JCS本刊论文 | 从“以生产为中心”到“以生活为中心”——中国人工作—生活观念变迁研究（1990—2018年）

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The Journal of Chinese Sociology

2026年4月17日，The Journal of Chinese Sociology（《中国社会学学刊》）上线文章From “production-centered” to “life-centered”: the transformation of Chinese work-life values, 1990–2018（《从“以生产为中心”到“以生活为中心”——中国人工作—生活观念变迁研究（1990—2018年）》）。

| 作者简介

吴玉玲

北京科技大学社会学系副教授

主要研究方向：阶层与价值观念、儿童福利、劳动与社会保障等

孙中伟

华南师范大学政治与公共管理学院教授

主要研究方向：劳动就业与社会保障、人口流动与城市化、产业转型与区域发展

Abstract

Drawing on data from the World Values Survey (1990–2018) and grounded in modernization and social transformation theories, this study examines the evolution of Chinese people’s attitudes toward work and life over the past three decades. The results reveal a general shift from “production-centered” to “life-centered” orientations. This specifically indicates that during the 1990s, work-centered values intensified, but since the early 2000s, they gradually weakened. As a key dimension of individual life, family orientation declined temporarily between 1990 and the early 2000s but later re-emerged as a factor central to everyday life. Leisure orientation, meanwhile, strengthened alongside socioeconomic development. In addition, class differences in these orientations have changed over time, and individual attitudes are found to relate more closely to their life-cycle stage than to their birth cohort.

Keywords

Work-life values; Social transformation; Social mentality; World values survey

Introduction

In 2017, as China was on the verge of eliminating absolute poverty and achieving a moderately prosperous society, the report of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China declared: “Socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered a new era. The principal contradiction in Chinese society has evolved into that between people’s growing need for a better life and unbalanced and inadequate development.” Meeting the peoples’ “need for a better life” has thus become a core task for contemporary Chinese society. Achieving a balance between work and life is an essential aspect of this goal. But what does “balance” mean here? The answer depends on how individuals conceptualize the relationship and boundaries between work and life or their work-life ethos.

Work-life values constitute a central dimension of a society’s social mentality. They reflect the interplay between economic development and social structure at the level of individual consciousness, while also providing psychological motivation and interpretive frameworks for broader processes of social change (Wang 2014). Sociologists have long been interested in how people perceive work and life. In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber (1992) examined the role of the “calling” ethic in fostering the rise of European capitalism during the nineteenth century. It is a foundational study that inspired generations of scholars to explore the relationship between work orientations and social development (Dubin 1956; Mannheim 1975; Inglehart and Baker 2000).

In China, mainstream society has always attached great importance to work and life ethics. “Diligence and thrift” have long been celebrated as traditional virtues. In the traditional agrarian society, work and life were organically united within the family structure, which functioned as both a productive and consumptive unit. As Fei Xiaotong (1998) noted in his book From the Soil, the Chinese family not only fulfilled reproductive and domestic functions but also carried economic, political and even religious roles. The notion of “managing the household diligently and frugally”, a core concept in Chinese culture, encompassed both a work ethic and a lifestyle ideal. With the advent of modern industrialization, marketization and urbanization, however, family production gradually shifted outward toward commercial and industrial spaces. Work and family life became separated, and tensions evolved into broader conflicts between the economic system and household organization. How to reconcile work and life while maintaining the integrity of family functions and social reproduction thus became a significant social challenge.

During the planned economy period (c. 1950s–1970s), the value of being “work-centered” was vigorously promoted, emphasizing devotion and self-sacrifice while rejecting individualism. This mirrored a “production-centered” model of social development. Since the initiation of reform and opening-up in 1978, the transition to a market economy released China’s demographic dividend and fueled four decades of rapid economic growth. The legacy of socialist-era diligence and endurance provided an endogenous engine for this success that was also accompanied by various structural and value changes. Individuals became detached from collectivist institutions and entered market competition, while families transformed from productive units into private sanctuaries (Yan 2003). Meanwhile, as work units (danwei) ceased to provide comprehensive welfare – education, healthcare and social security – new tensions emerged between individualized life (centered on family and leisure) and socialized production (centered on labor).

