The Role of Education in Determining Labor Market Outcomes in Urban China's Transitional Labor Markets.

Chinese urban workers are no longer shielded from market forces. They are bearing the brunt of the adjustment costs as enterprises shed redundant workers. This paper focuses on the role of education in determining labor market outcomes in China's rapidly changing urban labor environment. The empirical work, based on enterprise and worker survey data gathered in the fall of 1999 and spring of 2000, demonstrates that education is a key determinant of labor market outcomes. Educational attainment is an important and significant factor in the lay-off decision-the more education a worker has the better his/ her protection from lay off. Similarly, the more education a worker has the better his/her chances of finding new employment once laid off. The human capital accumulation of re-employed workers is rewarded more, as measured in terms of incremental earnings for each additional year of schooling, than that of continuously employed workers.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39843/3/wp459.pd

The Role of Education in Determining Labor Market Outcomes in Urban China's Transitional Labor Markets.

Chinese urban workers are no longer shielded from market forces. They are bearing the brunt of the adjustment costs as enterprises shed redundant workers. This paper focuses on the role of education in determining labor market outcomes in China's rapidly changing urban labor environment. The empirical work, based on enterprise and worker survey data gathered in the fall of 1999 and spring of 2000, demonstrates that education is a key determinant of labor market outcomes. Educational attainment is an important and significant factor in the lay-off decision-the more education a worker has the better his/ her protection from lay off. Similarly, the more education a worker has the better his/her chances of finding new employment once laid off. The human capital accumulation of re-employed workers is rewarded more, as measured in terms of incremental earnings for each additional year of schooling, than that of continuously employed workers.China, human capital, Lay-offs, education, labor

Differential Rewards to, and Contributions of, Education in Urban China’s Segmented Labor Markets

Education’s role in determining worker incomes in China’s rapidly changing urban labor markets is investigated in this paper. Using worker data from a 1999-2000 urban enterprise survey, we examine the effects of education on the current earnings of continuously-employed urban workers, migrants, and laid off but subsequently re-employed workers, as well as on the most recent earnings of laid-off (but not subsequently re-employed) workers. We also decompose the earnings differentials between each of these groups of workers and then assess the contribution of education to explanations of the differentials. The empirical results demonstrate that educational attainment remains an important explanator of earnings differentials between institutionally-differentiated groups of workers in China’s urban labor markets. An interesting hierarchy of returns to education has developed. The education of migrants is generally poorly rewarded. The moderate returns to educational investments of the continuously-employed urban residents rank next. Re-employed urban residents experience the highest rewards to their education, especially those who used a competitive means to find their post-layoff employment. When we assess the earning differentials between groups using the continuously-employed urban residents as the basis of comparison, differences in educational attainments alone contribute between 16 and 52 percent of the explanation of the total inter-group wage gaps.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39893/3/wp508.pd

The Effects of Market Liberalization on the Relative Earnings of Chinese Women

In this paper we first explore the effects of differences in labor market institutions and the degree of market liberalization on the size and composition of gender wages gaps in China's urban labor markets. We use enterprise-ownership type, enterprise age, and workers' methods of finding employment as proxies for the extent of market liberalization. We find both the size of the wage gaps and the proportion of the gap left unexplained by differences in productive characteristics largest in the most liberalized (joint venture) sector, and smallest in the least liberalized (state) sector. We next investigate the effects of differences in wage structure on the gender wage gaps. We find that differences in wage structure, in general, and the degree of wage dispersion, in particular, are extremely important in accounting for the larger wage gaps in the joint venture and collective sectors relative to the state-owned sector.China, gender wage gap, labor, market liberalization, earnings

The Effects of Market Liberalization on the Relative Earnings of Chinese Women

In this paper we first explore the effects of differences in labor market institutions and the degree of market liberalization on the size and composition of gender wages gaps in China's urban labor markets. We use enterprise-ownership type, enterprise age, and workers' methods of finding employment as proxies for the extent of market liberalization. We find both the size of the wage gaps and the proportion of the gap left unexplained by differences in productive characteristics largest in the most liberalized (joint venture) sector, and smallest in the least liberalized (state) sector. We next investigate the effects of differences in wage structure on the gender wage gaps. We find that differences in wage structure, in general, and the degree of wage dispersion, in particular, are extremely important in accounting for the larger wage gaps in the joint venture and collective sectors relative to the state-owned sector.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39844/3/wp460.pd

