Sectoral gender wage differentials and discrimination in the transitional Chinese economy

China's economic reform has affected various ownership sectors to different degree. A comparison of gender wage differentials and discrimination among individuals employed in the three sectors – state sector, the collective sector, and the private sector – provides information on the impact of economic reform. Two Chinese data sets from Shanghai and Jinan are used to examine the gender wage gap across the three sectors. It is found that privatization/marketization of the economy leads to larger wage differentials as human capital characteristics are more appropriately rewarded. Both data sets show that the relative share of discrimination in the overall gender wage differential declines substantially across ownership sectors from the state to the private. The increase in gender wage differential due to marketization is much larger than any increase in differential that may arise from more gender discrimination. Received: 5 November 1997/Accepted: 10 January 2000     

区域经济环境对工资性别差异的影响——基于多层模型的分析途径

本文建立了中国城镇居民工资方程的多层模型,并提出了相应的工资差异分解方法,用于分析区域经济环境对工资性别差异的影响。结果表明,在所有地区劳动力市场中,均存在明显的工资性别差异。虽然地区市场化水平的提高有助于个体工资水平的提升,但却导致工资性别差异的扩大;尽管地区失业率的上升将对个体工资获得产生不利影响,但却导致工资性别差异的缩小。市场化程度越高的地区,工资性别歧视越严重。因此,在市场化进程中,政府在努力发展教育和扩大就业的同时,应致力于实施公平的工资分配制度,将有助于缓解针对女性的工资歧视,进而有助于工资性别差异的缩小。     

Occupational mobility of American women: Compositional and structural changes, 1980–2007

In this paper, I document trends in women's occupational mobility between 1980 and 2007 in the U.S labor market, and link these trends to two distinct sources: compositional and structural changes. In this context, compositional changes refers to the over time trends in the distributions of men and women in the occupational wage hierarchy, while structural changes are the trends in the relative standing of occupations in the wage hierarchy over time. The findings provide empirical evidence for both processes, indicating that the impressive upward occupational mobility of American women is a consequence not only of their increased access to highly paid occupations, but also of the higher wage increments in their typical occupational profiles relative to men's—a structural change not often acknowledged by sociologists.     

The obesity pay gap: gender,body size,and wage inequalities—a longitudinal study of Chinese adults, 1991–2011

Sociocultural values promoting Western body-type ideals have proliferated over the past 20 years. An important question is whether the same obesity wage penalties seen in the United States, such as wage reductions for obese individuals, are emerging in China as ideals of beauty change to reflect Western ones. We hypothesize that Westernisation will exacerbate the impact of body size on wages for years to come, particularly for urban non-manual workers whose workplaces call for extensive interpersonal relations with employers, colleagues, and customers. This study examines the economic outcomes for individuals aged 18–55, focusing on 6600 female and 8488 male participants in the longitudinal 1991–2011 China Health and Nutrition Survey. Linear fixed-effects regression models estimate the net effect of body mass index (BMI) on wages, as well as the marginal effect of BMI on wages, by survey year. All analyses control for demographic backgrounds and household fixed effects, and are stratified by gender. The results show that normal-weight women with non-manual jobs in 2011 made 2.79–2.95 times more than they had in 1991, while overweight women made 2.66–2.76 times more, and obese women made only 2.57–2.63 times more. The results also indicate that women with non-manual jobs have been subject to wage disparities since 2000. Specifically, the wage disparity for heavier women living in urban areas with non-manual jobs increased significantly after 2000, while current male obesity rates may have been propelled by social acceptance of larger body sizes among men, particularly for manual workers living in rural areas.     

An economic approach to fertility in Britain since 1860

This paper utilises a dynamic economic approach to examine movements in fertility in Britain since 1860. The analysis and results indicate that fertility has responded positively to changes in incomes. However, this positive effect has been more than offset by the increase in the opportunity cost of female time which has followed closely the education attainment of women.An earlier version of this paper was presented to seminars at the Universities of Southampton and Hull, and the Hatfield Polytechnic. The authors would like to thank, without implementing, A. Cigno, G. Mizon and N. Rau for useful comments.     

Wage differentials due to gender

In this paper, a longitudinal data set covering 5% of all Danish wage earners over a 9-year period is used to shed light on the observed wage differentials due to gender. A human capital model is used to isolate the effects of changes in experience, schooling and unemployment, together with other factors. The model is specified as a fixed effect model that takes into account unobserved factors such as individual skills, the tendency to have an extra job and other factors. Despite the observation from macro statistics that women have had the highest observed increases in wage rates, the models show that this increase is mainly due to an improvement in their background characteristics and that men still receive a higher return to their characteristics. The main difference between genders appears to be that female workers do not, in general, get any return to their experience. The estimates also show negative effects on the wage rate of previous spells of unemployment.Peder J. Pedersen, the labour workshop at the Aarhus School of Business and two unknown referees are thanked for valuable comments. However, only the authors are responsible for any remaining errors. The Danish Research Council of the Social Sciences has provided the necessary funding.     

