Analytical Report China

BACKGROUND PAPER FOR THE
WORLD DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2013
Perceptions of Good Jobs
Analytical Report
Jianyang, China Sichuan
Huafeng Zhang
Ingunn Bjørkhaug
Anne Hatløy
Tewodros Kebede
Fafo-report 2012:19
ISBN: 978-82-7422-880-1
The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the
authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the World Development Report 2013
team, the World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the
World Bank or the governments they represent.
Table of Contents
List of Tables ............................................................................................................................... ii
List of Figures .............................................................................................................................. ii
Abbreviations and Acronyms ..................................................................................................... iii
Chapter 1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 1
Chapter 2 Methods ........................................................................................................................... 3
2.1 Good jobs survey ............................................................................................................... 3
2.2 Questionnaire ..................................................................................................................... 3
2.3 Empirical methods ............................................................................................................. 4
Chapter 3 Data .................................................................................................................................. 6
3.1 Demographic and dwelling characteristics ........................................................................ 6
3.2 Economic situations ........................................................................................................... 8
3.3 Labor force participation ................................................................................................... 9
3.4 Characteristics of randomly selected individuals ............................................................ 10
Chapter 4 Results ........................................................................................................................... 12
4.1 Determinants of labor force participation ........................................................................ 12
4.2 Jobs and household wealth .............................................................................................. 14
4.3 Perception about job types ............................................................................................... 15
4.4 Job benefits for wage workers ......................................................................................... 20
4.5 Job satisfaction ................................................................................................................ 22
4.6 Jobs and empowerment ................................................................................................... 27
4.7 Jobs, social trust and institutions ..................................................................................... 29
Chapter 5 Summary of main findings ............................................................................................ 36
References ...................................................................................................................................... 37
i
List of Tables
Table 1 Interview status for households and randomly selected individual .............................. 6
Table 2 Household wealth asset index by location .................................................................... 8
Table 3 Household economic situation ...................................................................................... 9
Table 4 Employment status (Age 18 and above) ..................................................................... 10
Table 5 RSI characteristics ....................................................................................................... 11
Table 6 Main employment status of RSI by reported activities ............................................... 12
Table 7 Logistic regression of labor force participation .......................................................... 13
Table 8 Household wealth index by the number of employed persons in the household ........ 14
Table 9 Household wealth index by employment status .......................................................... 15
Table 10 Mean value of preferred job by location, gender and education1 ............................. 19
Table 11 Benefits from employer by contract status................................................................ 20
Table 12 Ordered logit regression estimates for satisfaction with level of income ................. 25
Table 13 Ordered logit regression estimates for satisfaction with job potential for future ...... 26
Table 14 Ordered logit regression estimates for satisfaction with in social status from job ... 27
Table 15 Feature of job by education and type of work in percent .......................................... 28
Table 16 How meaningful people find their work related to empowerment? ......................... 29
Table 1 Level of trust by employment status ........................................................................... 30
Table 2 Regression results for index of trust............................................................................ 33
Table 3 Level of confidence in institutions .............................................................................. 34
Table 4 Regression results on index of level of confidence in institutions .............................. 35
List of Figures
Figure 1 Overview of structure of instruments .......................................................................... 4
Figure 2 Age and gender structure of population in urban and rural area ................................. 7
Figure 3 Preferred job by location and gender ......................................................................... 16
Figure 4 Job preferences in relation to location, gender, job status, age education and socio-
economic status. Multivariate correspondence analysis .......................................................... 17
Figure 5 Job type easiest to pursue by location and gender ..................................................... 18
Figure 6 Most important job for the society by location and gender ....................................... 19
Figure 7 Distribution of benefits among wage workers ........................................................... 21
Figure 8 Satisfaction and number of job benefits .................................................................... 22
Figure 9 Level of satisfaction by work categories ................................................................... 23
Figure 10 Level of satisfaction by workers with and without contract .................................... 24
Figure 1 MCA loadings across two dimensions of trust indicators on family, friends and
neighbors .................................................................................................................................. 31
Figure 2 MCA loadings across two dimensions of trust indicators on other people ............... 32
Figure 3 MCA loadings across dimensions of indicators of confidence in institutions ........... 35
ii
Abbreviations and Acronyms
CATPCA Categorical Principal Component Analysis
CCA Cognitive-Creative-Autonomous
DHS Demographic and Health Survey
OLS Ordinary least squares
PSU Primary Selection Unit
RSI Randomly Selected Individual
WDR 2013 World Development Report 2013
iii
Chapter 1 Introduction
Jobs have taken a center stage in the policy debate due to recent world developments ranging
from consequences of the financial crises to that of the Arab uprising that is partly fueled by
youth unemployment as well as political discontentment. The World Development Report 2013
focuses mainly on jobs and their connections with important dimensions of economic and social
development. To this end, jobs can be seen as having transformational roles in three dimensions:
living standards, productivity and social cohesion. In essence, focusing on what a good job for
development is from these perspectives will provide insights help address diverse job agendas.
The notion of a good job may seem normative but can also be anchored in basic economic
arguments. Instead of having a list of criteria such as structure of earning, health benefits, and
pension plans to characterize a job as good job, the WDR 2013 calls for focusing on the overall
features of a job as seen from its value in terms of increasing living standards, productivity
growth, and increasing social cohesion. However, it may be difficult to identify a single type of
job that is considered as good job in all dimensions. A job that is considered good in one aspect,
such as increasing income, may not necessarily be considered as prestigious job. Instead of trying
to focus on a single job, one may be interested to look into various facets of a given job and
conduct an assessment from different perspectives
This study has been conducted in order to better understand and explain how jobs are perceived
in a number of selected countries. The report is primarily targeted to provide inputs towards the
WDR 2013 and is part of a series of studies conducted on perception of good jobs in four
countries: Colombia, China, Egypt and Sierra Leone. The main emphasis has been to explore the
nature of jobs that affect living standards and enhance social cohesion. The report addresses the
following research questions:
- What are the most important factors affecting labor force participation?
- What are the relations between jobs and household wealth?
- Can perceptions and stereotyping of jobs be regarded as constraints for job creation?
- What are the linkages between job benefits and job stability?
- What are the determinants of job satisfactions?
- Jobs can be evaluated using a human empowerment perspective by focusing on three
features of job: cognitive, creative and autonomous activities. What is the relationship
between job status and human empowerment?
- Does inclusion in the labor force contribute to increased social trust and confidence in
institutions?
1
This study is conducted in the Jianyang in Sichuan Province, China. Jianyang is located in the
center area of Sichuan Province, which is one of the 23 provinces in Western China1. Jianyang
consists of 26 towns, 29 townships and 797 villages, with a population of around 1.5 million
people.
Within past few decades, China has experienced rapid economic growth. The economic growth in
China has also been accompanied widening disparities between urban and rural areas, between
Western and Eastern China. The economic reforms since 1970s have introduced large amount of
international companies, private and individual companies. The state-owned enterprises have also
experienced reconstructions since 1990s. The internal rural-urban labor migration was also one of
the important aspects in Chinese urban labor market. The tremendous changes in Chinese labor
market have also changed the perceptions and attitudes of people towards their work.
Sichuan province is one of the South-Western provinces, which is developed better than the
North-Western provinces, but lags behind most of the Eastern provinces. Among all the 31
provinces and regions in mainland of China, the per capita disposable income in Sichuan was
ranked at 23 in 2011. Sichuan is one of the main agricultural provinces. Jianyang is one of the
largest counties in China, and one of the 173 counties in Sichuan Province. Jianyang is also one
of the main counties that provides food and meat production in Sichuan. Jianyang has developed
rapidly in the recent years, and in 2010 was ranked for the first time at top 20 in comprehensive
economic evaluation among the counties in Sichuan.
This report is organized as follows. This chapter provides background to the study area. In
chapter two a description of the methodology used in this study is presented. Chapter three
presents description of the data collected for this study, including socio-economic background
and characteristics of labor force in the study area, Jianyang. Chapter four outlines the results and
discusses main findings. Summary of the main findings is found in the last chapter.
1
China has 23 provinces, 5 autonomous regions, 2 special administrative regions and 4 municipalities which are
administratively at provinces level. Sichuan is one of the Western Provinces.
2
Chapter 2 Methods
2.1 Good jobs survey
The main objective of the survey was to obtain data on perceptions of jobs in addition to
obtaining information on basic labor force indicators, economy and social trust.
The main design characteristics of the sample used in this study were as follows:
1. The target population of the study was all households living in Jianyang in Sichuan
Province, China
2. The sample frame was based on the 2010 census in China and was provided by Jianyang
statistics bureau.
3. The survey population was classified into two main reporting domains: Rural and Urban
4. Due to the low response rate, a second sample was drawn to increase the valid sample
size. First sample allocated 90 clusters, and 20 extra clusters were sampled in second
sample.
5. The selection of clusters was based on probability proportionate to size (PPS)
6. In first sample, 44 primary sampling units (PSUs) (clusters) were selected in urban area,
where 18 households were sampled in each cluster; while 46 clusters were allocated in
rural areas, where 15 households were sampled in each.
7. In second sample, 10 clusters were allocated in both urban and rural area, where 20
households selected in each cluster. With this design, the final sample size in the survey
was 110 clusters making up a total sample size of 1910 households.2
2.2 Questionnaire
To understand the populations own perception of jobs calls for detailed information about
what „good‟ and „bad‟ job characteristics are and to understand the constraints of accessing a
good job. In addition, barriers to labor market entry and potential solutions for these barriers
are important indicators that could have policy relevance. An associated concept of job
stereotypes could also help highlight what is regarded as a good job and is obtained through
vignettes depicting various types of jobs, and a questionnaire was designed for this study.
Part I of the questionnaire was administered at the household level. The respondent for this
part of the questionnaire was the household head or any other eligible knowledgeable person
who could provide information for the household as well as other household members. The
household member is called for responding to questions on household level information such
2
In 2 rural clusters, large amount of households had migrated to urban area, while the cluster did not have many
households. Therefore, during field work decisions were made to select all the households in these two clusters.
Additional 28 households were included into the sample in the second sample.
3
as demographics, education, labor force participation to household members (age 14 and
above), household economic conditions and assets.
Part II of the questionnaire was administered to a randomly selected individual (RSI) in the
selected household. The RSI was selected among all household members aged 18 or above.
The RSI responded to a number of questions about the person‟s current job status and its
associated features; the person‟s own perceptions of jobs; issues regarding social trust,
confidence on various institutions and participations on social organizations. These question
items are intended to be answered only by the randomly selected individual. The structure of
the questionnaire is depicted in Figure 1 below.
All Household Members