Ethnic discrimination in China's internet job board labor market

We conduct a large-scale field experiment to investigate how Chinese firms respond to job applications from ethnic minority and Han applicants for jobs posted on a large Chinese Internet job board. We denote ethnicity by means of names that are typically Han Chinese and distinctively Mongolian, Tibetan, and Uighur. We find significant differences in the callback rates by ethnicity and that these differences vary systematically across ethnic groups. Not all firms discriminate - approximately half treat all candidates equally. State-owned firms are significantly less likely than privately - owned firms to discriminate against minorities by calling only candidates with Han names and much more likely to treat candidates equally

Economic Reform and Changing Patterns of Labor Force Participation in Urban and Rural China

In this project, we employ data from the Chinese population censuses of 1982, 1990, and 2000 to examine reform-era changes in the patterns of male and female labor force participation and in the distribution of men’s and women’s occupational attainment. Very marked patterns of change in labor force participation emerge when we disaggregate the data by age cohort, marital status, sex, and rural/urban location. Women have decreased their labor force participation more than men, and urban women much more than rural women. Single young people in urban areas have decreased their labor force participation to stay in school to a much greater extent than single young people in rural areas. The urban elderly have decreased their rates of labor force participation while the rural elderly have increased theirs. We also find evidence of the feminization of agriculture.China, labor force participation, economic reform, occupational attainment, population censuses

Economic Reform and Changing Patterns of Labor Force Participation in Urban and Rural China

In this project, we employ data from the Chinese population censuses of 1982, 1990, and 2000 to examine reform-era changes in the patterns of male and female labor force participation and in the distribution of men’s and women’s occupational attainment. Very marked patterns of change in labor force participation emerge when we disaggregate the data by age cohort, marital status, sex, and rural/urban location. Women have decreased their labor force participation more than men, and urban women much more than rural women. Single young people in urban areas have decreased their labor force participation to stay in school to a much greater extent than single young people in rural areas. The urban elderly have decreased their rates of labor force participation while the rural elderly have increased theirs. We also find evidence of the feminization of agriculture.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/40173/3/wp787.pd

A Comparison of Reform-Era Labor Force Participation Rates of China’s Ethnic Minorities and Han Majority

Previous research suggests that minorities are not faring well in China’s transition—both income and occupational attainment gaps are widening. We are particularly interested in whether the differences in majority and minority economic outcomes are the result of ethnicity per se, or whether they are artifacts of local economic conditions. In this paper, we employ data from the three most recent population censuses of China to explore differences in the labor force participation rates of a number of China’s important ethnic groups. We estimate urban labor force participation rates using probit regressions controlling for sex, marital status, educational attainment, age, ethnicity, and location. We also account for the geographic concentration of particular ethnic minorities and compare the participation rates of different ethnic groups within geographic regions that represent the areas of principal residence for each minority. We concentrate on seven important minority groups: Hui, Koreans, Manchu, Mongolians, Uygurs, Yi and Zhuang. We find that location has limited explanatory power in explaining differences in the probability of labor force participation between these important Chinese ethnic minorities and the majority Han.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/40181/3/wp795.pd

Cultural and Ethnic Differences in the Transitions from Work to "Retirement" of Rural Elders in China's Minority Regions

This paper considers the work to "retirement" transitions of the rural elders in China who reside in seven regions with substantial minority populations. The data employed, those of the China Household Ethnicity Survey, are ideal for examining the effect of cultural differences on this key lifecycle event, the reduction of market-oriented work with age. Membership in particular ethnic minority groups is used to proxy the potential differences in the culture of aging and caregiving. We find that beyond education, the strongest predictors of labor force participation for China's rural elders are age, disability, widowhood, and ethnic minority status. The effects of ethnic minority group status on labor force participation are robust and the differences in participation among ethnic groups are sometimes large. It is thus misleading, in the analysis of the labor force participation of China's rural elders, to simply dichotomize ethnic minority and majority (Han) group membership. Further careful research is needed to help understand the differences in perceptions of aging among China's rural ethnic minority groups