Social Cost Of Mine-exhausted Towns--A Case Study On LiaoYuan City,JiLin Providence

As a special region, the mine-exhausted town has been studied by geographers for long time. On the way to substantial development, this kind of town is not only facing economic crisis but also serious ecological and social problems. In China, there are lots of mine-towns, which will probably grow into mine-exhausted towns when resources are dried up. Consequently, the study on mine-exhausted towns is very important and urgent.Social problems are extremely outstanding in mine-exhausted towns, such as unemployment, poverty. These problems retard economic development and do harm to ecological environment. The subject of this paper is the social problems in mine-exhausted towns. By utilizing some theories and methods in economics and social science, the author reckoned the cost to solve those social problems in mine-exhausted town. We can use the results of cost to bring forward much more instructive advices for mine-exhausted towns' substantial development. As a whole, this paper is composed of four sections.In the first section, the paper sums up and concludes the production about mine-exhausted towns. After defining the "mine-exhausted towns", the paper analyzed the amount and spatial distribution of mine-exhausted towns in China. On the base of summarizing the productions about economic, ecological and social questions in mine-exhausted towns, the author pointed out that there are still great of deficiency in study on social problems of mine-exhausted towns. The second part of the paper brought forward the concept of "social cost" and gave the reason why it was necessary to calculate the cost. Then by using theories and methods of social science, substantial development and economics for reference, the author managed to establish mathematic-model system of social cost. The aim of the model was to realize substantial development, and the main content was about structural social problems. The social cost model system included three parts: the cost of employment and penury, the cost of human capital and the saving cost by improving institution. In the third part, the paper applies the model into Liaoyuan City, which is a representative mine-exhausted town presenting many social problems. By using first-hand data, the paper analyzed the social problems in Liaoyuan and explained the reasons generally and deeply. At last, the author reckoned the social cost of Liaoyuan by applying the social-cost model system.At the end, the paper gives some exercisable advises and measures on how to solve these social problems in mine-exhausted towns.