China’s social transformation presents both challenges and opportunities for the study of social mentality (Fang 2008; Ma 2008; Wang 2014). In his later years, Fei Xiaotong (2009) repeatedly called for greater attention to social mentality, arguing that after resolving basic subsistence issues, China must address the psychological and spiritual dimensions of development. He wrote: “After achieving a moderately prosperous society, the study of mentality must advance alongside ecological research, to adapt to the simultaneous development of material and spiritual cultures” (Ibid 142). Since the early twenty-first century, numerous studies have examined Chinese society’s growing individualism, family values and consumer consciousness. Yet, few have provided a systematic analysis of China’s shifting social mentality. A major reason is the lack of frameworks that integrate individual experiences into a macro-sociological perspective (Zhou 2014). Specifically, within the field of work-life values, research has rarely situated Chinese transformations in a long-term, structural-historical context. Prior studies often focused on single dimensions, small groups or static snapshots – insufficient to capture the dynamic trajectory of Chinese attitudes toward work and family. This paper seeks to fill that gap by combining modernization theory and social transformation theory to analyze how Chinese people’s work-life values have evolved over the past three decades, and how these changes vary across social strata. Using a multi-level dynamic approach, this paper aims to provide a comprehensive picture of China’s evolving orientation from “production-centered” to “life-centered” values.

Literature review

and research questions

The notion of “work centrality” refers to the degree to which individuals regard work as important and meaningful within the overall framework of their lives (MOW International Research Team 1987; Paullay et al. 1994). It emphasizes the general significance of work that does not depend on antecedents or consequences, such as intrinsic or extrinsic motivation or work performance (Wallace and Scott 2011). The concept emerged during Western industrialization and urbanization, both as a product of modernization and a driver of it. At the same time, people’s views of life – including family and leisure orientations – also changed. This section reviews literature on the transformation of work-life values from the perspectives of both modernization and social transformation, and proposes the guiding questions of this research.

Economic development

and value change

in modernization theory

Modernization theorists have long examined the relationship between economic development and cultural change. From Weber to Samuel Huntington, many have argued that culture exerts a lasting influence on social development. Weber’s idea of the “calling” ethic, for instance, embodies a work-centered worldview that played a crucial role in the rise of Western capitalism (Weber 1992). By contrast, modernization theorists such as Karl Marx and Daniel Bell contend that culture is shaped by economic conditions, suggesting that economic development inevitably triggers widespread cultural transformation. Ronald Inglehart’s (1997) research on value change in industrial societies supports this view; as modernization progresses, developed industrial societies undergo a shift from materialist values to post-materialist values. Materialist values emphasize economic security and physical safety, whereas post-materialist values emphasize freedom, self-expression and quality of life. Inglehart (Ibid) explained this shift through the principle of scarcity that posits people tend to value what is relatively scarce. In times of material deprivation, economic security and order take precedence; once these needs are met, individuals increasingly seek nonmaterial goals such as community participation, political engagement and self-realization. Thus, the hierarchy of value priorities reflects one’s socioeconomic context.

If work-life values are part of this broader value system, do they follow the same trajectory? Numerous studies suggest so. Work is a key means of securing economic well-being, yet research in Western societies has shown that work centrality has declined (Sharabi and Harpaz 2007, 2013; Twenge et al. 2010). Scholars typically attribute this decline to sustained economic development. From a traditional modernization perspective, economic growth promotes materialist orientations that emphasize prosperity, security and welfare, which in turn reinforce work-centered attitudes. But as long periods of prosperity stabilize material life, people gradually move toward post-materialist orientations – placing less emphasis on work and more on family and leisure (Kwon and Schafer 2012). Therefore, the effect of economic development on work centrality is stage-dependent, varying across different phases of growth.

