The Theoretical And Empirical Study Of Social Capital Investment For Residents Welfare Improvement In China

In the 60 years of New China, especially during the reformation and open policy period, China's rapid economic development led the people living standards. With people's growing material and cultural needs and the backward social productive forces gradually ease the contradiction, people are no longer just content with the pursuit of a shortage in the economic life of food and clothing, gradually towards the well-off and rich life, increasingly focus on improving the level of benefits at all levels of life, and pursue the comprehensive development. The further improvement of welfare is an important part of comprehensive development.China is a developing country, the social welfare is not as good as western countries, and the coverage is not as wide as western countries. Economic and social development requires developing social welfare further. This requires theoretical workers giving theoretical guidance in Chinese situation. The matured human capital theory regards the traditional welfare system arrangement as particular importance of human capital. Social capital theory breaks the original capital dimensional attribution (physical capital, human capital). The perspective to social capital provides a new analytical tool for welfare economics and also provides a new perspective for welfare system arrangement.In this dissertation, the improvement of social capital on the role of welfare is mainly researched. Dissertation accords with the "theory-Analysis-Theory Framework-Experience of data analysis-empirical-International Experience Conclusions and Prospects" in full context of building. First, the development of welfare economics as well as related social capital theory is illustrated. On this basis, the welfare of our country at this stage is investigated, and the problems are raised. With these questions, the dissertation then gives theoretical framework of social capital to welfare improvement and proposes a theoretical hypothesis. After that, the theoretical hypotheses are processed experience and empirical data analysis. Through testing, it is concluded that social capital has a positive effect on welfare. After studying in China, the dissertation then examines social capital investment in social welfare system of the world, and suggestions about Chinese social welfare system are also identified. End of the dissertation is the conclusion and prospect.The introduction of the dissertation is to study the background and significance. Then the domestic and international research is illustrated. On this basis, the ideas, content, research methods and data sources are given.In this dissertation, the first chapter is the theoretical basis of social capital and welfare economics. The dissertation first illustrates the development of welfare economics, based on the theory of welfare economics. After, the research made by domestic and foreign scholar on social capital theory has also been classified and the concept, content, classification, function and nature of social capital are summarized.The second chapter investigates the improvement of social welfare of Chinese residents in the transition process, which is studied from the health, education, employment, housing, subsistence, and special groups of several aspects. And the existing social welfare system problems are raised.The third chapter is the core of this dissertation, namely the theory construction of social capital to welfare improvement.In the first part of this chapter, a new measure of the welfare indicators is constructed and extended based on the existing indicators according to Amartya Sen's capability approach possible indicators. The Measure of obtaining the benefits, the dissertation analyzes social capital on the role of the measures of these benefits, and presents three theoretical hypotheses:①social capital has improved the overall effect on welfare.②social capital on welfare has a positive effect of different dimensions.③different dimensions of social capital has a positive effect on the overall welfare and the role of different dimensions with different results.The fourth chapter of the dissertation is the experience of validation based on the theoretical hypothesis issued in the third chapter. By using the survey data of 2008 National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No.70873097) 7-8 month in 2009, the researcher compares the different conditions of social capital in household welfare. By comparison it is identified that households with higher social capital, their welfare state is significantly higher than the one with lower social capital.Chapter five of the dissertation is the empirical test for above theoretical hypothesis. According to different research needs, the dissertation uses structural equation, such as partial least squares (PLS) analysis of measurement methods. Through analysis, it is found that social capital has a positive role in promoting welfare, while, in addition to housing conditions, social capital on the welfare of the other dimensions is significantly positive, in addition, the different dimensions of social capital also has significant benefits positive effect.The sixth chapter is international comparison and institutional arrangements. The social capital investment is investigated in the United States, Western Europe, Scandinavia, Latin America, East Asia, Japan and emerging countries in social welfare arrangement. Through investigation it is discovered that the United States and other developed countries in the social welfare system pay more and more attention to social capital in the welfare and security. In contrast, the importance of social capital in developing countries is relatively backward. The dissertation considers that the developing countries should make full use of social capital.The end of this dissertation is the conclusion and prospect.The dissertation has the following innovations:①According to Amartya Sen's capability approach to construct the index system of the welfare measure.②Domestic and international theory of social capital on the welfare is still absent, in this dissertation, the welfare improvement of social capital theory is discussed for the first time, and the corresponding theoretical hypothesis is also raised.③In the verification process for theoretical hypothesis, the welfare state can be found more intuitive under different social capital by using a fuzzy mathematical method.④When it comes to difficult measurement between welfare and social capital in empirical research on welfare, most foreign researchers replaced the latent variable for social capital and welfare, such empirical results will be inevitably far-fetched. In this dissertation, in order to be more effectively and more widely use of survey data, the dissertation uses structural equation model to solve the problem of multiple variables on multivariate empirical question.⑤the total social capital in the examination of different dimensions of the welfare role, taking into account the single variable to multivariable problems, the dissertation uses partial least squares (PLS) method.⑥In the part of international comparison, the dissertation illustrates the world of today's social welfare system in the process of social capital investment situation for the first time.It is undeniable that there are still some disadvantages and the limitation of this dissertation is obvious. This limitation is reflected in the following three aspects:Firstly, in view of the data from this investigation and evidence collection, sample size is limited, and therefore, it cannot fully represent the overall welfare improvement of the residents.Secondly, the welfare factors are considered to be diversified. Due to the sample data in the empirical study, the dissertation only controls variables of household characteristics, while ignoring the control for other macro-economic variables. It is undeniable that macroeconomic factors, policy factors, institutional factors as well as cultural habits, etc. are all important factors that can affect the welfare.Thirdly, given the welfare can not be observed, and difficult to measure, in the empirical part of the dissertation, the researcher take advantage of latent variable approach, instead of using overall welfare measure. Different definitions of welfare will inevitably lead to differences in empirical results. As the sample of data limitations, this dissertation only investigates six factors:housing, income, employment, education, subjective well-being and health. In view of the extensive welfare content, readers can continue to expand on this basis to a more comprehensive measure of welfare improvement, which is the next in-depth study.