Welfare Exit Intention Among Chinese Welfare Recipients in a Welfare Employment Program in Beijing

Background and Purpose: This study explores the intention of welfare exit among Chinese welfare recipients in a welfare employment program in Beijing, China. Since the 1990s, urban unemployment has become a serious social problem in China. The real urban unemployment reached 16-million in 1999 (Hu & Sheng, 2007). To reduce unemployment and maintain the political stability, a specific welfare employment program was adopted by the government in Beijing. This government-sponsored program enrolled the elderly hard-to-employ needy group to serve the public welfare in the communities. Cui (2007) in her evaluation of this program stated that some of the participants might rely on the program. However, few empirical studies were found to verify and further the research. Little attention was paid to these participants, especially their welfare exit. This study examines these participants' intention to exit the program and factors influence their intention.

Method: Due to little research on this topic, a qualitative research with individual, face-to-face, and in-depth semi-structured interviews was adopted in the study. Thirty-six participants from five areas of Beijing were recruited with nonprobability sampling method. The mean age for them was 47, nearly half of them were female, and two third of them had high school or less education. Data were coded and analyzed with grounded theory method to detect patterns across the interviews.

Results: Based on participants' experience with the program and their description of their career plan, majority of participants (89%) planned to remain in current program until retirement. However, half of participants indicated they would leave if they had better options. Prominent reasons for remaining included: (a) difficulty in obtaining a job in labor market with work barriers such as elderly age, low education, few skill, and poor health; (2) low anticipation for the future and being waiting for retirement; and (3) merits of the welfare employment such as social insurance benefits, short commute distance, job stability, less workload and pressure, and perception of accomplishment. However, low income in the program and family financial and care burdens restrained their remaining. The findings showed that the welfare employment recipients in Beijing were strongly attached to the program but they were not relied on the program. The merits of the program attracted them to remain while the work barriers and frustrating unemployment experience restrained them from leaving.

Conclusions and Implications: This study tentatively describes welfare exit intention among Chinese welfare employment recipients, and explores their reasons to remain. It calls for measures to mitigate work barriers among these recipients, more intervention after job loss, and modification of the program to motivate exit. With the study, new information for Chinese welfare recipients is provided and possible influencing factors to their welfare exit are offered, from the perspective of the participants. This exploratory effort will lay the ground for further research on Chinese welfare exit.