Empirical Research On Income Inequality Between Han And Ethnic Minorities In China-Educational Difference, Regional Difference And Occupational Differentiation

This article studies the impact of ethnic minority status,education and region on personal income through two stages using the 2012 CFPS data in hope of generating results that can help provide some guidance for introducing policies that narrows the income gap between Han and ethnic minorities in China.The study applies both OLS and 2SLS method(with the number of effected year of compulsory education law and the regional influence of compulsory education law as instrumental variables)to process the data,which covers a wide range in China.The results show that education year has a significant positive effect on personal income both before and after adding the regional variables.However,ethnic minority status' significant negative effect on personal income before adding the regional variables turns into insignificant positive effect after that,while the significant positive effect of the interaction term of ethnic minority status and education year turns into an insignificant one.The above results suggest that income inequality between Han and ethnic minorities in China stems mainly from educational difference and regional development difference.Besides,regional difference can also weaken education's role in narrowing the income inequality gap of Han and ethnic minorities.Therefore,narrowing the regional gap shall be the priority.In addition,keeping and introducing reasonable and effective minority education supporting policies is also an essential way to narrow their income gap by promoting ethnic minorities' payoff from education.What's more,the interaction term of eastern region and ethnic minority status has an insignificant negative effect on personal income,which means that ethnic minoritiesin eastern region only face a minor income gap from Han.On the contrary,the interaction term of the regions where ethnic minorities take up more than 30%and ethnic minority status has a significant negative effect on personal income.Within these regions,ethnic minorities earn an average income that is 49.5%lower than the Han's.The above results suggest that there is a significant income gap between ethnic minorities and Han within these regions.Since 69.3%of ethnic minorities in China engage in production sector in agriculture,forestry,animal husbandry,fishery and water conservancy,which is 23%higher than Han's 46.4%,and this high focus on primary industry is probably more common in the relatively underdeveloped western region,the distinct income gap within these regions is likely to stem from occupational differentiation between ethnic minorities and Han.Therefore,paving the way for free workforce mobility is also of great concern to our problem.