The industrialisation thesis, revisited: Understanding welfare expansion in China through social expenditure data (2000–2019)

Abstract

AbstractChina is undergoing important reforms in its welfare system, and some scholars agree that a new ‘social policy era’ took place in the 2000s–2010s. Although welfare development theories—typically, the industrialisation thesis and the power resources approach—are well established in social policy research, welfare change and its determinants in China are still poorly understood in international literature. Making use of official statistics at the provincial level, this study examines whether industrialisation is associated with welfare development in China during the ‘social policy era’ (2000–2019). We contribute to welfare development literature by, first, measuring welfare effort in China while addressing comparability issues (the ‘dependent variable problem’); and, secondly, testing the industrialisation thesis, amongst others, through a fixed‐effects time‐series‐cross‐section data analysis on provincial‐level statistics covering 30 provinces during 20 time points (2000–2019). Results show that the industrialisation theory is indeed important for welfare development in China, but several less‐developed provinces also experienced substantial improvement in their welfare spending irrespective of their local revenues, suggesting that redistribution at the level of the central government and political reform are increasingly important topics for future welfare studies in China.