**6. Conclusions**

We used a nationally representative survey to examine the mediation effects of social security satisfaction and life satisfaction on the association between social security fairness and trust in government. We found in 2019 that although the Chinese governmen<sup>t</sup> enjoyed high levels of trust, there was stronger trust in the central than in the local governments. Our results sugges<sup>t</sup> the need to improve social security fairness because it is likely to lead to higher levels of social security satisfaction, life satisfaction, and trust in government.

Trust was better predicted via social security at county and township levels than at the central governmen<sup>t</sup> level. Furthermore, social security fairness indirectly and positively predicted trust in local governmen<sup>t</sup> at the county and township levels through social security satisfaction and life satisfaction. Social security fairness only indirectly predicted trust in central governmen<sup>t</sup> through social security satisfaction, and the prediction of trust in central governmen<sup>t</sup> via life satisfaction was not significant. Therefore, improving social security fairness can help narrow the trust gap between the Chinese local and central governments. During the current pandemic, administering social security benefits in a fair manner is very important for ensuring that citizens' needs are met adequately [62,63]. The Chinese governmen<sup>t</sup> should strive to promote fairness in the distribution of social security to improve trust by building service-oriented local and township agencies.

Several limitations of this study need to be considered in the interpretation of the results. First, the CSS was a cross-sectional investigation, which made it impossible for us to determine the causal relationships between variables. We hope future studies will examine the possible causal relationship among variables. Second, the AVE values of scales measuring social security fairness and social security satisfaction were below 0.4, indicating that the convergen<sup>t</sup> validity of the two scales was not ideal. We simply measured fairness and satisfaction in social security services from three aspects (public health, employment, and elder security). Future studies that examine the roles of fairness and satisfaction in determining trust in governmen<sup>t</sup> should include other dimensions of social security services (e.g., housing security and minimum living security). Third, our results were

specific to China, and it will be interesting to see if the same trends can be found in other countries despite differences in the political systems. Fourth, the data we used came from before the outbreak of the COVID-19, and therefore our results were not generalizable to the pandemic times. Future studies can compare the effects of social security fairness on trust in governmen<sup>t</sup> before and after the pandemic. A longitudinal and multinational design is needed in pandemic times that examines the multiple mediation effects of social security fairness, social security satisfaction, life satisfaction, and trust in government.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, K.Z., Q.T., S.C. and Y.C.; Data curation, S.C. and Y.C.; Formal analysis, K.Z.; Funding acquisition, K.Z. and Y.C.; Investigation, K.Z. and Q.T.; Methodology, K.Z. and Q.T.; Project administration, K.Z.; Resources, K.Z.; Software, K.Z., Q.T. and S.C.; Supervision, K.Z. and Y.C.; Validation, K.Z., Q.T. and S.C.; Visualization, Q.T., S.C., X.W., C.X. and A.S.; Writing— original draft, K.Z. and Q.T.; Writing—review & editing, K.Z., Q.T., S.C., Y.C., X.W., C.X. and A.S. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research was funded by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (grant number 2019CDJSK01PY11), the Social Science Planning Fund Program from Chongqing (grant number 2020BS33), and the National Social Science Foundation Research Program (grant number 21BSH117, 18BGL209).

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Ethical review and approval were waived for this study due to the only data we used is publicly available. The data released by the CSS project team has deleted the respondents' privacy, so applicants can directly apply to obtain the data without an ethical review.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.

**Data Availability Statement:** Publicly available datasets were analyzed in this study. These data can be found at: http://css.cssn.cn/css\_sy/, accessed on 7 April 2022.

**Acknowledgments:** We would like to thank the Institute of Sociology, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, for conducting the national social survey (Chinese Social Survey). We thank all colleagues who contributed to this study.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
