The Intergenerational Differences Of Social Fairness Between Chinese Urban Residents

Under the background of social transition,the profound changes of the social structure brings the changes of economic,politics,culture and so on,especially directly reflects in the public mentality.Residents’ social fairness receives a lot of concern.As one of the subjective experience and judgment,residents’ social fairness affects individual behavior and social operation.The research has both theoretical and practical significance.Different intergenerational groups of urban residents experience different social environment and life.Do they have varying degree of social fairness?Are there any differences of the factors between different intergenerational groups?The study firstly reviews the major social changes of different intergenerational groups in order to understand the different life experience of the Founding generation,the Culture Revolution generation and the Reform generation.It provides the basis for the later empirical research.Then,based on the data CGSS2013,the study found that the Culture Revolution generation experienced the weakest social fairness,followed by the Reform generation.The Founding generation experienced the strongest social fairness.The reason may be related to the social changes and psychological transmutation that they experienced during the critical growing period.The Cultural Revolution generation experienced the mad social movements that severely destroyed both their physical and mentality.As a result,it brought huge psychological gap in face of reformation and they may experience relatively strong sense of social unfairness.The Founding generations have retired and now live a stable life because of the reform and opening.Finally,based on the theory of‘structural determinism’and‘social comparison theory’,the study constructed a multiple regression model of different factors between intergenerational groups.The partial comparison had significant influence on the social fairness between different intergenerational groups.Residents with the higher social class awareness tend to have a stronger sense of social fairness so as the residents who judge their socio-economic status improves.However,the factors of demographic and social support have different affects towards different intergenerational groups.Residents with better family economic status and more frequent social interaction with neighbor tend to have a stronger sense of social fairness.For the Founding generation,female residents tend to have a poorer sense of social fairness,so as the residents with higher level of education.For the Cultural Revolution generation,residents with more quantity of real estate,better family finances tend to have a stronger sense of social fairness,so as the residents who participate in the medical insurance.For the Reform generation,residents participate in medical insurance tend to have a poorer sense of social fairness compared with those with no medical insurance.Results showed that,as one of the important dimension of social mentality,the social fairness’ formation is complex.Urban residents’ social fairness not only based on their objective position or absolute benefits,but also based on the individual life course.They shaped the values and ideas in the critical period of growth when they experience the social change.In the end,subjective comparison of social psychological becomes an important factor in determining the degree of social fairness.Thus,to enhance the social fairness between different intergenerational groups,we not only need to make sure that the society has the fair starting point,procedural justice and fair results,but also need to create a positive,healthy and harmonious atmosphere of social mentality.