Family and leisure represent vital dimensions of individual life. The transformation of family relations has long been a central concern of modernization theory. Although modernization has altered the social meaning of family, its importance has not disappeared. Since the 1960s, rising divorce, cohabitation and nonmarital childbearing have diversified family forms in Western societies. Demographer Ron Lesthaeghe (2010) argued that these changes were largely driven by the spread of post-materialist values, which emphasize individual growth and self-realization, leading to a shift from child-centered to couple-centered families. Similarly, Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim (2001) described the modern family as a site of individualization, where people are encouraged – or compelled – to pursue their own life paths. Anthony Giddens (2009) attributed the diversification of family forms to a transformation in intimacy: from “romantic love” to “confluent love” characterized by the pursuit of pure relationships grounded in emotional closeness. As the traditional, lifelong marriage-based family structure disintegrates, emotional intimacy becomes the new core of family meaning.

Even as marital institutions weaken, the family remains deeply significant. Empirical studies support this continuity. For example, Sharabi and Harpaz (2007) found that family centrality remained consistently high in Israel between 1981 and 1993. Research in the United States and Germany also indicates that people’s valuation of family remained stable through the 1980s and early 1990s (England 1991; Ruiz-Quintanilla and Wilpert 1991). Subsequent updates of the Israeli study incorporating 2006 data similarly revealed enduring family orientations (Sharabi and Harpaz 2013), and cross-national analyses show that family continues to rank above work and leisure in importance (Zavyalova et al. 2011).

Leisure, another essential component of life, has also drawn attention. According to Inglehart’s theory of value change, long-term economic prosperity encourages individuals to pursue a higher quality of life, where leisure becomes an important domain of well-being. Research confirms that leisure is closely associated with subjective well-being (Kuykendall, Boemerman and Zhu 2015). Theoretically, socioeconomic development should thus strengthen leisure orientation. Empirical studies in Western contexts show a general rise in leisure values over time (Twenge et al. 2010), though leisure rarely surpasses family in centrality (Zavyalova et al. 2011; Sharabi and Harpaz 2013). Overall, findings from Western societies largely support the proposition that modernization influences shifts in attitudes toward work, family and leisure. The next section examines these processes through the lens of China’s social transformation and cultural traditions.

China’s social transformation

and the evolution

of value orientations

The “culture of family” has long been central to Chinese tradition. Rooted in agrarian production, the Chinese family served as the basic social unit for both production and consumption; work and life were inseparable. Yet this organic unity was interrupted during three decades of collective economy throughout the twentieth century. After 1949, China nationalized the means of production and established a highly centralized planned economy. Heavy industry and defense sectors were prioritized over light industry and agriculture, subordinating family life to production. The state mobilized individuals to participate in collective labor, and the household’s economic autonomy was weakened (Wang et al. 2015). Especially during the Great Leap Forward (1958–1962), family life existed primarily to serve collective production, leading to what Wu Xiaoying (2016) calls a “de-familialization” process under collectivization.

Since the reform and opening-up (since 1978), China’s transition to a market economy has partially reversed that process. Although individuals and families became detached from collective structures, the emphasis on work as the route to survival and success persisted. Market reforms accelerated industrialization and urbanization, deepening the separation between work and family life. According to modernization and value-change theory, as material needs are met, people should move from materialist to post-materialist values. However, in the early reform years, China’s industrial base remained weak – per capita GDP in 1978 was below 400 yuan. Reviving production and reforming the economy were the state’s foremost goals. During this phase, individuals were encouraged to work diligently for prosperity, embodying the ethos “time is money, efficiency is life.” Hence, we expect that in the first two decades after reform, economic growth reinforced production-centered values emphasizing labor and material well-being.

By the 2000s, as per capita GDP exceeded 8000 yuan and the industrial structure shifted toward capital- and technology-intensive sectors, China had largely solved the problem of subsistence. With continuous economic growth, society began to celebrate confidence, initiative and self-driven success – values such as innovation, competition and autonomy (Zeng and Greenfield 2015). Public aspirations expanded from material affluence to rights and security. Correspondingly, the 2003 Third Plenary Session of the 16th CPC Central Committee called for “people-oriented, comprehensive, coordinated, and sustainable development” while the 2006 Sixth Plenary Session emphasized building a harmonious socialist society. This official rhetoric reflected citizens’ growing desires for a better quality of life. As economic prosperity continued, work-centered orientations weakened, and life-centered values strengthened.

