Religion and trust in strangers among China's rural-urban migrants

Geng Niu () and Guochang Zhao ()

China Economic Review, 2018, vol. 50, issue C, 265-272

Abstract: During China's rapid urbanization, the social marginalization of its rural-urban migrants has attracted increasing scholarly and social attention. At the same time, China is experiencing a rising tide of religion, the impact of which on social integration remains unexplored. Based on a large-scale survey for rural-urban migrants, we find that being a religious believer is associated with a higher level of trust towards strangers. In addition, participating in religious-related activities has a positive impact on trust for both believers and non-believers. We test the robustness of our results using instrumental variable analysis. We conjecture that prosocial values in religious teaching and social interaction opportunities contribute to rural-urban migrants' generalized trust. Our results indicate that informal institution such as religion can be important in forming social capital for marginalized social groups.

Keywords: Generalized trust; Religiosity; China; Rural-urban migrants; Social interaction; Informal institution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O15 Z12 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:chieco:v:50:y:2018:i:c:p:265-272

DOI: 10.1016/j.chieco.2018.05.005

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