individual accounts. As is evident from Figure 4, increases in coverage under the urban employee medical scheme have accounted for a substantial increase in coverage of local residents from 2005 to 2010 (see Figure A.1 for variation across ownership types).

The unemployment insurance (UI) scheme requires employers and employees to contribute two and one percent of wages, respectively. Government guidelines require that the standard UI payment is set below the local minimum wage, but above the local _dibao_ threshold.<sup>17</sup> Unemployed workers may receive benefits for up to 24 months, with UI benefit duration determined by number of months contributing to the scheme. Migrant workers are not typically covered by unemployment insurance, but China’s central government asked local governments to extend unemployment insurance benefits to migrants in the wake of the global financial crisis.<sup>18</sup> Urban workers may also participate in a work injury insurance scheme and maternity insurance programs, with contributions collected only from employers. The work injury insurance scheme contribution ranges from 0.5 percent to 2.0 percent of salary, based on the degree of risk in the specific industry, and covers the cost of injury, lost wages, living allowance and medical care costs for treatment; the maximum period for benefit receipt is capped at 12 months. Those identified as disabled from injury then receive disability benefits. The maternity insurance contribution is less than one percent of wage, the standard benefit is calculated as the average monthly wage of enterprise employees for the previous month, and includes medical services related to pregnancy and three months of maternity allowance.

**_Social Insurance for Urban Residents who are not Wage-Earners_** . Apart from wage-earning workers receiving contributions to social insurance accounts, other urban residents have been left out of social insurance coverage until recently, including the self-employed, workers in firms with fewer than eight employees, workers who are “informally employed” and not receiving benefits, and individuals who do not work. The self- employed and informally employed may make voluntary contributions to pension funds. In some cases, informal workers will still receive mandatory contributions to work-injury

> 17 The _dibao_ is the minimum living standard guarantee. Families with income per capita below the locally determined _dibao_ threshold may apply for financial support.

> 18Evidence from the CULS, however, suggests that local governments were not particularly responsive to this request. Few laid-off migrants received UI support, and focus group interviews conducted by scholars from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences suggest that local labor bureaus in cities as diverse as Shanghai and Shenyang were concerned primarily with assisting local workers who had lost jobs (Giles et al., 2012). Certain conditions are also required for unemployed workers to receive UI benefits. In most cities, a worker must be employed a minimum number of months prior to layoff (in most jurisdictions displaced workers receive one month of UI for every 12 months that they had been employed. In the wake of the global financial crisis, the minimum employment duration was reduced to six months in some urban areas). Rural migrants typically do not remain long in urban areas if they do not have income support.

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