(PART I) Selection of RSI
 Demographics
 Household composition
 Education
Information on RSI’s
 Labor force participation (PART II)
 Housing  Job status and features
 Economic conditions  Perceptions on job

 Assets
 Social trust and participation
Figure 1 Overview of structure of instruments
2.3 Empirical methods

Descriptive statistical methods including frequencies, means, graphs and tables are used to
describe the various indicators used in this study. In addition to the descriptive statistics, the
study employs regression models to explore relationship with various factors affecting the
dependent variable under investigation. Generally, the perception indicators used in this study are
measured using five Likert items: 1=Not at all satisfied; 2=somewhat unsatisfied; 3=neither;
4=somewhat satisfied; 5=very satisfied. These values make up an ordinal set and ordinary least
square (OLS) regression will not be suitable to explain the various job satisfaction indicators used
in the study as it can give estimates which imply predictions of the values outside the feasible
range. Hence, ordered logit regressions are used to explain factors affecting job satisfaction.
Another type of indicator used in the study takes binary values (0 or 1). Specifically, labor force
participation is recorded as whether individuals are in or out of the labor force. OLS will not be
suitable for dummy variable indicators either as it predicts values beyond 0 and 1. So, logistic
regression is used to explore factors influencing labor force participation.
4
Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) was used in this report to analyze the pattern of
relationships of several categorical variables. It is an extension of correspondence analysis (CA),
which was developed by Hirschfeld (1935) and Jean-Paul Benzécri (1973). MCA is part of a
family of descriptive methods, such as Principal Components Analysis, that use mathematical
procedure to reveal pattern in complex data sets. It is very useful in mapping both variables and
individuals so as to construct complex visual maps whose structuring can be interpreted. The
increasing use of visualizations in presentations makes this method more popular in illustrating
complex relationships between variables. The method is particularly suitable when responses to
question items are recorded in categorical scale. In this report, we employed Multiple
Correspondence Analysis in analyzing perception of different of jobs, social trust and confidence
in institutions. Technical description of the method can be obtained in Greenacre and Blasius
(2006).
This report also constructs a wealth index from a set of assets owned by the household. This
wealth index is a linear asset-based index, constructed following procedures as in the
Demographic and Health Surveys (Rustein and Kiersten 2004). It considers households‟ access to
durable consumer goods and other asset indicators related with housing, water, sanitary facilities
and other amenities owned by households. To construct this asset index, we use the following set
of mixed asset-based and health-related variables for determining wealth tertiles:
- Household ownership of consumer durables (mobile phone, sofa set, chair, table, bed,
mattress, mat, sewing machine, gas cooker, stove, water heater, water filter, electric
fan, vacuum cleaner, microwave, fridge, freezer, air conditioner, washing machine,
TV, radio, bicycle motorbike, cars, DVD player, satellite connection, internet access,
personal computer, photo camera, video camera)
- Characteristics of households‟ dwelling (number of rooms, floor material, electricity,
toilet facility, water sources)
- Households‟ ownership of dwelling
5
Chapter 3 Data
The survey was originally planned to cover 1482 households in both rural and urban areas of
Jianyang. Due to the expected low response rate after the field work started, an additional sample
of 428 households was complemented.
The survey has a response rate of 51percent resulting in final sample size of 966 households as
shown in Table 1. The main reasons of such low response rate include unclear or invalid
addresses registered during census, reconstruction in urban area, and rural-urban labor migration
in rural area. Regarding the randomly selected individual survey, the response rate is 46 percent
resulting in a final sample size of 871 RSIs including 4 partly completed interviewed RSIs.
Table 1 Interview status for households and randomly selected individual
Interview status Households (%) Randomly selected individual (%)
Interview completed 51 46
Interview partly completed 0 0.2
No contact 11 3
Refusal 3 0.3
Convinced for interview after refusal 0.3
No usable information 3 2
No building structure 2
Vacant 26
Building under reconstruction 0.1
Unclear status 5
Incomplete household interview - 49
Total 100 100
Sample Size 1910 1910
The study did not conduct any substitution of households or RSIs that could not be contacted
during the survey period. This is mainly needed so as not to introduce a bias that may be due to
systematic absence of households and RSIs. In situations where people who do not work are
more likely to be at home, substitutions would increase a sampling bias through oversampling of
RSIs that are unemployed or outside the labor force. During the survey implementation, repeated
visits have been made to interview selected households and individuals and hence reduce non-
response rates of the survey.
3.1 Demographic and dwelling characteristics

The sampling of the households in this survey was based on the registered households in 2010
census. However, due to the rural-urban labor migration, large amount of rural population
migrated to work in urban area and sent money back to their households in the rural area. The
labor migration can be temporary, seasonal or permanent, but households still considered them as
their household members. During the survey for RSI questions, these labor migrants were to large
extent under-sampled, as they were not available in their original home, and not in the sampling
6
frame in their current place. Only the household members, who were reported as being at home
the day before the interview, were eligible for RSI interviews.
Figure 2 shows that age and gender structure of population in urban and rural area were found to
be similar, while the age and gender structure of the population who actually lived in rural and
urban area were quite different. In rural area, there was very apparent out-migration of young
people who are between 15 to 40 years old; while the elderly and the children were left behind. In
urban area, many of these young people were not included, that is, the proportion of the young
people living in the urban area might be much higher as shown in the figure.
All urban population All rural population

