Abstract: The real social insurance contribution rate of China’s urban workers is far lower than the policy rate standard. Based on the enterprise reporting data from CSMAR and the data from China Family Panel Survey (CFPS), this paper measures and calculates the actual social insurance payment rates of both the enterprises and the employees, the result is 13.5% and 8.5% respectively. An investigation of the factors influencing the real contribution rates of enterprises and workers shows that the actual contribution rates of private enterprises, foreign enterprises as well as the enterprises with lower profits are quite low, and the wage level of enterprises has a substitutability for their social insurance contribution. As for the employees of rural residents or with lower education level, their actual payments are even lower. The real contribution rate of the employees has a regressive nature, the real payment proportion of the employees with higher income is less than that of the employees with lower income. In the areas with higher policy rate, the above conclusion is more robust. The false social insurance contribution of the enterprises and employees is one of the causes leading to the unbalance of China’s social insurance funds.

Key words: social insurance; real contribution rate; policy rate