Research On The Household Registration System And Equal Employment In China

Equal employment is a basic human right, but China’s current household registration system constraints migration and the freedom of movement by artificially divided hukou into different levels, leading to seriously infringement of the right to equal employment and employment inequality between workers with different household registration status. Household registration system is the origin of unequal employment. In this paper, we attempt to make a systematically study on how the household registration system influence the labors’job.Historical analysis, statistical analysis, quantitative analysis, comparative analysis and so on are used to study the history of existing household registration system from formation to reform, to discuss the achievements and limitations of household registration system reform, and detailed argument how the household registration system impact the workers’job in different historical stages. And we also use recent survey datas to make an empirical research on the household discrimination on the current labor market, including the characteristics, extent and trends of the discrimination. Finally, we investigated the mechanism of the household registration system to employment inequality between workers with different household registration status from the perspective of freedom of migration and citizenship, and point out policy directions to equal employment.Studies show that:(1) During the planned economy period, urban and rural communication, as well as the rural-urban migration, were absolutely blocked by the household registration system, leading to job isolation between urban and rural workers, and hukou turned into the primary factor deciding the occupation, income, social insurance and welfare of laborers.(2) Since reform and opening, the household registration system is still a major obstacle to equal employment, but the forms and extent of inequality between laborers have changed with the reform and adjustment of the household registration system and the labor mobility policies.(3)Empirical studies show that there is still household discrimination in current urban labor market, which mainly as regional discrimination with a lower level in occupation, urban-rural and regional discrimination with a relatively high degree in social insurance.(4) Empirical studies also show that there is a significant decline in urban-rural and regional discrimination between2009to2012, public services supplied by city government have become the main content of equal employment.By combing the hukou effects on labors’job since1958comprehensively and systematically, looking in depth at household discrimination on wages, occupation and social insurance, concluding the dynamic development process of the content of equal employment, this paper make up for the deficiencies of the existing literature and proved to be some innovative.