85+ 85+
80-84 80-84
75-79 75-79
70-74 70-74
65-69 65-69
60-64 60-64
55-59 55-59
50-54 50-54
45-49 45-49
40-44 40-44
35-39 35-39
30-34 30-34
25-29 25-29
20-24 20-24
15-19 15-19
10-14 10-14
5-9 5-9
0-4 0-4
8.0% 6.0% 4.0% 2.0% 0.0% 2.0% 4.0% 6.0% 8.0% 8.0% 6.0% 4.0% 2.0% 0.0% 2.0% 4.0% 6.0% 8.0%
Female Male Female Male
Urban population at home Rural population at home

85+ 85+
80-84 80-84
75-79 75-79
70-74 70-74
65-69 65-69
60-64 60-64
55-59 55-59
50-54 50-54
45-49 45-49
40-44 40-44
35-39 35-39
30-34 30-34
25-29 25-29
20-24 20-24
15-19 15-19
10-14 10-14
5-9 5-9
0-4 0-4
8.0% 6.0% 4.0% 2.0% 0.0% 2.0% 4.0% 6.0% 8.0% 8.0% 6.0% 4.0% 2.0% 0.0% 2.0% 4.0% 6.0% 8.0%
Female Male Female Male
Figure 2 Age and gender structure of population in urban and rural area
Most urban households (77 percent) lived in apartment building, while most rural households
lived in single-story houses (33 percent) or two-or three story houses (60 percent). The majority
of the people who lived in rural area owned their houses (97 percent), while around two-thirds of
the urban households owned the houses or apartments, 23 percent rented the house, and the rest
of the urban people occupied the house for free or due to other reasons. The mean number of
rooms in the houses people were living in was 3.6 in urban areas, and 5 in the rural areas. All the
7
households in urban area and over 99 percent of the rural households were connected to
electricity. On the other hand, the urban and rural households access to water sources and toilet
facilities varied much. While 89 percent of the households in urban area had piped water into
building, 84 percent rural households mainly used water from open or covered well, and only 13
percent rural households had piped water into the buildings. Similarly, most urban households
used flushed toilet to piped sewer systems (85 percent), and only one-tenth of the rural
households did the same. The remaining urban households used flushed toilet connected to septic
tank or other places, or the ventilated improved pit latrine. Almost one-fourth of the rural
households used flushed toilet connected to other places, one-forth rural households used
ventilated improved pit latrine, another one-forth rural households used pit latrine with or without
slab, and 14 percent rural households used composting toilet, bucket toilet or other kind of toilet.
3.2 Economic situations

Households‟ income was not asked in this survey, as good quality of income data is rather
difficult to collect in such small surveys. Instead, the set of consumer goods owned by
households, together with other asset indicators were asked by the survey. They were used to
construct a wealth index to identify households‟ economic situations. When ranking the
households‟ wealth index, household size was taken into account, that is, the ranking of the
wealth index was based on the population. And among all the households, they were grouped into
three groups, with each group containing one third of the population according to the constructed
wealth index.
The economic disparity between urban and rural was quite apparent. Table 2 shows households‟
economic situation in urban and rural areas, and high rural-urban economic disparities in
Jianyang. As many as 90 percent of the urban households were ranked as the richest; while 44
percent of the rural households were ranked as the poorest and 19 percent rural households were
among the richest.
Table 2 Household wealth asset index by location
Urban Rural Total
Poor third 2 44 36
Middle third 8 36 31
Rich third 90 19 33
Total 100 100 100
Sample size 475 493 968
In addition to the use of objective measure of wealth based on household assets, households were
asked to provide a subjective assessment of their economic situations that are classified into three
different categories: live well; neither rich nor poor and poor. The households‟ subjective
assessments on the economic situation indicated that 19 percent of households considered
themselves as living well, while 30 percent considered themselves as being poor (Table 3).
Although wealth index indicates that urban households have much better economic situation than
8
rural households, there are still 13 percent urban households consider themselves as poor, and 31
percent think they are living well. In rural area, 34 percent households report themselves as poor.
While wealth index indicates people‟s objective deprivation, people‟s subjective assessment
illustrates very well how people rank themselves among the people in the areas they live.
Table 3 Household economic situation

Urban Rural Total
Subjective assessment We live well 31 16 19
on household We are neither rich nor poor 56 50 51
economic situation We are poor 13 34 30
Fully satisfied 4 2 3
Satisfaction with Rather satisfied 18 13 14
current financial Neither 39 31 32
situation Less than satisfied 27 30 29
Not at all satisfied 12 25 22
Save money 20 13 14
Just get by 52 53 53
Financial situation
Spent some savings 13 7 8
during last year
Spent savings and borrowed money 13 18 17
Only borrowed money 3 9 8
In addition to these indicators households were also asked how satisfied that they were regarding
their current financial situation. Although only 13 percent urban households and 30 percent rural
households assessed themselves as poor, many more households were not satisfied with their
current financial situation. As shown in Table 3, only 22 percent households in urban area, and
15 percent households in rural area were satisfied with their current financial situation; while as
many as 39 percent urban household, and 55 percent rural households were not satisfied.
In the year before the survey, 20 percent of urban households and 13 percent rural households in
Jianyang managed to save money; while half of the households just got by. The remaining one-
third households had to spend savings or borrow money in the past year.
3.3 Labor force participation

For the purpose of this study we have used the ILO definition for unemployment. ILO defines the
unemployed as „the person who during the past seven days was without work, was currently
available for work and was seeking for work‟. Only around 14 percent of individuals of age 18
and above did not participate in the labor force (Table 4). More people were economically active
in rural area (90 percent) than in urban area (72 percent), while 16 percent women and 10 percent
men aged 18 and above were out of labor market. The unemployment rate was quite low in
Jianyang, as of the 86 percent economically active individuals only 1.2 percent were
unemployed. The unemployment rate was quite similar in urban and rural areas, also similar
among women and men.
9
Table 4 Employment status (Age 18 and above)
Location Gender
Total
Urban Rural Men Women
Employed 72.3 89.2 89.0 83.4 86.3
Employment status Unemployed 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.0 1.1
Out of labor force 26.6 9.7 9.9 15.6 12.7
Sample size 1283 1572 1439 1416 2855
Unemployment rate Employed 98.4 98.8 98.8 98.8 98.8
(ILO definition) Unemployed 1.6 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2
Sample size 939 1414 1236 1117 2353
3.4 Characteristics of randomly selected individuals