Changes in family values followed a different pattern. Although collectivization had weakened family autonomy, the family remained the primary emotional and practical anchor for individuals. After reform, as collective institutions loosened, China’s individualization accelerated. But under the enduring influence of family culture, it produced a form of “new familism” characterized by returning to and relying on the family (Yan 2021). This dependency stems from families’ expanded support roles, especially in childcare, where intergenerational cooperation has tightened kinship ties (Zeng and Li 2020). Unlike Western societies, where family transformation centers on intimate partnerships, China’s familism is rooted in intergenerational reciprocity. Thus, family centrality may have weakened in the early reform years, when people prioritized economic survival, but likely strengthened again as prosperity grew.

Leisure, while increasingly important, remains culturally secondary. Traditional Chinese culture valorizes hard work and frugality, rejecting hedonism. Although the demand for leisure has grown, and its meaning has deepened from pleasure-seeking to the pursuit of (life) meaning, leisure is still often viewed as a complement to work and family rather than an end in and of itself. Consequently, while leisure orientation is expected to strengthen, it is unlikely to surpass work or family as the dominant life focus.

Considering this historical context and ensuing theoretical implications, this study proposes the following research questions:

RQ1: Since 1990, have Chinese people’s work, family and leisure orientations followed said period-specific trends: a strengthening of work centrality in the 1990s and a weakening thereafter; a temporary weakening but later resurgence of family centrality; and a continuous strengthening of leisure orientation alongside economic growth? If not, what alternative patterns emerge?

RQ2: To what extent can economic growth (GDP per capita) explain these temporal patterns and differences in work, family and leisure orientations?

Age, cohort,

and class differences

in work-life values

According to life-course theory, individuals occupy different social roles and statuses at different stages of life, and transitions between them bring corresponding shifts in expectations and values (Kohlberg 1969). Hence, work-life orientations should vary across the life cycle: from child to parent, from breadwinner to retiree. Family orientation is likely to peak in midlife, when individuals bear major family responsibilities, and work orientation should also reach its maximum during the prime working years, declining after retirement. Leisure orientation, in turn, may increase with age as roles and obligations change.

In recent years, the value orientations of young generations have drawn widespread attention. Popular online expressions such as tangping (lying flat), foxi (Buddhist-style detachment), neijuan (involution), and 996 (an overwork schedule) reveal conflicting tendencies. On one hand, they suggest overwork and competition; on the other, resistance and withdrawal. These debates suggest that today’s youth may hold distinct work-life attitudes compared to older cohorts. Cohort, as distinct from biological age or kinship generation, refers to groups shaped by common formative experiences (Li 2020). Both socialization and social generation theories emphasize how major historical events during adolescence and early adulthood imprint enduring values and behaviors (Mannheim 1952; Inglehart 1997). Life-course theory likewise stresses that individual trajectories are embedded in historical time (Elder 1974). Empirical studies in other countries have found generational differences in work-life orientations. For example, younger cohorts, such as Millennials, exhibit stronger leisure and weaker work centrality than Baby Boomers or Generation X (Twenge et al. 2010).

Since 1949, China has undergone a series of transformative events, all of which profoundly shaped life chances. Those who experienced famine in their youth learned scarcity; those who grew up during reform benefited from market opportunities; and those raised under the one-child policy enjoyed unprecedented family resources. These experiences have differentiated cohorts in their worldviews. Studies have shown, for instance, that the only-child generation tends to hold more egalitarian gender views (Shu and Zhu 2012). However, few studies have examined generational differences in work-life values. Given that younger cohorts matured during periods of economic prosperity and greater family affluence, they are more likely to embrace post-materialist values. They are expected to prioritize work less, and family and leisure more so than older generations.