A model of voluntary childlessness

Demographers and sociologists have studied why women remain childless for more than two decades; however, this specific choice of zero fertility has not interested economists. Permanent childlessness, in developed countries, can concern up to 30 % of the women in a cohort. Childlessness rates can be positively related to average fertility for some cohorts of women. This paper provides an explanation for this using an endogenous fertility model where individuals have different preferences for children. The main mechanism considered goes through the intergenerational evolution of preferences: I show that a reduction in the gender wage gap, or an increase in the fixed cost of becoming a parent, has a negative effect on both fertility and childlessness. The reduction of childlessness is due to a composition effect: small families shrink more than larger families, and this reduces childlessness.     

Sixty years of change in Tibetan fertility: An assessment

Existing knowledge of Tibetan historical population development is mostly based on ‘best-guess’ estimates and is heavily politicized. Using census data, I reconstruct the development of Tibetan fertility in China since the 1940s, with the objective of providing an independent assessment that can be used as benchmark for future studies and debates on Tibetan demography. Following major social and economic transformations starting in the 1950s, Tibetan fertility unexpectedly increased from the late 1950s to the late 1960s. As noted in several existing studies, Tibetan fertility in China then declined swiftly from the early 1980s onwards and has now reached values close to replacement level. Focusing on the 1950–70 period, I examine factors that contributed to shaping the Tibetan fertility increase in more detail. This confirms that changes in nuptiality and disease-related infertility both played a role in pushing up fertility rates among Tibetan women in China.     

The effects of motherhood timing on career path

This paper estimates the effects of motherhood timing on female career path, using biological fertility shocks to instrument for age at first birth. Motherhood delay leads to a substantial increase in earnings of 9% per year of delay, an increase in wages of 3%, and an increase in work hours of 6%. Supporting a human capital story, the advantage is largest for college-educated women and those in professional and managerial occupations. Panel estimation reveals both fixed wage penalties and lower returns to experience for mothers, suggesting that a “mommy track” is the source of the timing effect.     

Changes in women’s postmarital employment in Japan and Taiwan

Research on female labor-force participation has not fully explained why economic development has different effects on married women's employment continuity across societies. I use life-history data from nationally representative samples of women in Japan and Taiwan to examine the divergence in women's patterns of labor-force exit in these two countries during the postwar period. The findings reveal that the effects of family demands, occupation, firm size, and employment sector on women's exit rates differed substantially between Japan and Taiwan. Taken together, these factors account for the different trends in married women's employment during this period. I argue that the cross-national differences in the predictors of women's labor-force withdrawal reflect the extent of incompatibility between work and family responsibilities for married women in these two societies.     

结婚、生育对工资的影响研究 ——基于性别工资差距角度

随着技术进步和女性人力资本水平的提高,男性和女性的劳动生产率差异逐渐缩小,但性别工资差距在我国是否缩小?全面开放的"二胎政策"又是否加深了女性就业困境?本文使用CGSS 2015数据,从结婚、生育角度出发,运用工具变量法、分位数回归、Oaxaca-blinder分解等方法考察婚育事件对劳动力工资的影响及其作用机制,探讨婚育视角下的性别工资差距问题,提出相应对策建议以促进性别公平。研究首先通过对城镇劳动力的婚姻状态和生育情况与工资性收入进行实证分析,发现在控制了个人特征、人力资本、职业性质和地区等因素后,性别工资差距仍显著存在且婚育事件拉大了该差距。其中结婚使男女劳动力的工资水平均有所提高,但由于原始工资水平的差异和溢价大小的不同,性别工资差距被拉大;生育使男性工资增长,女性工资缩水,这同样加大了性别工资差距。其次基于分位数回归结果进行Oaxaca-blinder平均工资差异分解,结果显示随着收入的增加,性别工资差距在缩小,但婚姻和生育对此差距的解释力度却越来越大且相对稳定。即低收入群体的工资差距较大,但婚育对该差距的解释力度较小,相反高收入群体的性别工资差距较小,但婚育对该差距的贡献却很大。因此,缩小婚姻和生育造成的性别工资差距、消除性别歧视、保障女性职业的可持续发展是亟待解决的问题。     

An analysis of variations in U. S. fertility and female labor force participation trends

This study is based on time series data from 1947–1977 on fertility and female labor force participation, and examines (a) the effects of male relative income and female earnings on the level and timing of fertility and female labor force participation, and (b) the relative importance of variations in relative income and female wage rates in explaining the fluctuations in both fertility and female labor supply. The results suggest that relative income exerts a significant positive effect on fertility and a negative effect on female work effort. However, female wage rates appear to be the dominant factor in explaining variations in fertility and female labor force participation over the past two decades, with increases in female earnings leading to both depressed fertility and increased labor force participation of women.     