Altogether 874 RSIs were interviewed, among whom 446 were in urban area and 428 in rural
area; while 417 were men and 457 were women.
Table 5 shows the age and gender distribution, marital status, educational level, employment
status of the interviewed RSIs in the survey. The table also shows the wealth index distribution of
RSI‟s households, and whether the interviewed RSI had sickness of prolonged nature. Only 10
percent of the interviewed RSIs were aged 18 to 34, 38 percent were 35 to 49 years old, one-third
were 50 to 64 years old, and 20 percent were 65 or older. The age distribution of the RSIs was
quite different between urban and rural areas. The urban RSIs were younger than the rural RSIs,
as 21 percent urban RSIs and 7 percent rural RSIs were aged 18 to 34; while 36 percent urban
RSIs compared to 57 percent rural RSIs were 50 years of age and above. The rural-urban labor
migration has caused such differences, and those who have migrated were mainly young
population. The gender distribution of RSIs shows that more women were selected for RSI
interviews than men. The age and gender distributions of RSI were similar in both urban and
rural areas and as many as 86 percent of the RSIs were married or cohabitant, while only 14
percent were single and never married.
10
Table 5 RSI characteristics
Urban Rural Total
Age 18-34 21 7 10
35-49 44 37 38
50-64 21 35 32
65+ 15 22 20
Gender Male 48 48 48
Female 52 52 52
Marital status Single 10 6 7
Married/Cohabitant 84 86 86
Widow/Divorced/Separated 6 8 7
Education No school or no stage completed 14 45 38
Elementary or intermediate completed 46 50 49
Secondary (high school) or higher completed 40 5 13
Employment status Wage work 35 13 18
Farm work 2 60 47
Self-employed/ family businesses 25 3 8
Unemployed 2 1 1
Out of labor force 37 23 26
Wealth index Poor 2 41 32
Middle 7 40 33
Rich 91 19 35
Physical or psychological illness Yes 24 45 40
of prolonged nature No 76 55 60
Total 100 100 100
The educational level completed by the interviewed RSI varied quite much in the urban and rural
areas. As Table 5 shows, 40 percent of the urban RSIs completed secondary high school or higher
education, while it was only 5 percent in rural area. As the population in urban area only
comprised of 23 percent of the population in Jianyan County, the education level of the whole
population was not high. Only 13 percent of the RSIs completed secondary high school or higher
education, and 38 percent of the RSIs have never been in school or did not complete elementary
school. In rural area, almost half (45 percent) of the population had never attended school or did
not complete any level; while in urban area, it was 14 percent. As to the employment status, 18
percent of the RSIs were wage earners, and almost half were farmers, and 8 percent were self-
employed or worked in family business. Slightly more one-fourth of the interviewed RSIs were
out of labor force, while only one percent was unemployed. As discussed before, the temporarily
migrated members in the interviewed households were not among eligible for RSI interview,
therefore, relatively more interviewed RSIs were out of labor force than that was the case in the
whole population.
Table 5 describes the characteristics of the RSIs and what type of work they were mainly
involved in the previous 12 months. However, as Table 6 displays, many people were engaged in
more than one activity. One-third of the individuals who specified their main activity to be wage
work during the last 12 months also conducted additional work. On the other hand, only 10
11
percent agricultural workers have other additional work activities. However, among those who
were defined as out of the labor force, 46 percent conducted some type of activity in the past 12
months.
Table 6 Main employment status of RSI by reported activities
Main employment status in the last 12
months
All work activities conducted in the Wage Agricultural Self Un- Out of labor
1 2 3
last 12 months work work employed employed force Total
1
No work - - - 100 54 15
Wage work 66 - - 0 4 13
Agricultural work - 89 - 0 37 52
Self-employed - - 77 0 3 7
Wage and agricultural work 28 8 - 0 2 9
Wage and self-employed 2 - 6 0 0 1
Self-employed and agricultural work - 2 10 0 0 2
Wage, agricultural work and self-
3 0 7 0 0 1
employed
Total 100 100 100 100 100 100
Sample size 210 271 110 10 273 874
1
Not possible
2
Not working last 12 months, searching for work last seven days
3
Not working last 12 months, not searching for work last seven days
Chapter 4 Results
In this chapter, we will present the main results. Section 4.1 presents determinants of labor force
participation among the population age 18 and above. The relationship between wealth and jobs
are explored in section 4.2. Section 4.3 deals with job stereotype and how this differs by different
social categories. Section 4.4 presents job benefits to wage workers. Job satisfactions assessed
from different perspectives are presented in section 4.5. The role of job in empowering people is
presented in section 4.6. The last section presents how having a job influences social trust and
confidence in institutions.
4.1 Determinants of labor force participation

The previous section discussed characteristics of people in and outside the labor force. In this
section, we will investigate the features of individuals that are relevant for labor force
participation. We conducted a logistic regression for the population in age group 18-65 and the
results are shown in Table 7 below.
12
Table 7 Logistic regression of labor force participation
3
Variables Estimate Std. Error P-value Odds ratio
Female, compared to Male -0.760 0.153 .000** 0.468
Age 0.372 0.035 .000** 1.451
Age squared -0.428 0.042 .000** 0.652
1
Elementary completed 0.062 0.235 .792 1.064
1
Intermediate completed 0.131 0.231 .570 1.140
1
Secondary or higher level completed 0.577 0.290 .047** 1.781
2
Slightly difficult health condition 0.067 0.315 .832 1.069
2
Difficult health condition -3.053 0.703 .000** 0.047
Household size 0.309 0.129 .017** 1.362
Dependency ratio -0.205 0.094 .030** 0.815
Wealth index -0.071 0.121 .559 0.932
Urban compared to Rural -1.250 0.238 .000** 0.287
Constant -3.794 0.764 .000** 0.022
-2 Log likelihood 1342.38
1 2 3
Compared to No Education; Compared to No health problems; Significant at 5% level are starred.
Household population 18-65 years old, n=2405
Women are less likely to participate in the labor market

The logistic regression model shows that women are less likely to participate in the labor market
as compared to men exhibited by the negative and significant relationship with likelihood of
labor force participation. This is in line with the descriptive observation made earlier in that more
women are out of labor force.
Higher education increases labor force participation

Secondary or higher education is positively related to probability of participating in the labor
force. The relatively insignificant but positive relationship of higher level education shows the
relative importance of having a higher education to participate in the labor market.
Health matters
Self-reported chronic health status of individuals is a key indicator that determines labor force
participation. The reported chronic health status is classified into three categories: individuals
who has no reported health problem; individuals with slightly difficult health situation in that
they have reported health problem but are less hindered to go out on their own; individuals who
have health problems that makes it difficult to move around by themselves. Individuals with
slightly difficult health conditions have similar labor participation, while those with serious
health problems are much less likely to participate in the labor force.
Wealth does not matter

Wealth of individuals as measured by using a wealth index constructed from the list of assets is
found not to be related to the likelihood of labor force participation.
Household size, Dependency ratio

Households with more household members had higher labor participation, while the households
with higher dependency ratio, individuals are less likely to participate in the labor force.
13
Location
The labor force participation is significantly higher in rural area.
4.2 Jobs and household wealth

Higher employment contribute to household economy in the rural areas
Table 8 shows the ranking of households‟ wealth index in all the interviewed households in
Jianyang by the number of employed members in the household. As discussed in chapter 3.3 we
see that the labor force participation is high and most people who were able to work would be
engaged in some type of work.
In the urban households people without any employed persons were the least poor, but apart from
this, there were no significant differences between the households when one or more persons
were employed.
In rural areas, households with no members employed or one household member who worked
were significantly poorer than other households, and few household were in the rich third tertile
of the wealth index. People with three or more employed persons were relatively better off.
Table 8 Household wealth index by the number of employed persons in the household
Wealth index tertile (%)
Number of members employed Total (%) Sample size
Poor third Mid third Rich third
No employed member 38 42 19 100 65
One employed member 34 38 28 100 78
Urban Two employed members 26 38 36 100 188
Three or more employed members 36 28 36 100 115
Total 32 36 32 100 446
One employed member 61 24 15 100 46
Two employed members 45 29 25 100 139
Rural
Three or more employed members 27 37 36 100 230
Total 38 33 30 100 427
Employment type related more with households’ economic situation

The households‟ wealth was related to the type of work conducted by the household members, as
described in Table 9. In both the urban and the rural areas, households involved in farming
activities had a low wealth index: among the households in the urban areas who were engaged in
farming activities together with other types of employment, as many as 58 percent were in the
poorest wealth index, and only 17 percent were among the rich tertile of the wealth index. When
the household were self-employed together with other types of employment, the household were
more likely to be among the well offs. This was in particular evident in the rural areas, where 63
percent of the household who were self employed and engaged with other types of employment
were among the better offs.
In the urban area the households with wage employment seemed to be relatively better off than
the other types of employment statuses, as fewer people (23 percent) are poor.
14
One of the differences that have an impact on the households‟ economic situation in the rural
areas is whether or not they are able to conduct any income related activities in addition to their
farming activities. In China, most rural families have access to land distributed by the
government, but if the household do not have any extra labor force that can conduct income
generating activities outside the farm they are likely to be worse off than farmers who send
family members to urban areas to work. In Table 9 we see that households that only live of
farming is poorer than families who are engaged in farming and wage employment.
Table 9 Household wealth index by employment status
Wealth index
Sample
Location tertile Total
size
Poor Mid Rich
No employment 38 42 19 100 67
Only wage employment 23 39 39 100 214
Only self-employment 38 33 29 100 58
Urban
Self-employment and wage employment 32 29 38 100 79
Farming together with other employment 58 25 17 100 57
Total 33 35 32 100 475
Only wage employment 41 30 28 100 53
Only farming 54 27 19 100 96
Rural Farming and wage employment 34 37 29 100 277
Self-employment together with other
16 21 63 100 54
employment
Total 38 32 30 100 493
4.3 Perception about job types