Social class represents another enduring determinant of values. Research indicates that higher education and occupational status increase individuals’ sense of satisfaction, achievement and meaning from work (Ng and Feldman 2009), which in turn enhances work centrality (Kwon and Schafer 2012). Class differences also extend to family and leisure orientations. In the United States, for example, highly educated women are more likely to affirm the importance of marriage and childbearing (Tichenor et al. 2017), while leisure preferences have become key markers of class distinction (Bourdieu 1986). Thus, we expect that individuals of higher socioeconomic status will place greater emphasis on family and leisure.

Based on this reasoning, three additional research questions are posed:

RQ3: Do Chinese people’s work-life values follow the expected age pattern, with midlife individuals prioritizing work and family, and younger and older individuals showing weaker orientations toward both but stronger emphasis on leisure?

RQ4: Do Chinese people exhibit a generational pattern in which younger cohorts increasingly value family and leisure while downplaying work centrality?

RQ5: Do higher levels of education and class position correspond to stronger work-life orientations, and how have class differences evolved across different developmental stages?

Data, variables,

and analytical model

Data

The World Values Survey (WVS), initiated by political scientist Ronald Inglehart, was designed to explore global cultural diversity and value change. First launched in Europe during the 1980s, it now covers more than 90 countries and regions. China joined the project in 1990. Over the years, the WVS Network has produced more than a thousand scholarly publications in some twenty languages, and countless additional works have drawn on its data. The WVS has thus become an indispensable source for cross-national studies of cultural and attitudinal change, and the Chinese subsample has been widely used to trace long-term trends in public values.

This study employs the Chinese WVS waves of 1990, 1995, 2001, 2007, 2012 and 2018 to examine trends in people’s orientations toward work, family and leisure. All six waves used face-to-face interviews with adults aged 18 and above. Because the questionnaire design, sampling principles, and key questions remained consistent across waves, the data permit both cross-period and cross-cohort analysis of attitudinal change over 28 years. Sample sizes for the six waves are 1000, 1500, 1000, 1991, 2300 and 3036, respectively. After excluding cases with missing values on core variables, the effective sample totals 8616 respondents: 4333 men (50.29%) and 4283 women (49.71%), with a mean age of 42.

Variables

Within the WVS China questionnaire, respondents rated how important work, family and leisure are in their lives. Previous research sometimes supplements these items with additional indicators. These indicators may include: “I love my work; it is the most important thing in my life” or “Regardless of income, I always do my best at work” (Parboteeah and Cullen 2003). Because the Chinese WVS includes only the question on importance, this study uses that single indicator as a proxy for general significance, consistent with Kwon and Schafer (2012). Responses were recoded into dichotomous variables: “very important” = 1; all other categories (“important”, “not very important” and “not at all important”) = 0. Family and leisure orientations were recoded analogously.

Hence, respondents who regarded family, work and leisure as very important accounted for 79.8%, 49.4% and 16.5% of the sample, respectively (see Table 2). It is important to note that “work centrality” here does not mean that work outweighs family or leisure, and “life centrality” does not imply the opposite. Rather, each reflects the general perceived importance of that domain in everyday life. Family and leisure, while not exhaustive of “life”, occupy the largest share of non-work time and are culturally recognized as its key components.

Three temporal variables capture change over time: period, cohort and age. Period refers to the WVS survey year (1990, 1995, 2001, 2007, 2012 and 2018). Cohorts are grouped in five-year intervals based on birth year – from the 1930 cohort (born 1930 or earlier) to the 2000 cohort (born 1996–2000) – yielding 15 groups (See Table 1). Age and age-squared are used to test nonlinear life-cycle effects.

Control variables include gender, marital status, number of children, education, employment status and self-assessed social class. Because the 2012 survey lacked occupational data, occupation is excluded from the final models. Household registration status is not collected in the WVS, and regional codings are inconsistent across waves. Therefore, both variables are also omitted from the models. Table 2 summarizes descriptive statistics.

