How does social pension enrolment impact residents’ trust in local government? A comparison between urban and rural China

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

The Chinese government is placing increasing emphasis on providing public goods to strengthen political support, particularly for local governments. This paper analysed data from the CFPS (2014–2020) to examine the relationship between enrolment in one of the most extensive social policies — the social pension for residents – and residents’ political trust in local governments in China. Our findings indicate that social pension enrolment was positively associated with political trust among rural residents, particularly contributors. However, from 2016 to 2020, these positive effects gradually declined. Moreover, no significant effects were observed in the urban sample during the study period. These findings highlight that the political impact of a policy can vary over time and across different contexts due to complicated underlying mechanisms.