Randomly selected individuals were asked to choose from eight different types of professions
and rank them according to their preference, irrespective of their present work activity. This is in
order to understand job stereotyping that will shed light on features of good jobs by ranking them
across three different dimensions: preference for them, most important to society and easiest to
pursue.
The most preferred job is illustrated in Figure 3. There are very few gender differences between
male and females with regard to what job they preferred, however, the difference between urban
and rural areas is significantly different.
The most preferred job in the urban areas was to be a government employee among the men (29
percent), and a shop owner among the women (29 percent). However, both men and women
preferred these two professions more than the other types of work in the urban areas. To be a
teacher or a doctor was also preferred by a number of both the men and the women. A lower
number of people preferred to be farmers and very few preferred to be carpenters, taxi drivers or
hairdressers.
In the rural areas, the most preferred job was to be a farmer, both among the men (32 percent)
and the women (34 percent). However, to be a shop owner, teacher and a government employee
15
was also preferred across both genders. Only a small number wanted to be carpenters, taxi drivers
or hairdressers in the rural areas.
URBAN - Male URBAN - Female
Farmer Farmer
Shop owner Shop owner
Government employee Government employee
Teacher Teacher
Doctor Doctor
Carpenter Carpenter
Taxi driver Taxi driver
Hairdresser Hairdresser
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%
RURAL - Male RURAL - Female
Farmer Farmer
Teacher Teacher
Doctor Doctor
Carpenter Carpenter
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%
Figure 3 Preferred job by location and gender3
Figure 4 shows a map of people‟s three most preferred jobs, by a number of characteristics
among the population, using multivariable correspondence analysis. The characteristics which are
related have a short separating distance, while characteristics that are not linked are spread apart.
The plot shows that each of the work categories falls in its own quadrant. Quadrant I can be
labeled „urban, rich and educated‟, this group was among the wealthy population, who were
either not working or self employed. Quadrant II can be labeled „non-educated females‟ as the
characteristics of this group were that they were aged females aged 50 years and above and with
little or no education. Quadrant III can be labeled „rural male farmers‟. They were living in the
rural areas and poor. Quadrant IV can be labeled „the wage workers‟ and they had completed
3
n=754 adults 18-65 years of age in Jianyang, China: February 2012. The tables show the percentage of jobs that
was ranked number one the most preferred job for themselves.
16
some lower education and were employed.
The findings in Figure 4 show that the „urban, rich and educated‟ preferred jobs that required
education, such as to be a doctor, a teacher or a government employer. „The wage workers‟
showed a wider preference in what jobs they wanted, ranging from government employees and
doctors to being hairdressers or shop owners. Among the „non-educated females‟ and „the rural
male farmers‟, there were weaker preferences to what type of job they preferred.
Figure 4 Job preferences in relation to location, gender, job status, age education and socio-economic status. Multivariate
correspondence analysis
In both urban and rural areas both men and women thought farming was the easiest job to pursue
(see Figure 5). This is as expected in the rural areas, as most people there have access to land and
to farming activities. Few people considered the seven other work alternatives to be easy to
pursue in the rural areas. However, the population in the urban areas also seemed to consider
farming to be the job that was most accessible for themselves. Next to being a farmer, both men
and women in the urban considered it easiest to pursue to be a shop owner.
17
Contrary to the preference of being a government employee illustrated in Figure 3, few people
considered this to a job that would be easy to pursue. In the urban areas only nine percent of the
men and five percent of the women regarded it easiest to pursue a job as a government employee.
Farmer Farmer
Carpenter Carpenter
Teacher Teacher
Doctor Doctor
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 0% 20% 40% 60% 80%

Farmer Farmer
Carpenter Carpenter
Teacher Teacher
Doctor Doctor
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 0% 20% 40% 60% 80%
Figure 5 Job type easiest to pursue by location and gender4
The findings in Figure 5 complement the findings in Table 10, which shows the mean value of
what job they found most easy to pursue. The job that required no formal education was
perceived as easy to get, and the jobs that required higher degree of education were difficult to
pursue. Independent of age, gender and education, people found it most easy to pursue a job as a
farmer, and most difficult to become teachers, doctors and to work as a government employee.
4
was ranked number one as the easiest job to pursue for themselves.
18
Table 10 Mean value of preferred job by location, gender and education1
Shop Hair- Taxi Government
Farmer owner Carpenter dresser driver Teacher Doctor employee
Area Urban 2.9 3.6 4.4 4.3 4.4 5.0 5.7 5.7
Rural 1.8 4.2 4.0 4.6 4.8 5.3 5.5 5.9
Gender Male 2.1 4.3 3.9 4.7 4.6 5.3 5.5 5.7
Female 2.0 3.9 4.3 4.3 4.7 5.4 5.6 6.0
Highest No school or no stage 1.7 4.4 3.6 4.5 4.9 5.6 5.5 5.9
education Primary or Junior secondary 2.0 4.0 4.2 4.5 4.6 5.3 5.5 5.9
completed Senior secondary or higher 3.1 3.7 4.8 4.4 4.4 4.4 5.7 5.5
Total 2.1 4.1 4.1 4.5 4.7 5.2 5.5 5.9
1
Ranking of the easiest job to pursue for themselves, ranging from one to eight, where one is the easiest and eight is the most difficult to pursue
The response to what type of job that is most important for the society is similar across location
and gender (Figure 6). Teachers, farmers and government employees range highest, followed by
doctors. Shop owners, carpenters, taxi drivers and hairdressers were ranked low along the
dimension of what they positioned as important for the society.
Teacher Teacher
Farmer Farmer
Doctor Doctor
Carpenter Carpenter
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%
Teacher Teacher
Farmer Farmer
Doctor Doctor
Carpenter Carpenter
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%
Figure 6 Most important job for the society by location and gender5
5
was ranked number one as most important job for the society.
19
4.4 Job benefits for wage workers
In this section, we will describe job associated benefits for wage employees. This will help assess
the labor market situation for wage employees in addition to providing a basis for assessing job
satisfaction in the subsequent sections.
Overall, having a long term contract for a wage worker gave more benefits than for people who
had oral or written contract for a short time period. The highest frequency (72 percent) of benefits
received by long term contract was maternity leave, and the official policy in China is four
months paid maternity leave. However, among the people with short term contracts, only 18
percent received maternity leave as a benefit. Health insurance was a benefit given to 71 percent
of the people with long term contract, compared to 19 percent among the people with short term
contract. In addition to maternity leave and health insurance, pension after retirement, paid sick
leave, bonuses, learning opportunities and school fees to the children was a common benefit to
many of the people with long term contracts. Job benefits is strongly related to the type of job
contract a person has as illustrated Table 11; the table display how the situation for employees
with long term wage contract offers more benefits compared to employees with short term
contracts (less than one year).
Table 11 Benefits from employer by contract status
1 2
Job related benefits Short term contract (%) Long term contract (%)
Maternity leave 18 72
Health insurance from employer 19 71
Learning opportunities 24 70
Pension after retirement 12 68
Paid sick leave 25 65
Bonuses 26 60
School fees 17 60
Unemployment benefits 4 39
Housing allowances 15 36
Free meals 45 34
Transportation allowances 10 22
Stock shares 0 8
Sample size 120 88
1
Oral or written contracts for less than one year
2
Long term contract=contract for one year or more
The contrast between benefits for employees with long and short term contracts becomes sharp
when the number of benefits provided is taken into account. To this end, long-term contract
employees had large number of benefits as compared to short term contract employees (Figure 7).
20
30% Short term contract (n=120) Long term contract (n=88)
25%
20%
Percentage
15%
10%
5%
0%
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Number of benefits
Figure 7 Distribution of benefits among wage workers
All randomly selected respondents who were wage workers were asked about their access to
different benefits and their evaluation on the different work benefits, such as health insurance,
pension insurance, transportation allowances, and housing allowances. More than half of the
respondent were not willing to pay, in order to get a long-term contract or paid sick leave; while
one-third were not willing to pay for health, pension insurance, housing and transportation
allowances. Around one-fifth of the respondents were willing to pay for different benefits, but
could not tell how much they would like to pay.
The work benefits had actually quite high correlation with people‟s satisfaction in the work. All
the interviewed wage earners were classified into one of the four groups, according to their
accesses to different work benefits. The work benefits here refer to the list of benefits in Table
11. Among all the interviewed wage earners, only six percent did not have any work benefits or
only had one or two benefits, one-forth had three kinds of work benefits, and one-third had 4 to 5
or 6 to 8 work benefits, respectively. Only 8 percent wage workers had more than 8 kinds of
work benefits.
In Figure 8 these four groups of people and their satisfaction with job stability, form of contract,
training and skill development, social status from job, potential for future personal development
and level of income are listed. Two answers “very satisfied” and “somewhat satisfied” were
grouped to be presented as “satisfied” for all the questions. Not surprisingly, those who had most
work benefits were most satisfied on all the aspects of the work, and they were in particular
satisfied with their job stability, the form of contract they had and the social status the job offered
them. Overall, they were the people who were most satisfied across all groups. People who had 6
to 8 benefits in their work was less satisfied with their job than the ones who enjoyed even more
21
benefits, but they scored higher than the people with 5 benefits or less. Among the people who
received three benefits or less, the level of satisfaction was generally low.
The satisfaction with the income level was the lowest across all groups. Among the people with
more than nine benefits, 36 percent reported that they were satisfied with their income. However,
among the remaining group, less than 17 percent were satisfied with their level of income.
Job stability
Form of contract
Training and skill