Analytical model

To examine how age, period and cohort jointly shape work-life orientations, this study applies a Hierarchical Age-Period-Cohort Cross-Classified Random Effects Model (HAPC-CCREM) (Yang and Land 2006, 2013). This framework treats age as a first-level individual variable with fixed effects, while period and cohort are second-level contextual factors with random effects, thereby alleviating the classic identification problem of linear dependence among the three dimensions.

Taking work centrality as an example, the first-level logit equation is:

At the second level:

The combined form yields:

Models for family and leisure orientations follow the same specification. Parameter estimation uses SAS PROC GLIMMIX (Littell et al. 2006), and charts are prepared in Excel.

Analysis results

Age, period and cohort effects

on work, family, and leisure values

Table 3 presents two models for each dependent variable: work, family and leisure importance. The difference between Model 1 and Model 2 lies in the inclusion of per capita GDP in the latter, allowing an assessment of how much economic development explains period-level differences in attitudes. Across all three orientations, the directions and significance of individual-level predictors remain consistent between models, with only minor coefficient differences. Regarding education, employment and social class, higher educational attainment increases the likelihood of valuing work, family and leisure, especially the latter two. Those in full-time employment are significantly more likely to emphasize the importance of work (p < 0.001). Additionally, self-assessed class position affects family and leisure orientations more than work. Compared with the lower class, the middle class shows a stronger family orientation (p < 0.05), while the working class is less leisure-oriented (p < 0.10) and the upper-middle class more so (p < 0.05).

In Model 1, the random variance components show significant period effects (p < 0.10) but nonsignificant cohort effects, indicating that individuals’ orientations toward work, family and leisure vary mainly across historical periods rather than generations. Figure 1 illustrates these period effects. Overall, since 1990, work centrality has declined while family and leisure centrality have strengthened. Work orientation was strongest in 1990 and 1995, then gradually weakened, reaching its lowest level around 2012. In contrast, family orientation was relatively weak in 1990 and 2001 but increased steadily thereafter, peaking between 2012 and 2018. Leisure orientation remained low overall but rose markedly in 2012 and 2018. These findings confirm that as socioeconomic development advanced, Chinese people gradually shifted focus from work to family and quality of life, thus supporting the first research question while aligning with said theoretical expectations.

In Model 2, adding per capita GDP allows for an examination of how economic development accounts for these period effects. Once GDP is included, the previously significant differences in work orientation (1990), family orientation (2012 and 2018), and leisure orientation (2012 and 2018) become nonsignificant or substantially weaker. The period-level variance in work orientation drops from 0.17 to 0.06, as family orientation drops from 0.43 to 0.12, and leisure orientation similarly falls from 0.23 to 0.16. These reductions suggest that roughly 81%, 71%, and 29% of the period variance in the three orientations can be explained by economic growth over the past three decades. This result answers the second research question, showing that economic development has been a major driver of value change in China.

Figure 2 depicts age effects. Age exerts a significant curvilinear (inverted-U) influence on work and family orientations but not on leisure. Both work and family importance peak in midlife (around age 40), then decline. Leisure importance remains low but rises slightly after age 60, though not significantly. Given that retirement typically occurs around ages 55–60 and that this period also marks the onset of the “empty-nest” stage, people reduce their investment in work and family and begin to value leisure more. These results respond to our third research question and fit well with life-cycle theory.

Figure 3 presents cohort effects, showing minor differences across birth cohorts that are statistically insignificant. This finding answers the fourth research question but runs counter to the expectation of strong generational divergence.

Socio-economic status differences

and their evolution

Figure 4 illustrates the evolution of educational differences in work, family and leisure orientations. Individuals with higher education consistently value work more highly, though the magnitude of difference fluctuates. In the early 1990s, education gaps in work centrality were wide; they narrowed around 2000, then widened again thereafter. For family orientation, differences were minimal before 2001 but have since grown, with more educated respondents increasingly emphasizing family. Leisure orientation exhibits the clearest and most persistent educational gradient; those with higher education attach greater importance to leisure. The gap was small in 1990 and 1995 but expanded steadily over the following two decades. Overall, educational disparities in work-life values have widened, with highly educated groups paying more attention to family and leisure.

