Mapping the Sexual Landscape: A Study of the Family Planning Association of Hong Kong (1950s - 1980s)

This dissertation is composed of three essays. The first essay is on the labor income inequality in urban China; the second essay is on the gender earnings gap in urban China; the third essay is on income volatility and consumption volatility in rural China. The first essay discusses the evolution of labor income inequality in urban China from 1988 to 2008. Not only the trend of income inequality but also the evolution of price effect and composition effects are provided in this essay. The increase of inequality is highly co-moved with the evolution of price effect. The sharp increase in inequality in 1990s, the considerably smaller increase rate (for males) and the decline of income inequality (for females) in 2000s are all due to the change of price effect. The increasing trend of composition effect makes it plays a larger role in the growth of income inequality in the 2000s than in previous years. Inequality in the low-income class ceases to increase in 2000s, whereas that in the high-income class still increased. The proportion of between-income-class inequality in the total inequality has become larger in the last decades. This issue may be correlated with higher social segmentation and lower social mobility. The second essay examines the evolution of gender income dispersion from 1988 to 2008 in urban China. This study shows that gender gap sharply increased since the acceleration of economic reform in 1992. Since 2004, the gender earnings gap kept relatively stable and even slightly reduced. Price effect dominates the annual gender gap, indicating that discrimination in the labor market is the main contributor to the gender earnings gap. Gender earnings gap increased dramatically in low-income class in 1990s, while it increased mainly in high income class in early 2000s. This study also compares the evolution of gender income dispersion in state-owned enterprises (SOE) and non-SOEs. Both absolute values of the gender earnings gap and the share of discrimination in the total gender income gap are higher in the non-SOEs than in SOEs in the 1990s. Conversely, the relative importance of discrimination to the total gender earnings gap is higher in the SOEs in the 2000s. The third essay uses panel data to analyze the income and consumption volatilities in rural China from 1995 to 2002. Empirical results in this study show that both income and consumption volatilities increase from 1995 to 2002. Both income and consumption volatilities for unconstrained households are smaller than those of the full sample. This study shows that income volatility significantly reduces consumption growth, which implies that rural households have poor ability to cope with income shocks and income risks. Particularly, the estimation results reveal that a larger income reduces income volatility but increases consumption volatility. Saving has a significant effect on reducing consumption volatility. However, rural households may need to sacrifice future consumption to increase saving, and then to make consumption volatility smaller.