development
Social status from job
Potential for future personal

9 to 12 benefits
development
6 to 8 benefits
4 to 5 benefits
Level of income
0-3 benefits
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Percentage of people who are satisfied
Figure 8 Satisfaction and number of job benefits
4.5 Job satisfaction

Job satisfaction is an indicator of workers‟ happiness and is shown to be good both for workers
and employers. Workers that are satisfied have positive organizational behavior and tend to
perform better and are more likely to receive rewards realized in the form of promotion and pay
rises (Clark and Oswald 1996, Diener and Seligman 2004, Fassina et al 2008). In this study,
workers are asked about their satisfaction with difference facets of their job.
Generally, the level of satisfaction with their job was low. Overall, 20 percent of the people with
employment in Jianyang were somewhat or very satisfied with their current level of income, 34
percent were neither satisfied nor unsatisfied and 46 percent were somewhat or not satisfied with
their current level of income. The people with long term contract and people who were self
employed or worked in a family enterprise and the farmers expressed some satisfaction with their
income, whereas few people among the short term contracted people were satisfied with their
income (Figure 9). The people who expressed the lowest satisfaction with their work hours were
22
the people who were self employed or worked in a family enterprise. On the other side, people
who worked as wage workers with a long term contract reported the highest level of satisfaction
with their work hours, the social status the job gave them and the potential for future
development embedded in their work.
Current income
level
100 %
80 %
60 %
40 %
20 %
Potential for
future personal 0% Work hours
development
Long term contract,

wage work
Short term contract,
wage workers
Self employed and
family entreprise
Self employed and
Social status family entreprise
Figure 9 Level of satisfaction by work categories
The level of satisfaction for people who were hired with or without a long term contract was
different regarding the job stability, the opportunities for training and skills development and
regarding the distance to their work place (Figure 10). As many as 60 percent of the wage
workers with a long term contract reported that they were content with the stability the job
offered them, compared to 30 percent among the people with short term contracts.
The highest satisfaction for both groups was the relationship to their colleagues. Overall, 70
percent reported that they were satisfied with this aspect of their job, and there were not
differenced between people working with a long term and people engaged in short term contracts.
23
Training and
skill
development
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
Relationship
0% Job stability
with colleagues
Long term contract,

wage work
Short term
Distance to contract, wage
work place workers
Figure 10 Level of satisfaction by workers with and without contract
Among the various aspects in which people have evaluated their level of satisfaction, we focus on
three facets: satisfaction with their level of income; satisfaction in their job potential for future
development and satisfaction in social status they obtain from their job. We conducted ordered
logit regression analysis on each of these satisfaction indicators that are measured as a single
index on likert scale (1=not at all satisfied, 2=somewhat satisfied, 3=neither, 4=somewhat
satisfied, 5=very satisfied.)
The level of meaningfulness with the job and the level of independence increased the level of
satisfaction the level of income also improved. Satisfaction on level of income was also
significantly related to the usefulness of the job people were conducting. Specifically, the data
also show that the satisfaction with the level of income increased when the job was useful for
establishing contact with people, when it gave information about other jobs and when it was
useful for the decision making in the household. This finding indicates that job satisfaction is
derived from associated uses of the job in addition to simply job being a source of income (Table
12).
24
Table 12 Ordered logit regression estimates for satisfaction with level of income
Estimate Std. Error P-value
Urban, compared to Rural -0.289 0.328 0.379
Female, compared to Male 0.119 0.169 0.480
Age -0.066 0.042 0.118
Age squared 0.102 0.042 0.016
Wealth 0.205 0.138 0.138
More than one job -0.381 0.224 0.089
Number of hours worked per week -0.002 0.005 0.753
Type of tasks (Creative versus routine) 0.129 0.040 0.001
Level of Independence 0.133 0.031 0.000
Level of Meaningfulness of Job 0.112 0.035 0.001
Employment status:
Wage employment -0.502 0.294 0.088
Farming -0.236 0.346 0.495
Usefulness of job for:
Establishing contacts with people -0.215 0.097 0.026
Learning new things 0.045 0.104 0.666
Information about other jobs 0.308 0.127 0.016
Information about societal matters 0.094 0.131 0.472
Information about Good Deals -0.086 0.102 0.398
Decision Making in household 0.211 0.088 0.016
-2 log likelihood 1512
Another important factor that determines the level of satisfaction with the future potential of the
job people conduct (Table 13) is the level of meaningfulness they attach to the job they carry out
and the level of independence the job enables them.
25
Table 13 Ordered logit regression estimates for satisfaction with job potential for future
Urban, compared to Rural -0.384 0.333 0.249
Female, compared to Male 0.068 0.171 0.693
Age -0.094 0.042 0.026
Age squared 0.117 0.042 0.005
Wealth 0.542 0.141 0.000
More than one job -0.109 0.222 0.623
Number of hours worked per week 0.002 0.005 0.759
Employment status:
Wage employment 0.129 0.298 0.665
Farming 0.211 0.350 0.547
Establishing contacts with people -0.105 0.099 0.290
Information about other jobs -0.089 0.129 0.492
Decision Making in household 0.094 0.089 0.287
Jobs can be classified as good or bad depending on the social status people associate with their
activities. This at times can be a barrier for unemployed people to engage themselves in income
earning activities. Hence, the level of satisfaction in social status from a given job is another
indicator of a good job. The level of satisfaction was positively influence by the type of task they
did, the level of independence, the level of meaningfulness and the potential for establishing
contact with other people (Table 14).
26
Table 14 Ordered logit regression estimates for satisfaction with in social status from job
Urban, compared to Rural 0.051 0.333 0.878
Female, compared to Male -0.091 0.172 0.598
Age -0.043 0.042 0.309
Age squared 0.066 0.042 0.113
Wealth 0.215 0.140 0.125
More than one job 0.051 0.223 0.819
Number of hours worked per week -0.001 0.005 0.796
Employment status:
Wage employment 0.390 0.300 0.193
Farming 0.716 0.354 0.043
Establishing contacts with people 0.188 0.098 0.054
Information about other jobs -0.153 0.129 0.237
Decision Making in household -0.097 0.089 0.273
From these various satisfaction assessments, we understand that perception of good job is related
to the meaningfulness of the job as well as ability to establish contact with other people.
4.6 Jobs and empowerment

