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Which Generation is More Likely to Participate in Society? A Longitudinal Analysis

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Abstract

People’s social participation is deeply rooted in social change and development. Based on the World Values Survey data from 1990 to 2018, this study analyzed the temporal trend of social participation across successive cohorts in China using the hierarchical age-period-cohort-cross-classified random effects model. The results show that social participation continued to fall among Chinese born before 1972 and then successively rose in the following cohorts. However, this cohort effect was mainly attributed to the participation in Olsonian associations, and it could be partly explained by people’s education attainment. The cohort effects of participation in three Olsonian associations, including trade unions, political associations and professional organizations, were similar to that of general social participation. The significant increase in social participation in cohorts born after the 1970s is mainly attributed to China’s socioeconomic and educational development, and a favorable environment for social development is a critical factor for civic social participation.

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Notes

  1. In state corporatism framework, a strong state is needed, the actions of interest groups are limited, and the government usually intakes social organizations to help govern the country (Adams, 2019).

  2. In the present study, cohort born before 1950 can be called the war cohort, cohort born during 1950–1976 can be called the planned economy cohort, and cohort born after 1976 can be called the reform cohort.

  3. When using two cohort dummies in the model, cohort should not be a level-two variable. If so, there would be a multicollinearity problem, because the fixed-effect cohort dummies are directly computed based on the 12-group cohort variable (also used as random dummies not continuous in HAPC-CCREM), they do not have substantial or practical significance. We do not display the detailed specification of this multilevel model in the text, as it is similar to the specification of HAPC-CCREM.

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Acknowledgements

We appreciate the useful help from Xiaolan Li (School of Sociology, Wuhan University) and Ling Zhang (School of Public Health, Wuhan University). We also thank the anonymous reviewers for their relevant comments and suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Sociology, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, China

    Junfeng Jiang

  2. School of Public Health, Wuhan University, No. 115 Donghu Road, Wuhan, 430071, China

    Peigang Wang

  3. Population and Health Research Center, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China

    Peigang Wang

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  1. Junfeng Jiang
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  2. Peigang Wang
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Correspondence to Peigang Wang.

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Appendices

Appendix 1

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Table 5 Multilevel analysis of social participation
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Appendix 2

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Table 6 Multilevel analysis of participation in specific social organizations
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6.

Appendix 3

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Table 7 HAPC analysis of Olsonian participation
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7.

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Jiang, J., Wang, P. Which Generation is More Likely to Participate in Society? A Longitudinal Analysis. Soc Indic Res 162, 209–229 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-021-02830-4

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