Study Of The Influence Of Income Inequality On Generalized Trust From The Perspective Of Social Network

Over the past 40 years of reform and opening up,China's economy has developed rapidly and the people's living standards have increased substantially.In sharp contrast,the income gap of Chinese residents continues to be large,and the problem of income distribution is becoming more and more serious.Not only that,the level of social trust of residents has gradually decreased,and various social dishonesties have occurred frequently.Based on the perspective of “relational network”,this paper studies the impact of income disparity on generalized trust during the transition period.By using the microscopic data of CFPS(2014),the regression model is constructed and the Probit estimation method is used to empirically analyze the impact of income gap on generalized trust,and further discuss the relationship between income network and generalized trust.The role of influence.In addition,this paper explores in depth the impact of the income gap on generalized trust in urban and rural residents.The empirical results are as follows:First,the income gap has a significant negative impact on generalized trust.The expansion of the income gap has significantly reduced the level of generalized trust of residents.For every one unit increase in the Gini coefficient,on average,the level of generalized trust fell by 27.4%.In other words,the region with greater income disparity has a lower level of generalized trust.Second,the negative impact of the income gap on the level of generalized trust is “dependency dependence”.For groups with a closer relationship network,the income gap has a relatively less damaging effect on the level of generalized trust;on the contrary,the devastating effect of the income gap is relatively large.Third,it shows that for every rural household income gap,the trust level drops by 5.7%.This means that compared with rural residents,the negative impact of the widening income gap of urban residents on the level of generalized trust is relatively greater.Based on this,to improve the level of generalized trust of citizens in the transition period,we must not only continue to promote supply-side structural reform to optimize the income distribution structure,but also pay attention to the soft environment construction of the “relationship network” between people in modern society.In other words,in the process of social transformation and urbanization,we must pay attention to the expansion of the income gap and the accumulation of social capital.