Social Economic Status and Social Network Resources

Based on the 1999 survey data in Xiamen, this paper takes the lead in Chinese literature to explore the relationship between social economic status and social network resources comprehensively. The research finds that sex, age, income, education, and household registration status are the main variables influencing individual's social network resource, while the Party membership, ownership of labor by the work unit ( danwei suoyouzhi ), and government jurisdiction ( zhenfu zhuguan bumen ) have no statistical significant influence on social resources. The author argues that the findings reflect characteristics of Chinese society in the transition period. On the one hand, more and more importance is attached to economic factor and human capital such as education in the accumulation process of social resources, while factors, such as political background ( zhengzhi mianmu ), ownership of labor by the work unit, and government jurisdiction are fading away, which indicates the obvious trend of marketization in our society. On the other hand, household registration status is the important symbol of status and still plays an important role in accumulation of one's social resources, which shows that the imprint of the duality of our society from planed economy has not disappeared