Numerous studies have demonstrated the importance of mothers in children's status attainment process in Western societies. Using pooled data from two nationally representative surveys in China, this study investigates the influence of mothers’ socioeconomic status (education and occupation) on the status attainment of men and women in a socialist country and how maternal impact changed with the market reform. In total, 10,124 sons and 8984 daughters born between 1943 and 1985 were studied. Using chained multiple imputation data and linear regressions, this study finds that mothers’ socioeconomic status matters for both sons’ and daughters’ status attainment and, in the case of daughters, is as important as that of fathers. With the economic transition, the influence of mothers’ education has become more important for both sons’ and daughters’ education and can thus indirectly benefit their occupational status attainment. Mothers’ occupational status, however, has become less important for sons’ and daughters’ occupational status attainment with the transition, whereas the influence of fathers’ occupational status has remained the same. These findings suggest that the re-emergence of traditional gender norms that has accompanied the market reform has played a role in shaping the status attainment process of men and women. Since the reform, the role of mothers has been more restricted to the family domain.

Despite income inequality in China being a heated topic in scholarship and public discussion, little research has explored the trend in income inequality since the mid-2010s or focused on the implications of household assets on income inequality. Using pooled cross-sectional data from the Chinese General Social Survey, we estimate income inequality at the household level from 2012 to 2021 and further examine the effects of two types of household assets (housing assets (HA) and financial assets (FA)) on income inequality in urban China, as well as the moderating effects of socioeconomic status (SES) and regional marketization. The results indicate that national income inequality was sustained at a high level between 2012 and 2021, while income inequality in urban households was higher than that in rural households. Both HA and FA were positively related to income inequality, and the latter assets had a stronger effect on income inequality. The association between the two types of household assets and income inequality strengthened along with an increase in family SES and regional marketization levels. The study highlights that FA, relative to HA, are a more important contributor to income inequality among urban households, thus extending the literature on inequality and social stratification in contemporary China by revealing the causes underlying rising income inequality from the household assets perspective.

Using data from the 2011 baseline China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, this study employs a simulation model developed by Mare and Maralani to investigate the intergenerational effects of changes in the distribution of women's education on the educational distribution of their offspring's generation in China. Different from the conventional retrospective studies of intergenerational mobility that have focused on associations between parents’ and children's socioeconomic attainment, the prospective approach adopted in this study examines the relative importance of both the demographic pathways, namely assortative mating and fertility differentials, and the social mobility pathway to the intergenerational transmission processes in a changing socioeconomic and policy context of China. First, I found a positive intergenerational effect across all three cohorts of women born between 1925 and 1965: an increase in women's education led to an improvement in their daughters’ educational attainment. Second, the two demographic pathways, marriage and fertility, and intergenerational transmission jointly affected the educational attainment of the next generation in a complex way. While assortative mating strengthened the intergenerational effects, educational differentials in fertility dampened the intergenerational effects, since improvement in women's education increased their chances of marrying better-educated husbands but reduced their fertility levels. Third, the intergenerational effects and the respective effects of two demographic pathways became smaller across cohorts, which could be attributed jointly to educational expansion at the national level and changing family planning policies experienced by different cohorts of women and their offspring. Fourth, rural/urban comparison further demonstrated the existing educational inequality in contemporary China.

The recent rise of nonstandard employment worldwide has significant implications for intergenerational transfers but has been neglected in existing research on the relationships between adult children's employment experiences and parental support. Utilizing data from the urban sample of the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), we examine how nonstandard employment is related to adult children's money (financial) and time (instrumental and emotional) support for parents. Our analyses among four groups of adult children reveal complex patterns in the nonstandard employment–parental support relationship by children's gender, coresidence status, and educational attainment. Results suggest nonstandard employment primarily undermines the financial ability to support parents among non-coresident daughters, but nonstandard jobs have little to do with daughters’ time caring for parents regardless of their coresident status. Meanwhile, nonstandard employment appears to be weakly related to help for parents in the short term among all adult sons. Disadvantages associated with nonstandard employment in upstream parental support, such as a “less money, less time” situation, are concentrated among less-educated adult children (mainly daughters) who live apart from their parents.

Premarital cohabitation has been understudied in China, and its impact on marriages in the region remains largely unexplored. This study examines the implications of premarital cohabitation for gender inequalities in Chinese marriages. The author analyzes how married couples with and without the experience of premarital cohabitation compare in the amounts of time they spend doing housework, whether the differences can be attributed to social and economic factors, and to what extent the experience of cohabitation equalizes the gendered division of housework. Drawing on four waves of data (2010, 2014, 2016, and 2018) from the China Family Panel Studies, this study is one of the first to provide nationally representative evidence on the relationship between premarital cohabitation and housework in China. Propensity score weighting and linear mixed effect models were employed. In contrast to findings from Western contexts, this study finds that in China, premarital cohabitation is not associated with a smaller gender gap in housework time after accounting for factors that affect selection into cohabitation. However, premarital cohabitation was associated with a significant decrease in women's housework time among urban residents and couples married after 1995, while its effect on men's housework time was not significant. Findings from this study highlight a gendered cohabitation effect on housework hours in China and underscore the importance of contextualizing the meanings of cohabitation and housework in non-Western contexts.

