| Since the reform and opening-up, the industrial structure and production technology of China has undergone tremendous change, and the economic development has made remarkable achievements. But at the same time, the wage gap between different types of labor by their level of education has also expanded gradually. The rising income inequality brings great challenges to the harmony and stability of social as well as the sustainable development of economy in China. So, the research about the change of education wage gap is with great significance.Most of the existing researches on the education return in China are about the higher education premium, and there are few literatures about the education premium that from the perspective of industrial structure change and biased technological progress. However, the overall education level of labor in China is on the low side at the present stage, the junior school educated workforce is the main body of our labor market, so to research the returns to our high school education is meaningful for improving our human capital investment. On the other side, the industrial structure change and the biased technological progress are the direct factors that influence the relative wage of workers with different educational level. So, this paper attempts to analyze the effect of industrial structure change and biased technological progress on the relative demand and relative wage of labor force with different educational level in China as a supplement to the current researches.Firstly, this paper reviews the related literatures at home and abroad on education premium; secondly, it theoretically analyzes the mechanisms of industrial structure changes and biased technological progress on the relative demand and relative wage of workforce with different educational level; thirdly, it studied the long-term evolution of education premium, industrial structure upgrading and the technological change during1990and2010in China with the data of CHNS (China health and Nutrition Survey) and the macro-statistics about structure of national economy as well as the census data; lastly, it used the regression models to analyze the influence of industrial structure change and biased technological progress on the education premium in China empirically.This study shows that the industrial structure change and the skill-biased technological progress are the important causes of the rising education premium in China. The industrial restructuring and skill-biased technological change plays an obvious role in promoting the relative wage of workers with college education, and the effect of skill-biased technological change on higher education premium has been ever-increasing in recent years. The industrial restructuring is benefit to the labor force with high school diploma at now stage, but the technological change is more in favor of higher educated workers in the twenty-first century. Both the industrial restructuring and technological change have caused an adverse impact on the less educated workers especially after2005.Based on the results of the research, this paper proposes the following recommendations to narrow the wage gap as well as promoting the industrial structure upgrading and the productivity:firstly, increasing the investment in high school education, vocational education and higher education to expand the supply of highly educated workers and improve the level of human capital in our country; secondly, accelerating the technological advancement in the primary industry, promoting the development of manufacturing industry and the basic service industries to upgrade the employment structure; thirdly, promoting the labor market reform, establishing a unified and more perfect labor market, adjusting the minimum salary system timely an4implement it strictly; lastly, widening the employment channels for college graduates, eliminating the employment structural contradictions of them, promoting the labor market supply and demand balance. |
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