Abstract: The household registration system has caused a split between urban and rural areas and dual structure within the city. Under this system, China’s population and their social capital display structural characteristics of their own. This paper divides urban and rural residents into four categories: original citizens, new citizens, floating population and agricultural population. By using Chinese General Social Survey data (CGSS 2015), we describe the characteristics and differences of structural and cognitive social capital between groups with different registration identities, and empirically analyze the influence on urban-rural income and income gap that social capital structure has during the period of registration reformation. The result shows that: social capital structure has a significant difference among groups with different registration identity, presenting significant characteristic of dynamic transition; structural social capital and cognitive social capital significantly expand urban-rural income gap; with the development of permanent population urbanization, the impact of structural social capital on expansion of income gap will be mitigated, but impact of cognitive social capital is just the opposite; improvement of registered population urbanization mitigates impact of cognitive social capital on income gap.

Key words: household registration system, permanent population urbanization, registered population urbanization, social capital, urban-rural income gap