Jobs can be perceived from a human empowerment perspective (Alexander and Welzel 2011)
with cognitive, creative and autonomous dimensions (CCA). As shown in Table 15, the jobs in
Jianyang in Sichuan, China are characterized by being manual labor, dominated by routines and
with a relatively high level of autonomy. Half of the population defined their work as
meaningful, and 37 percent considered their job to be highly meaningful. These patterns are
similar across the level of education, however: the people with higher education seemed to
estimate their work as more meaningful than the people with elementary education or less. With
regard to the work status, the farmers had significantly more manual labor and routines in their
work, and this is not unsurprisingly due to the nature of the work. The farmers also felt that their
work was less meaningful than the people who are self employed or involved with wage work.
The wage workers were also most satisfied with the meaningfulness the job gave them, and only
11 percent reported low on the scale of how meaningful their job was.
27
Table 15 Feature of job by education and type of work in percent
Job status (%) Education (%)
Total
Wage Self- No stage Elementary/ Secondary
Farming (%)
employment employment completed intermediate or higher
Manual 33 86 26 78 70 19 66
1
Cognitive Intermediate 37 13 57 17 24 43 24
Cognitive 30 1 17 5 7 39 10
Routine 46 81 49 77 73 33 69
2
Creative Both 39 18 43 19 24 49 25
Creative 14 1 7 4 3 18 5
Low 17 13 10 19 11 11 14
Autonomy
3 Medium 47 39 26 38 41 38 39
High 36 48 63 44 48 51 47
Meaning- Low 11 17 4 18 13 5 14
fullness in Medium 38 52 53 48 53 32 48
4
the job High 51 31 43 34 34 62 37
Total 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
Sample size 208 264 109 161 295 124 580
1
Cognitive: Are the task in your work mostly manual or mostly cognitive. Rate from 1 (mostly manual) to 10 (mostly cognitive) – Manual 1-3;
Intermediate 4-7; Cognitive 8-10
2
Creative: Are the task you perform mostly routine or mostly creative. Rate from 1 (mostly routine) to 10 (mostly creative) – Routine 1-3; Both 4-
7; Creative 8-10
3
Autonomy: How much independence do you have in performing your tasks at your main job? Rate from 1 (No independence at all) to 10
(complete independence) – Low 1-3; Medium 4-7; High 8-10
4
Meaningfulness in the job: How meaningful is your main job? Rate from 1 (Not meaningful at all) to 10 (Very meaningful and gives a sense of
doing something useful) ) – Low 1-3; Medium 4-7; High 8-10
Regarding how meaningful the people found their job to be, it was the people who conducted the
least manual work, the ones with a creative job and the people with high autonomy who found
their work to be the most meaningful (Table 16). This is also in line with the findings of who
were the most satisfied with their job discussed above.
28
Table 16 How meaningful people find their work related to empowerment?
Meaningfulness in the job (%)
Not Very
Medium Total (%) Sample size
meaningful meaningful
Manual 17 53 30 100 302
1
Cognitive Intermediate 11 50 40 100 192
Cognitive 2 17 81 100 86
Routine 19 50 31 100 359
2
Creative Both 4 52 44 100 175
Creative 0 16 84 100 40
Low 36 42 22 100 77
3
Autonomy Medium 10 62 28 100 211
High 11 39 49 100 289
Total 14 49 37 100 580
1
Cognitive: Are the task in your work mostly manual or mostly cognitive. Rate from 1 (mostly manual) to 10 (mostly cognitive) – Manual 1-3;
Intermediate 4-7; Cognitive 8-10
2
Creative: Are the task you perform mostly routine or mostly creative. Rate from 1 (mostly routine) to 10 (mostly creative) – Routine 1-3; Both 4-7;
Creative 8-10
3
Autonomy: How much independence do you have in performing your tasks at your main job? Rate from 1 (No independence at all) to 10 (complete
independence) – Low 1-3; Medium 4-7; High 8-10
4
Meaningfulness in the job: How meaningful is your main job? Rate from 1 (Not meaningful at all) to 10 (Very meaningful and gives a sense of
doing something useful) ) – Low 1-3; Medium 4-7; High 8-10
4.7 Jobs, social trust and institutions

Several variables have been identified to capture the degree of social trust including trust in
family, neighbors, friends, people met for the first time, people from workplace, another religion
and another ethnic group. Two categories ”Trust completely” and ”Trust somewhat” were
merged as ”Trust”, while two categories ”Not trust very much” and ”Not trust at all” were
merged as ”Not trust”. As can be seen in Table 17, people had high trust on family, neighbor and
friends, while low trust on other people. More importantly, most people found it difficult to tell
whether they trust other people or not. With a large amount of people reporting “difficult to say”
on the trust questions, it is not easy to compare people‟s trust on others.
Based on the feedback from the fieldwork of the survey, some people chose “difficult to say”
because they actually meant neither “trust” nor “not trust”; while some people thought that they
could trust some but not others, therefore “it depends”; some found it inapplicable, such as
people from workplace; while some had not had contact with such people, such as people from
another religion, people from another ethnic group. Large amount of population in China do not
have strong religious beliefs, which made such questions not so obvious for people to answer.
Furthermore, Jianyang in Sichuan China is a county with majority of the population to be Han. In
the survey, among all the household members in the interviewed households, only 6 were
minority.
29
Table 17 Level of trust by employment status
Wage Self- Out of labor
Trust towards people
employment Farming employment force
Trust 100 99 98 96
Family
Difficult to say 0 0 0 2
Trust 82 94 81 84
Neighbors
Trust 85 88 85 82
Friends
Trust 7 15 10 20
People met for first time
Trust 69 40 48 52
People from workplace
Trust 9 17 10 10
People from another religion
Trust 21 31 23 33
People from another ethnic group
Sample size 210 269 110 271
Values show percentage of people who have complete or somehow complete trust
Since we have more than one social trust indicators, it is important to identify the underlying
components of the indicators while maximizing the amount of variance accounted for in those
indicators. While many respondents have chosen the “difficult to say” category, together with the
scale categories of the questions on trust and confidence, it is then inappropriate to treat these
variables as scale variables. Therefore, MCA is more appropriate to analyze the relationships of
questions on trust towards people, and questions on confidence in institutions, respectively.
When running the multiple correspondence analysis on all the questions about people‟s trust
towards other people. The joint plot of category points was quite mixed, and not obvious to read.
Furthermore, as fewer people chose “difficult to say” on their trust on family, neighbors and
friends, it would be reasonable to split the trust questions into two groups. Therefore, questions
about people‟s trust on family, friends and neighbors were analyzed as one group; while
questions about people‟s trust on people met for first time, people from workplace, people from
another religion, and people from another ethnic group were merged as one group for analysis.
The joint plot of category points in Figure 11 MCA loadings across two dimensions of trust
indicators on family, friends and neighbors identifies two dimensions out of the trust towards
family, friends and neighbors. Apparently, “difficult to say” has its own dimension which is
captured in the second dimension, while first dimension captures people‟s general trust level. The
higher the loading is, the more people trusted others; while the lower the loading is, the more
people trusted others. Therefore, we can construct an index of trust by using the object scores on
dimension one. In order to understand the role of job on social trust, we can conduct regression
by using the trust index. The unemployed were very found to be very few in the survey; only 8
unemployed RSIs in urban area, and 2 unemployed RSIs in rural area. The unemployed were not
used as one separate category during analysis. The results from regression are presented in Table
18.
30
Figure 11 MCA loadings across two dimensions of trust indicators on family, friends and neighbors
The MCA component loadings on two dimensions out of the trust towards other people were
presented in Figure 12. Again, “difficult to say” has its own dimension which is captured in the
first dimension, while second dimension captures people‟s general trust towards other people,
except close people. The higher the loading is on the second dimension, the more people trusted
others; while the lower the loading is, the less people trusted others. Therefore, we can construct
an index of trust by using the object scores on dimension two. In order to understand the role of
job on social trust, we can conduct regression by using the trust index. The results from
regression of people‟s trust towards other people are also presented in Table 18.
31
Figure 12 MCA loadings across two dimensions of trust indicators on other people
Table 18 shows that employment has contributed to people‟s trust on close people, such as
family, friends and neighbors; but has negatively affected people‟s trust on other people. The
result from the regression on the trust of family, friends and neighbors shows that those who were
out of labor force had significantly lower trust on family, friends and neighbors, compared to the
wage worker. When people grow older, their trust on family, friends and neighbors were also
significantly higher. On the other hand, the result from the regression on people‟s trust towards
other people indicates that those out of labor force and the farmers had significantly higher trust
on other people than the wage worker. Women showed significantly lower trust on other people
than men.
32
Table 18 Regression results for index of trust
Trust on family, friend and neighbors Trust on other people
Variables Estimate Std. Error t-value Estimate Std. Error t-value
Constant -1.169 0.398 -2.934*** -0.431 0.405 -1.065
Women compared to men -0.040 0.069 -0.590 -0.120 0.070 -1.724*
Age 0.052 0.014 3.661*** 0.017 0.014 1.151
Age squared -0.039 0.014 -2.839*** -0.009 0.014 -0.631
Rural compared to urban -0.132 0.122 -1.083 -0.096 0.124 -0.773
Employment status:
Farming 0.032 0.109 0.293 0.262 0.111 2.364**
1
Self-employment/ family business -0.222 0.142 -1.558 0.136 0.145 0.943
1
Out of labor force -0.296 0.111 -2.657*** 0.183 0.113 1.618*
Wealth Index 0.033 0.056 0.584 0.007 0.057 0.118
Sample size 873
1
Base category is wage worker
***Significance level 1%, **Significance level 5%, *Significance level 10%
In addition to the trust indicators, respondents were asked to provide information on their level of
confidence in various institutions. These institutions range from governmental institutions to that
of local and international organizations. The percentages of people that have confidence or found
it difficult to say are shown in Table 19. Again, quite a few people reported “difficult to say” on
the confidence questions. People showed generally high confidence in National government, head
of state, people‟s congress and etc; while the wage workers showed lower confidence in
television, civil services, companies and NGOs and etc.
33
Table 19 Level of confidence in institutions
Wage Self- Out of labor
employment Farming employment force
Confident 89 94 73 94
Head of state
National government
People's Congress
Courts
Political parties
Armed forces
Banks
Local government
Television
Civil service
International companies
State companies
Confident 45 3 13 8
Private companies
Local NGOs
International NGOs
Sample size 210 269 110 271
Values show percentage of people who have complete or somehow complete Confident
All the 15 indicators are used to capture people‟s confidence in institutions, and we conducted
MCA to construct a confidence index. The component loadings for two dimensions out of
component analysis are shown in Figure 13. We can see that “difficult to say” has its own
dimension which is captured in the first dimension, while second dimension captures people‟s
general confidence level in institutions. The higher the loading is, the more people were confident
in institutions; while the lower the loading is, the less people were confident in the institutions.
34
Figure 13 MCA loadings across dimensions of indicators of confidence in institutions
Therefore, we can construct an index of confidence by using the object scores on dimension two.
We further investigated factors affecting level of confidence by using regression models with the
confidence index as dependent variable. The results from regression are presented in Table 20.
The result from the regression shows that women had more confidence in institutions than men.
Although not significant even at 10 percent level, the positive coefficients on different
employment type indicate that wage workers had relatively low confidence in institutions than
other group of people. And negative coefficients on wealth index indicate that people from rich
households had lower confidence in institutions than the poor people.
Table 20 Regression results on index of level of confidence in institutions

