Can Social Mobility Alleviate Anxiety? An Empirical Analysis Based on the CGSS

Abstract

With the aggravation of social competition, more and more people fall into anxiety, depression and even suicide. How to alleviate individual anxiety and then avoid the spread of social anxiety? Academic circles have been very concerned about the impact of social mobility on individual political attitude, psychology and behavior. Can social mobility alleviate individual anxiety? What is the underlying mechanism? Based on 17192 samples in 2010, 2012, 2013 and 2015 from Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS), the paper attempts to study the impact of social mobility on individual anxiety and the mediating effect of Self assessment on family economic status . The ordered probit regression model showed that the increase of positive mobility distance can alleviate individual anxiety to a certain extent, whether it is intra or inter-generational social mobility. Meamwhile, the higher the score of subjective class identification, the lower the degree of anxiety. The results also showed that self assessment on family economic status has a significant mediating effect on the relationship among social mobility and individual anxiety.