In China, state sector employees enjoy a persistent organizational premium, but surprisingly few studies have examined which college-educated workers tend to work in the state sector. In this study, we focus on one key dimension in horizontal stratification in higher education—field of study—to examine patterns of state sector employment among college-educated workers in China according to the occupational specificity and profit orientation of their college majors. Using data from three nationally representative surveys in urban China, we find that college graduates majoring in less occupationally specific and less profitable fields (i.e. those with lower marketability) are more likely to work in the state sector, and this pattern is more pronounced during the later period of marketization reform. Moreover, family resources in the form of a father working in the state sector can weaken the field-to-sector association, and we observe greater intergenerational mobility into state sector employment among college graduates majoring in fields with lower marketability. These findings highlight the field-to-sector relationship as a unique mechanism of China's horizontal stratification in higher education and school-to-work transition. They also underscore the significance of considering organizational contexts when examining the educational stratification in labor market outcomes.

Despite the prevalence of global migration flows from more developed to less developed areas, few studies have been conducted on this phenomenon. This research utilizes data recently collected in 2020 regarding migration intentions among residents of Hong Kong considering moving from Hong Kong to the Chinese mainland. Our study aims to understand the role of social networks and perceptions of destinations in migration intentions. The results suggest that social networks, perceptions of governance quality, and perceived knowledge of the overall development plan for destinations are significantly related to the intention to migrate from more developed to less developed areas. The analysis further indicates an indirect relationship where strong social networks enhance the perception of governance quality and the understanding of development plans to reinforce migration intentions. These findings underscore the complexity of migration dynamics and highlight the need for a nuanced understanding of migration drivers beyond economic factors.

In contrast to the intergenerational relations of families in the West, Chinese families emphasize mutual support and care among family members and consider parenting and filial duty a continuous process. Based on the typology of intergenerational relations in Western countries, this study constructs an analytical framework for Chinese families consisting of two dimensions: living arrangements and functional exchange. On this basis, it also proposes four potential types of intergenerational relationship: tight-knit, instrumental, independent, and parental support. Using a latent class analysis of nationally representative China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study data helped us understand the different forms of intergenerational relationship and have a better understanding of their development trends. Several things can be learned from the findings. The significant share of the instrumental type and the emergence of the independent and parental support types indicate a change in intergenerational relationships in contemporary China. Although the traditional tight-knit type is no longer the dominant model, close intergenerational linkages are maintained through the instrumental and parental support types, and almost half of parents continue to have a close relationship with their children. This indicates that parenting and filial duty are preserved, reflecting the continuation of intergenerational relationships. The study also found that the type of intergenerational relationship is significantly influenced by the socioeconomic statuses of offspring and parents, indicating the reproduction of social inequality.

Boys’ love (BL) fiction has flourished in China since the beginning of the twenty-first century. It primarily focuses on the romance between men, while most authors and readers of BL fiction are heterosexual women; thus it is paradoxically patriarchal and feminist. This study aims to explore two main questions: (1) What topics do Chinese BL fiction authors prefer? (2) How do the gender concepts of Chinese culture affect the topics and contents of BL fiction? Adopting machine learning methods––the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic model and word vector technology—this study presents the typical topics and specific contents of 72,548 original BL fiction pieces from synchronic and diachronic dimensions. The findings reveal that Chinese BL fiction extensively uses Chinese myths and history to create heterosexually structured fantasies. Furthermore, under the Chinese patriarchal culture, primarily the clan concept, BL authors attach great importance to marriage and reproduction issues. Such discourses eventually limit Chinese BL women authors’ awakening of a feminist consciousness.

In recent years, the emergence of mobile-internet-based crowdfunding has provided a new way for the poor to obtain emergency relief for medical needs. Despite a number of reported scams, medical crowdfunding has made an important contribution to society. Public opinion and sentiment highlight two practical issues: Are the resources being directed to the people who need them the most? And how can we optimize medical crowdfunding? To tackle these questions, we focus on the issue of how the socioeconomic status (SES) of help-seekers affects their online medical crowdfunding outcomes. We ask three research questions: What is the correlation between the SES of help-seekers and their fundraising outcomes? What are the underlying mechanisms? Is there a possible path for the optimization of medical crowdfunding outcomes? Our dataset includes 1930 fundraising cases from a large medical crowdfunding platform in China. The study finds significant differences in crowdfunding outcomes among different socioeconomic groups. Higher SES brings higher donation amounts, higher proportions of fundraising targets reached, a higher number of donations received, and more shares on social media. This socioeconomic gradient in crowdfunding outcomes contradicts the social expectation of prioritizing help to the neediest in medical crowdfunding. Mediation analysis also shows that offline interpersonal networks play an important intermediary role. While appealing case narratives are helpful, they are not an intermediary mechanism that links family SES with crowdfunding outcomes. Further analysis also finds that such a socioeconomic gradient seems to weaken when crowdfunding that begins within a private network of offline acquaintances on WeChat moves to public platforms.