Figure 5 compares full-time and non-full-time workers. Full-time employees consistently show stronger work centrality across all periods. Their family orientation is now virtually identical to that of non-full-time individuals, indicating convergence in the value of family across employment statuses. Differences in leisure orientation were insignificant before 2012 but have since widened, as full-time workers increasingly value leisure as a counterbalance to work pressures.

According to Fig. 6, class differences in work-life attitudes display distinct patterns of change. The class gap in work values was relatively pronounced in 1990 and 1995, but it gradually converged and continued to weaken thereafter. The class gap in family values was smaller, yet it evolved in the opposite direction. In the 1990 and 1995 surveys, higher-class groups exhibited relatively weaker family orientations. By 2000, their emphasis on family had gradually surpassed that of other groups, and although the gap narrowed again after 2012, higher-class individuals have continued overall to place greater importance on family. The class gap in leisure values has remained relatively stable over the past three decades, narrowing somewhat between 2007 and 2012 but widening again afterwards. This pattern shows that the higher people rate their social class, the more they value leisure, with the middle and upper classes showing the strongest orientation toward leisure. Taken together, trends in class differences in attitudes toward work, family and leisure suggest that as society changed, people across social strata have become increasingly similar and consistently less differentiated in their identification with work, whereas differences in family and leisure values have become more pronounced, with higher-class individuals attaching greater importance to both family and leisure.

Conclusion and discussion

Since the reform and opening-up, the development of marketization, industrialization and urbanization has transformed modes of production, resulting in structural shifts and adjustments within Chinese society, while also bringing about changes in values to adapt to a new social order. As an important component of social values, work-life orientations reflect not only the level of economic development and the transformation of social structure, but also contain the seeds of society’s future direction. Drawing on nearly three decades of repeated cross-sectional data, this study examines the period, cohort and age trends in Chinese peoples’ work-life orientations and analyzes how these orientations have evolved across social strata, thus portraying the complex and dynamic process linking social development and value change in China. The findings show that from 1990 to 2018, Chinese peoples’ work-life orientations underwent a general shift from a “production-centered” outlook toward a “life-centered” one – a transformation broadly consistent with the general pattern of value change observed in modernized societies worldwide. However, this 30-year evolution was far from linear. This study reveals the unique characteristics and dynamics of China’s structural transformation and stages of social development in several distinctive ways.

First, Chinese peoples’ work-life orientations exhibit a distinct period effect. The work-centered orientation strengthened during the 1990s but began to weaken after entering the twenty-first century. The importance of family, while declining from 1990 to the early 2000s, subsequently returned to the center of people’s lives. Attitudes toward leisure have steadily strengthened in step with socioeconomic progress. The evolution of these values reflects how different stages of economic development shape value orientations, each leaving its own historical imprint. During the 1990s, China was still in the process of establishing a socialist market economy; in this period, the public generally displayed a strong work-centered orientation. As the economy continued to prosper and the problem of basic subsistence was resolved, people’s focus on work weakened while the importance attached to family and leisure grew. This shift illustrates how economic and industrial advancements have liberated individuals, allowing them greater leisure and the opportunity to enhance their quality of life and pursue meaning beyond labor.

From the planned economy to the present, Chinese peoples’ work-life orientations can roughly be divided into three stages. During the planned economy, the state emphasized collective production. Work served not only to ensure survival but also carried political significance, and family life was subordinated to production. In the early reform era, as the state prioritized economic construction and encouraged individual productivity, production lost its revolutionary connotations and became centered on personal survival; meanwhile, family values weakened and leisure remained marginal. Since the turn of the twenty-first century, with sustained prosperity – and especially with the accumulation of both public and private wealth in the past decade –work-centered orientations have been increasingly challenged. At the same time, family values have strengthened and leisure has become increasingly important, ultimately defining the shift from a production-centered to a life-centered worldview. This transformation in outlook provides a valuable foundation for social policies and public services that aim to meet the evolving needs of families in contemporary China.

