Study On Equity Of China's Basic Old-age Pension System From The Perspetive Of Social Impact Assessment Theory

In a broad sense the old-age insurance system belongs to the arena of public policy, which is enforced by the government under the legal framework to solve the survival problems for all the citizens after their retirement. It is a kind of economic welfare institution and considers achieving the social justice as its ultimate objectives. After the17th National Congress of Communist Party of China, Chinese government and scholars have put establishing an equalitarian, unified and nationwide old-age insurance as their priorities. In recent years many scholars have done numerous researches on this topic and achieved a lot, and most of their researches are undertaken from the perspectives of economics or politics, which lay a solid foundation for the building of China's old-age insurance system. However, since old-age insurance is related not only with political or economic areas but also with social areas, and some social factors such as social class segmentation, demographic chages, cultural values changes and social structure changes can possibly have effects on old-age insurance; we should also probe the research from the perspective of social perspective. To a certain degree, whether the equalitarian values of old-age insurance can be achieved or not depends on the results of interactioins between institutions and social factors. Under this background the author takes a tentative research on the equalitarian situations of Chinese old-age insurance system with the aid of analytic theoretical framework of social impact assessment. The purposes for this research are to assess the equalitarian situations of present Chinese old-age insurance system in terms of fair starting point, fair procedures and fair results, to analyse the correlations between old-age insurance institutions and social factors, to evaluate the related stakeholders' interest loss or insterst winning situations, to predict the potential social risks of old-age insurance system, and to sugget forceful measures to improve the institution's rationality and effectiveness.This thesis puts forward that the present Chinese old-age insurance possesses the features like rural-urban segmentation, regional fragmentation and class fraction, and the institutional fairness is obviously in shortage. From the establishment of Republic of China in1949, the Chinese government has built up the Urban Enterprise Old-age Insurance system, Organs and Institutions' Old-age Insurance system, Urban Citizens' Old-age Insurance System, and the New Rural Citizens' Old-age Insurance System, but there exist great differences among the four systems in terms of funding model, coerage rate, payment standard, management methods, and benefit rate. The present Chinese old-age insurance system is unfaire in terms of redistribution effects not only among the same generation but also among different generations. There are four obvious demerits of present system. Firstly, the payment rate and benefit rate are not equal among different stakerholders, which leads to the blockage of migration among urban-rural labors and takes nagetive effects on the social class unity. Secondly, the regional segmentation of present system is deteriorating, which has resulted in the low social risk sharing and poor pooling effects. Since the payment rate and benefit rate are not evenly distributed in different regions, different provincial governments and corporations undertake different financial burdens, which posibilly will hinder the balanced development of national labor market. Thirdly, there is lack of security mechanism for the public participation in the policy-making process of old-age insurance system. Some disadvantaged groups are deficient in expressing their opinions on the system, and the benignant mutual interation mechanism is still not in shape. Fourthly, the structure of present old-age insurance has lost its balance. Some people who work in public organs and institutions and who get stable high salary are also paid well after their retirement. However, some other people who work as migrant workers and who get low payment are paid rather poorly after they retreat from labor market, and some of them even get no payment guarantee. The foctors that have caused the shortage of fairness among the present systems include the inside factors and outside factors. The inside factors are those institutional ones that have resulted in the poor systematic designing, for example, the conflits between the institutional objectives and the social development level, the discordance between the system design and social structure, and the class segmentation inside the system. The outside factors that have been affected by the outside environment may include dual-economic system, dual residential registration system, and the changes of family support mechanism for the aged poeple.The long-term plan for Chinese social development is to establish a fair and unified old-age insurance system. The equalitarian system can help to promote the interests of all the social classes, to distribute the social resources more evenly among different regions, to relieve social conflicts, and to keep a stable political environment and improve the safety sense of social members. At present, if the Chinese government wants to achieve the fairness objectives of present old-age insurance system, they must guarantee the fairness of starting point, the procedure fairness and the result fairness. Firstly, to achieve the fairness of starting point, the government must pay attention to granting the equality of participation opportunities and institutional designg, and the establishing of the integrated urban-rural old-age insurance system in line with principles of high coverage, low payment rate, strong stability, and coercion. Secondly, to achieve procedure fairness, the government must gradually unify the fragmented old-age insurance systems into one complete system, and intetrate the funding models, payment rates, management institutions, pooling level, fund management, and benefit standards. Finally, to achieve the result fairness, the government must make sure that all the social classes can enjoy the equal old-age insurance protection and service. The pre-conditions for achieving result fairness are the procedure fairness and starting fairness. Only when people get equal rights of participation and equal treatment, can they really enjoy the result fairness.