Title: Rural-Urban cleavages in perceptions of inequality in contemporary China
Description: My dissertation investigates how the household registration ( hukou ) system and related policies shape the cleavages in perceptions of inequality and distributive justice between rural residents, rural-to-urban migrants, and city dwellers in Reform-Era China. My inquiry is made based on analysis of data from a nationally representative survey (N=3,267) conducted in China in fall 2004. I focus on three attitudes that constitute major components of the legitimacy of economic distribution in a society: satisfaction with current living standards, perceived fairness of actual inequality, and attitudes toward government intervention to reduce inequality. The hukou system has generated different opportunity structures and socioeconomic outcomes for rural, migrant, and urban people biased against the former two and represented the most important source of inequality in contemporary China. However, I find that disadvantaged rural residents are more likely than urban people to be satisfied with their living standard, accept the fairness of actual inequality, and reject government intervention to reduce inequality. Migrants' attitudes fall between rural residents and urbanites.

Integrating theories on distributive justice attitudes and theories on the role of the state in stratification processes, I argue that this disjunction between attitudes and objective positions originates from the interaction of multiple forces enforced by political-economic institutions. To be specific, the hukou system has not only stratified rural, migrant and urban people into different socioeconomic positions, but has also engendered differential life experiences, contexts of living, access to information, and understanding of social reality among the three groups. The more accepting attitudes among people of rural origins than among urban residents result from complex interplays of positional, experiential, and psychological factors. Nevertheless, I suggest that the cushioning effects of the more positive attitudes among disadvantaged rural residents induced by the hukou system may dissipate along with the relaxation and ultimate elimination of this system.