Gender Gap In Earnings In Urban China,1995and2006

The post-1978economic reform has widen earnings inequality in China. As an important part of income stratification, gender gap in earnings especially the relationship between market transition and gender gap in earnings has spurred scholarly interest widely. With national survey data from the1995Chinese Household Income Projects (CHIP) and2006Chinese General Social Survey(CGSS), we use theories of human capital, segmented labor market and political capital to analyze the impacts of marketization on gender gap in earnings in contemporary urban China. Firstly, we study the changes in gender-based wage differentials in urban China by measuring differences over time between1995and2006. Secondly, we examine the effects of human capital, political capital and institutions on earnings and the amount of gender gap in earnings explained by the three factors. Finally, we focus on the relationship between marketization and gender gap in earnings.The quantitative analysis shows that the gender differences in human capital (education and work seniority), political capital(party membership and cadre status), institutions(occupation and sector) are narrowing, but there are persistent gender-based wage differentials between1995and2006which means that market transition increases the gender gap in earnings. It is also found that the impacts of education, professional rank, cadre status, occupation and industry on earnings increase. Contrarily, the effects of work seniority, party membership and sector rapidly decline and even disappear. Market transition decreases the amount of gender gap in earnings explained by human capital, political capital and institutions. However, human capital is still the most important factor and explains the most gender gap in earnings. As a whole, marketization increases the gender inequality in labor market and women are encountering new gender discrimination.This article is divided into six parts. The first chapter introduces research background and makes a brief summary of the related literature and then draws out the research question. The second chapter is about research design, including an introduction of source of data, variables, methods and models. Chapter three to five demonstrate the research results. Chapter three is the descriptive results including the gender gap in every variables and the comparison of gender gap in earnings by different standards. In chapter four, we use OLS regression model to measure the gender effects of every factor on earnings and the changes in the impacts of every factor on earnings. In the fifth chapter, we use the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition method to measure the amount of gender gap in earnings explained by every factor. The final(sixth) chapter summarizes the research conclusions and makes a further discussion of the shortcomings.