not result from the depressing effect of the prospect of upward mobility.

Key words: subjective well-being, migrant workers, social comparison, multiple reference group