Discrimination Towards Gender And Household Registration In Labor Market Of China

There have been fruitful research results in the area of discrimination. Based on mass of data, economists have conducted deep study on the discrimination existing in labor market using econometrics and statistical method. These articles exposit the reason why employment discrimination exists from different angles, and point out that employment discrimination will at the end results in the welfare loss of employees, employers, and even the society as a whole, or in another word, the behavior of discrimination is inefficiency to the society.These results, however, can only be partially confirmed by the empirical data in the labor market. No matter in the perfect competition market, or in the imperfect competition market caused by factors like asymmetric information, there is not enough powerful empirical research to confirm the theoretical model of employment discrimination. More importantly, the core issue in discriminatory economics still has not been solved:why discrimination exists in the labor market for such a long time in spite of its inefficiency?There are different kinds of discriminatory behavior in labor market, such as discrimination toward gender, household registration, age, race, disease, height and appearance. In China's labor market, discrimination toward gender and household registration dominate other kinds of discrimination. Specifically, GENDERual discrimination mainly exists in the graduate employment market, while household registration is the key factor leading to the discrimination against off-farm workers. As a result, this article will focus on the discrimination toward gender and household registration in China's labor market, and go a further step to explain the reason why discrimination exists for a long time. My conclusion is that, both the discrimination based on traditionally factors and consolidation of formal institution to it, are the main reasons of the long-time existence of discriminatory behavior in the labor market of out country.This article consists of seven chapters. As a introduction, the first chapter includes the writing objective, research ideas and method, definition of basic concepts, and the structure of this article, as well as the innovation and shortage.The second chapter, literature review, lists previous research about labor market discrimination, reviews and analyzes the latest study in this area from several aspects such as the very source, social effects, measurement, and regulation, summarizes existing research related to the discrimination behavior in China's labor market, and in a separate part reviews a few of articles which conduct research about labor market discrimination from the angle of institution.In the third chapter, the writer gives an overview of the discriminatory phenomenon toward gender and household registration in the labor market. For GENDERual discrimination, the writer at first discusses the source of this kind of discrimination from the aspects of traditional factors, current laws and regulations, human capital investment and market mechanism, then exposits the severity and extent of the influence of GENDERual discrimination to the labor market on the basis of statistical data, and finally conducts a rigorous analysis on the social economic effects of GENDERual discrimination. For the discrimination toward household registration, the writer at first explains the cause of this kind of discrimination based on the source of household registration system and off-farm workers, and then analyzes the main performance and social economic effects of discrimination toward household registration.The fourth chapter is the empirical research about the gender discrimination in the graduate employment market. The writer sent eight hundreds of questionnaire investigations to several universities in Shandong province, and the econometric analysis based on the investigations shows that gender is very important between the factors which influence the employment of the graduate students; moreover, gender discrimination is a prevailing phenomenon in the graduate employment market.The fifth chapter is the empirical research about the discrimination toward household registration against off-farm workers. The writer collects mass of data through the questionnaire investigation oriented to some labor-intensive industries such as construction and home serving business. The econometric analysis points out that the discrimination against off-farm workers is mainly caused by household registration, i.e. formal institution.After the empirical study on the two kinds of discrimination respectively against the graduate students and off-farm workers, the sixth chapter attempts to give a theoretical explanation from the angle of endogenous institution theory, and find a reasonable answer to the existence of discrimination. The writer thinks, the main reason of the long-time existence of gender discrimination is that once the informal institution related to the treatment difference to men and women based on tradition was formed, it will exert its effect in a long time, and lead to long-time existence of gender discrimination in the labor market. Discrimination against off-farm workers is gradually strengthened by the ground of urban-rural division. Household registration system and the resulting social security system, regional employment policy and other formal institutions formalize and consolidate this kind of discrimination step by step, and therefore make it be the specific feature in China's labor market.In the seventh chapter, the writer focuses on the discussion about the regulation of discrimination. Despite of the controversy over "whether discrimination should be forbidden", and the effect of anti-discrimination law is still unclear, there is a general trend in the legislation effort to strengthen the extent of anti-discrimination in lots of countries. America's anti-discrimination law is the most complete version, while there are shortages in both the system and enforcement of the anti-discrimination law in our country. Therefore, in order to regulate the discriminatory behavior toward gender and household registration, the government has to conform to the basic logic behind the theoretical analysis:since institution is an important factor caused the long-time existence of labor market discrimination, the regulation should begin with institution. Based on the transmission of traditional conception, the government has to improve existing anti-discrimination law, develop the law enforcing department and strengthen the law enforcement, to minimize the welfare loss caused by labor market discrimination.