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Social Indicators Research

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01-11-2021 | Original Research

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

Authors: Junfeng Jiang, Peigang Wang

Published in: Social Indicators Research | Issue 1/2022

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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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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.

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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Title: Which Generation is More Likely to Participate in Society? A Longitudinal Analysis
Authors: Junfeng Jiang
Peigang Wang
Publication date: 01-11-2021
Publisher: Springer Netherlands
Published in: Social Indicators Research / Issue 1/2022
Print ISSN: 0303-8300
Electronic ISSN: 1573-0921
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-021-02830-4

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