Confidence
Variables Estimate Std. Error t-value Sig.
Constant -1.034 0.400 -2.582* 0.010
Women compared to men 0.193 0.069 2.794** 0.005
Age 0.008 0.014 0.586 0.558
Age squared -0.002 0.014 -0.158 0.874
Rural compared to urban 0.119 0.123 0.973 0.331
Employment status:
1
Farming 0.157 0.109 1.431 0.153
1
Self-employment/ family business 0.171 0.143 1.193 0.233
Out of labor force1 0.174 0.112 1.551 0.121
Wealth index -0.083 0.056 -1.475 0.141
Sample size 873
1
Base category is wage worker
***Significance level 1%, **Significance level 5%, *Significance level 10%
35
Chapter 5 Summary of main findings
The following are the main findings of the report.
- The labor force participation in in Jianyang is 62 percent. Men have a participation rate
than women. High education is strongly correlated with labor force participation.
- In both the urban and rural areas households with a higher number of adults working are
better off than households with few working members. People that have wage work,
either as main activity or as an additional activity, tend to be better off than the others.
- Using job stereotype vignettes, preferred jobs are correlated to jobs that are considered to
be easier to pursue in rural areas. There most people prefer to be farmers, and they think
the easiest job to get is farmer. Also in urban area people think that farming is the easiest
job to pursue, however, there they prefer to be government employees or shop owners.
- For wage workers, there are big differences in the distribution of benefits between the
workers with a long-term contract and those without such contract. Benefits such as
maternity leave, health insurance and learning opportunities are available for two out of
three wage workers with long term contracts but only for one out of five workers with
short term contract. This indicates strong linkages between job stability and benefits.
- Assessments of various dimensions of job satisfaction covering level of income reveal

that overall there is a low degree of satisfaction among the people. The highest
satisfaction is found among wage workers. A job that provides opportunities for
establishing contact with other people and information about other jobs increases the level
of satisfaction.
- Jobs in Jianyang are mainly manual labor dominated by routine work and with a relatively
high level of autonomy. However, to get a „good job‟ in the sense of a higher degree of
meaningfulness, a shift from manual towards more cognitive work is desired, as well as a
shift from routine work towards more creative tasks.
- In general there is a very high level of trust to family, neighbor and friends while there is
a low level of trust towards other people. Employment contributes to trust on close
people, but has a negative effect on people‟s trust on other people. The wage workers also
had a lower confidence in institutions than other people.
36
References
Alexander, Amy C.; Welzel, Christian. (2011) “Measuring Effective Democracy: The
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Benzécri, J-P (1973) L‟analyse des données. Volume II. L‟Analyse des Correspondances.
Paris , France: Dunod.
Clark, Andrew, Andrew Oswald and peter Warr (1996), “Is Job Satisfaction U-Shaped in
Age?” Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology vol 69, pp. 57-81
Diener, Ed and Martin Seligman (2004) “Beyond Money: Toward an Economy of Well-
Being,” Psychological Science in the Public Interest vol 5, no 1 , pp. 1-31
Fassina, Neil, David Jones and Krista Uggerslev (2008) “Relationship Clean-Up Time: Using
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37

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BACKGROUND PAPER FOR THE

WORLD DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2013

Perceptions of Good Jobs

All Household Members

 Economic conditions  Perceptions on job

Figure 1 Overview of structure of instruments

2.3 Empirical methods

3.1 Demographic and dwelling characteristics

All urban population All rural population

Urban population at home Rural population at home

Female Male Female Male

3.2 Economic situations

Table 3 Household economic situation

3.3 Labor force participation

3.4 Characteristics of randomly selected individuals

4.1 Determinants of labor force participation

Women are less likely to participate in the labor market

Higher education increases labor force participation

Wealth does not matter

Household size, Dependency ratio

4.2 Jobs and household wealth

Employment type related more with households’ economic situation

4.3 Perception about job types

URBAN - Male URBAN - Female

Figure 3 Preferred job by location and gender3

URBAN - Male URBAN - Female

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 0% 20% 40% 60% 80%

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 0% 20% 40% 60% 80%

Figure 5 Job type easiest to pursue by location and gender4

URBAN - Male URBAN - Female

Figure 7 Distribution of benefits among wage workers

Training and skill

Social status from job

Potential for future personal

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Figure 8 Satisfaction and number of job benefits

4.5 Job satisfaction

Long term contract,

Figure 9 Level of satisfaction by work categories

Long term contract,

Figure 10 Level of satisfaction by workers with and without contract

4.6 Jobs and empowerment

4.7 Jobs, social trust and institutions

Table 20 Regression results on index of level of confidence in institutions

- Assessments of various dimensions of job satisfaction covering level of income reveal

Hirschfeld, H.O. (1935) A Connection Between Correlation and Contingency. Proc.

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