东北财经大学学报

降低收入不平等程度、实现全体人民共同富裕，对推进中国式现代化具有重要意义。本文基于2015年、2017年和2019年的中国社会状况综合调查（CSS）数据，从多维公平感的视角，采用有序Probit模型实证检验收入不平等对社会信任的影响及其作用机制。结果表明，收入不平等对社会信任具有负向影响。机制检验发现，提高居民在收入与财富分配、工作与就业机会、社会保障等方面的公平感，均可有效缓解收入不平等对社会信任的负向影响，其中社会保障公平感的作用最突出。值得注意的是，收入不平等对社会信任的负向影响在高学历或家庭收入处于中等及以上水平的群体中更为突出。本文的研究为理解收入不平等如何通过多维公平感影响社会信任提供了理论阐释和经验证据，对厚植社会信任根基、提升治理效能具有重要的政策启示意义。

Reducing income inequality and achieving common prosperity are crucial for strengthening the foundations of social trust and realizing Chinese modernization. During China's social transformation, income inequality remains a pressing issue. Objective income inequality affects people's subjective psychological states, negatively impacting interpersonal trust relationships and hindering the establishment of social trust models based on strangers. This paper investigates the impact of income inequality on social trust based on the 2015, 2017, and 2019 Chinese Social Survey(CSS) data and analyzes its transmission mechanism from the perspective of multidimensional subjective fairness. The empirical study finds that income inequality has a negative effect on social trust levels, and for groups with higher education and income levels, the effect is greater. Multiple dimensions of subjective fairness exhibit simultaneous mechanism effects, among which the social security fairness mechanism plays the strongest role. Among various social security evaluations, employment security evaluation has the most prominent effect on enhancing social trust, as it not only has a significant positive impact on social trust itself but also plays the most central role in the transmission chain of income inequality affecting social trust. Compared with existing literature, the marginal contributions of this paper are mainly reflected in the following four aspects. First, this paper focuses on the impact of China's income inequality on social trust in the new era, which has greater practical value. Second, this paper uses minimum wage income as an instrumental variable, addressing endogenous issues such as measurement errors, missing variables, and reverse causality related to income inequality variables, and effectively identifying the causal relationship between income inequality and social trust. Third, most existing literature on the impact mechanism of income inequality on social trust remains confined to theoretical discussions, while this paper takes subjective fairness as the entry point to deeply explore the influence of subjective fairness in multiple dimensions, such as income, wealth, employment, and social security, analyzing the transmission mechanism through which income inequality affects social trust. Fourth, mechanism analysis indicates that among the subjective fairness in multiple dimensions, the subjective fairness in the social security dimension has a stronger transmission effect. Enhancing subjective fairness in social security can effectively block the negative impact of income inequality on social trust, indicating that residents pay more attention to “bottom-line fairness” than to fairness in other dimensions.This study examines the impact of income inequality on social trust and its underlying mechanisms. Based on key findings, the paper proposes three key measures. First, to mitigate the adverse effects of income inequality on social trust, it is essential to advance reforms in the income distribution system, with a focus on narrowing income disparities. Second, tailored social security and trust-building strategies should be implemented for different groups. Third, significant attention must be paid to enhancing the subjective fairness within the social security system.