Furthermore, there are no significant intergenerational differences in Chinese peoples’ work-life orientations, but there are notable age-related trends. This finding suggests that attitudes toward work and family are closely tied to life-stage roles rather than generational identities. Existing research notes that the popular expression tangping (“lying flat”) among young people is often misinterpreted as passive withdrawal or escapism. In reality, it is better understood as a coping mechanism – an ironic, self-soothing and pressure-relieving response to the intense competition of “involution” (neijuan) (Qin and Dai 2022; Xiong 2022). Young people have not truly “lain flat” or given up striving; the ever-increasing number of graduate school applicants testifies to this. Thus, the absence of significant generational differences in this study aligns with previous findings. As younger individuals establish families and become household pillars, their commitment to both work and family naturally intensifies. However, the lack of significant cohort effects may also reflect the conservative nature of the HAPC model in estimating generational influences. Compared to age and period effects, cohort effects are harder to detect statistically because the random effects for numerous cohorts contribute to larger total variance, making their coefficients less likely to reach significance (Fosse and Winship 2019). Future research on intergenerational value differences could therefore benefit from more diversified data sources, such as interviews or mixed-methods approaches, for deeper exploration.

Finally, differences in work-life orientations across socioeconomic groups have shown varying characteristics over time. In today’s China, class differentiation is increasingly evident in multiple domains, including access to higher education, lifestyles and childrearing (Wang 2017; Ye 2022). This study finds that over the past three decades, class differences in work orientations have diminished, while differences in family and leisure orientations have gradually widened. Specifically, individuals with higher socioeconomic status place greater emphasis on family and leisure. Consistent with post-materialist theory, once material security is achieved, people seek to enhance their quality of life and realize self-value – family and leisure being two key arenas for such pursuits. By contrast, individuals with lower socioeconomic status remain preoccupied with basic survival, devoting less attention and fewer resources to improving life quality or pursuing self-fulfillment. Thus, their orientations toward family and leisure are comparatively weaker. The evolving class pattern of Chinese peoples’ work-life orientations broadly accords with modernization theory’s expectations regarding value transformation.

Focusing on value change, this study provides a comprehensive account of how Chinese peoples’ work-life orientations have evolved and diverged across groups over the past thirty years. It contributes both theoretically and empirically to our understanding of social mentality during China’s accelerated transformation. Theoretically, it offers a Chinese case for global modernization theories of value change and enriches the literature on social transformation in China, particularly regarding the shift between production and life orientations. Empirically, it demonstrates that with economic development and social transformation, Chinese values are experiencing, or have already experienced, a weakening of production-centered orientations and a strengthening of life-centered orientations. This study also carries important policy implications. Specifically, in the pursuit of common prosperity, China’s social services and welfare policies should be designed around and responsive to the needs of family life.

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引用本文

Wu, Y., Sun, Z. From “production-centered” to “life-centered”: the transformation of Chinese work-life values, 1990–2018. J. Chin. Sociol. 13, 8 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40711-026-00262-6

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40711-26-00262-6

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《中国社会学学刊》(The Journal of Chinese Sociology)于2014年10月由中国社会科学院社会学研究所创办。作为中国大陆第一本英文社会学学术期刊，JCS致力于为中国社会学者与国外同行的学术交流和合作打造国际一流的学术平台。JCS由全球最大科技期刊出版集团施普林格·自然(Springer Nature)出版发行，由国内外顶尖社会学家组成强大编委会队伍，采用双向匿名评审方式和“开放获取”(open access)出版模式。JCS已于2021年5月被ESCI收录。2022年，JCS的CiteScore分值为2.0（Q2），在社科类别的262种期刊中排名第94位，位列同类期刊前36%。2023年，JCS在科睿唯安发布的2023年度《期刊引证报告》（JCR）中首次获得影响因子并达到1.5（Q3）。2025年JCS最新影响因子1.3，位列社会学领域期刊全球前53%（Q3）。

欢迎向《中国社会学学刊》投稿！

Please consider submitting to The Journal of Chinese Sociology!

官方网站：

https://journalofchinesesociology.springeropen.com