An analysis of gender wage differentials in urban and rural China: The importance of occupational attainment

I use China Health and Nutrition Survey data from 2006 to compare and contrast measures of gender wage discrimination across urban and rural labor markets and provide estimates of the contribution of discrimination in occupational attainment to gender wage differentials. Gill's (1994) extension of the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition technique is used to incorporate a decomposition of gender-based occupational differences into the measure of gender wage discrimination. The results show that males in China earn more than females in both urban and rural labor markets. Wages in the urban labor market are higher than in rural markets and the gender wage gap is more pronounced in the rural labor market. The results also show that most of the gender wage differential is ascribed to discrimination in both urban and rural labor markets. Without considering the difference in occupational distribution between males and females, the rural market has more discrimination than the urban market. Taking account of the differences in occupational distribution, discrimination levels in the urban market are a higher than the rural market. The discrimination within occupation is the major contributing factor to the total unexplained wage gap, while occupational segregation plays a much smaller role.