Research Into Gender Wage Gaps And Discrimination In College Graduates During The Market-oriented Reform

Human capital differential theory from neo-classical economic school believes that under perfect competitive labor market conditions, wage gap will be eliminated with the workers conversion or migration between regions, between urban and rural areas, as well as between the different economies of ownership. Those labors that possess the same skills will have the same value of the marginal product of labor. In equilibrium, wage reflects the real price of labor, and equals the value of the marginal product of labor. That is, homogeneous labors receive the same pay-"equal pay for equal work". While labor market segmentation theory from neo-institutional school denies assumptions that the labor market is unified, fully free movement of labor and labor homogeneity. They argue that wages are not simply determined by supply and demand sides, but by a variety of factors. Institutional factors such as internal labor markets and labor unions, as well as social factors such as social class and discrimination will segment the labor market, and thus format non-competitive markets among some labor groups, and prevent labors from flowing between different markets. The existence of gender wage gaps in college graduates show that non-competitive labor market factors exist, and improving the level of competition in the labor market will reduce and even eliminate this difference.Market-oriented reform will release the institutionally suppressed part of human capital and then expand the gender wage gap. As to the discrimination part of the gender wage gap, the reform acts simultaneously on two opposite effects. On the one hand, discrimination from traditional culture will be, in short term, more and more serious with the loosening of the enterprise employment rights. On the other hand, in long term, the rapid market competition will eliminate gender discrimination gradually. Specifically for the labor market of college graduates, increasing college enrollment results in a decline in overall quality of college graduates, and various types of enterprises which have the right to employ and wage pricing treat the low educated workers before enrollment as the same way of wage payment, thus the gender wage gaps will enlarge after the increased enrollment of college students. As for the part of discrimination, on the one hand the increasing ratio of female students in total college students will restore the discrimination for them to the level of ordinary groups as a result of traditional culture, and thus expand the degrees of discrimination. On the other hand, the market mechanism will, in the long term, eliminate discrimination. In the short run, the former effect will probably dominate the latter.In order to verify the impact of China market-oriented reform on gender wage gap and discrimination of college graduates, this dissertation cites the ideas of converting the vertical time dimension to a horizontal cross-sectional dimensions as Liu et al (2000), that is, consider state-owned enterprises as business representatives before the introduction of market mechanism, private or self-employed business as the nascent and immature competitive enterprises after introduction, while joint venture, foreign or wholly-owned enterprises as the relatively matured ones. Through an empirical study of the employment situation after graduating half a year from colleges in Hebei Province in 2007, the dissertation finds that, gender wage gaps in graduates from state-owned enterprises are the lowest, joint venture, foreign or wholly-owned enterprises are the worst while those of private or self-employed businesses stay between the two, indicating the marketization of economy will expand the gender wage gaps in graduates. Through the decomposition methods of wage gaps such as Oaxaca, the dissertation can further find market-oriented reform will continue to enlarge the proportion of discrimination, in particular the proportion of reverse discrimination. In order to do more robustness checks, this dissertation also classify the whole industries into competitive industries and monopoly or government-regulated ones according to the degree of state-owned economies like Xue Xinxin (2008)'s method and the same conclusions can be drawn. These findings of the dissertation confirm the empirical facts that market-oriented reform has enlarged the gender wage gaps in ordinary labor market, but are quite different from the fact of narrower trend of discrimination part.Since at present the enhancing effects of gender discrimination of college graduates caused by traditional culture is much greater than the eliminating effects caused by market competition, the dissertation argues that, on the one hand, it should introduce market competition further to eliminate discrimination; on the other hand, it is also essential to weaken the impact of traditional culture, break down barriers to industries'employment, and improve women's social roles and status. Specifically speaking, we must perfect the legal system, labor laws and regulations. Also, the government can subside to enterprises which implement gender equity policies if necessary. Further, it is required to improve the quality and the thought level of awareness of national populations to eliminate gender bias and misunderstanding, and then enhance the social status and role of women college graduates, and involve them into high-income, high stability industries and professional groups.Specific research ideas of this dissertation come as follows:1. Sort out the research for the gender wage gap literature systematically, review the process of market-oriented reform, sum up the corresponding theoretical explanations and measurement models, and give descriptive statistics on the intuitional characteristics of labor market for college graduates.2. Using dummy variable method for Mincerian (Mincer,1974) wage equation, do empirical analysis of wage determinants on different sex groups of college graduates in China, and measure individual characteristics and labor market characteristics in the role of wage determination. Validating the existence of a significant wage gap in male-female college graduates. If significant, then how much the extent of wage gaps is, and examine the changes law in recent years.3. Based on Mincerian wage equation, select the variables such as majors, types of graduate colleges, industries, and city type of work units, run regressions on male and female graduates, respectively, and conduct further Blinder-Oaxaca (1973) decomposition in order to observe the contribution of individual characteristics and labor market characteristics, and verify the existence of discrimination and to what extent. Consider the cross-sectional of different forms of ownership at the same time as firms before and after market-oriented reform. That is to say, see state-owned enterprises, private or self-employed enterprises and joint venture, foreign, as well as wholly owned businesses as firm representatives before the market-oriented reform, in the early period and further development period, respectively, and further study the influence of market-oriented reform on the gender wage gaps in college graduates and discrimination.4. Through non-discriminatory state gender wage gap decomposition model, the dissertation still selects above variable to measure whether the labor market exist wage premium for men and wage discrimination for women. If there are indeed, how much they are respectively. Then, comparatively analyze the various methods to determine the degree of discrimination for female college graduates, and to further make an international comparison.5. In order to further verify the results, divide whole industries into two categories:competitive industries and monopoly or government-regulated industries according to the proportion of state-owned economies in the industry. Substitute competitive industries for firms after the introduction of market mechanisms, while the monopoly or government-regulated industries for firms during the old planned economy era. Using again dummy variable method for Mincerian wage equation, Blinder-Oaxaca gender wage gaps decomposition model and gender wage gaps decomposition models under non-discrimination condition, measure the influence of market-oriented reform on the gender wage gaps and discrimination of college graduates.6. Synthesizing results based on the above regressions, sum up the profound reasons behind the phenomena and arrive at relevant implications in reality.Contributions of this dissertation are mainly manifested as:1. Through sorting out the research for the gender wage gap literature both at home and abroad systematically, point out the importance and differences of college graduates labor market compared to ordinary labor market. Analyse how and how much the market-oriented reform impacts the college student's gender wage gaps, and making specific suggestions.2. Find several similar but also some different empirical facts compared with the former literatures. Especially, the gender wage gaps in college graduates show an increasing trend.3. Using a variety of econometric theory and methods, attempt to determine individual characteristics and labor market characteristics part and discrimination part of the gender wage gaps in graduates through various decomposition methods. 4. Use the latest micro-survey data to do empirical analysis, with large size and rich information, to great extent, representative.Of course, due to the limitation of the author's knowledge and time, there must exist some shortcomings. For example, as the data and length are limited, this dissertation does not analyse precisely on how occupational, abilities and preferences and other factors impact on gender wage gaps and discrimination for graduates. It doesn't compare the current sample with earlier one of college student directly, either. If richer information micro-data is available, these areas may well be the future direction for further research and expansion.