最低工资标准提升的劳动供给效应——基于回归间断设计的经验研究

文章依据中国健康与营养调查1997～2009年的微观数据,应用回归间断设计方法分析了最低工资标准提升对低收入群体劳动供给的影响。研究结果表明,提升最低工资标准未对男性就业和工作时间产生显著的影响,也未对女性工作时间产生显著影响,但对女性就业产生了显著的消极影响,这导致女性劳动力供给明显降低。随着相对工资的上升,男性就业、男性工作时间和女性工作时间均呈现上升趋势。因此,政府应逐渐适度地提高最低工资标准,在保证低收入群体劳动供给不受较大消极影响的同时,渐进地提高低收入群体的工资水平。     

The rise of divorce and separation in the United States, 1880–1990

I use the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series to assess the potential effects of local labor-market conditions on long-term trends and race differences in marital instability. The rise of female labor-force participation and the increase in nonfarm employment are closely associated with the growth of divorce and separation. Moreover, higher female labor-force participation among black women and lower economic opportunities for black men may account for race differences in marital instability before 1940, and for most of such differences in subsequent years. However, unmeasured intervening cultural factors are probably responsible for at least part of these effects.     

A Comment on Ali Tas˛ıran's `Wage and income effects on the timing and spacing of births in Sweden and in the United States'

This note reviews and evaluates Taşıran's (1995) claim that estimated female wage effects on Swedish fertility dynamics reported by Heckman and Walker (1990) are not robust to the use of microwage data. The results reported here indicate that once individual wage measures have been purged of measurement error, estimated female wage effects are not sensitive to the introduction of microwages. The results reported by Heckman and Walker (1990) persist even with the use of microwage data. Received: 8 March 1996/Accepted: 4 December 2001 I thank Tom MaCurdy, Eric French and two anonymous referees for useful comments. This research was supported by NICHD grants HD-19226 and HD-28685. The usual disclaimer applies. Responsible editor: Klaus F. Zimmermann.     

Evidence for and against the 'double penalty' thesis in the science and engineering fields

This study examines how race and gender affect the economic status of scientists and engineers. Using data from the 1989 Survey of Natural and Social Scientists and Engineers, the wage rates of minority females are compared with those of white males, white females, and minority males for the native-born population and immigrants. The results reveal Asian women's parity with white men in some contexts. Economic discrimination holds up for black and white women only. There is also evidence that institutional contexts affect men and women with similar characteristics in different ways. The findings challenge the claim for universalism but offer some support for the discipline-dependence hypothesis.     

Undocumented workers in the labor market: an analysis of the earnings of legal and illegal Mexican immigrants in the United States

This paper studies the differences in earnings between Mexican legal and illegal immigrants in the United States. The analysis includes a cross-sectional examination of the wage differences between legal and undocumented workers as well as a longitudinal analysis examining the impact of legalization on the earnings of previously-undocumented workers. It is shown that the average hourly wage rate of male Mexican legal immigrants in the United States was 41.8% higher than that of undocumented workers while female legal immigrants earned 40.8% more. Though illegal immigrants have lower education and English proficiency, and a shorter period of residence in the United States, than legal immigrants, it is shown that differences in the observed characteristics of legal and illegal immigrants explain only 48% of the log-wage gap between male legal and illegal workers and 43% of the gap for women. An analysis of undocumented immigrants legalized after the 1986 U.S. immigration policy reform shows significant wage growth in the four years following legalization. These gains are due mostly to the change in legal status itself, not to changes in the characteristics of immigrants over time. Received: 7 July 1997/Accepted: 16 March 1998     

性别差异视角下的流动人口迁移距离及其影响因素 ——基于对上海流动人口的分析

通过对流动人口迁移距离性别差异的考察发现:(1)女性流动人口的平均迁移距离长于男性23.1千米,个体因素、迁移特征、经济社会因素对男性、女性流动人口的迁移距离存在着不同方向和不同程度的影响。少数民族和农村户籍的女性流动人口的迁移距离明显长于男性。(2)随受教育程度的提高,女性迁移距离不断增加,初中、高中、大学和研究生学历的女性流动人口的迁移距离分别增加0.062、0.058、0.098和0.170个单位。(3)女性流动人口的迁移受到距离的阻抗作用强度弱于男性,距离每增加1%,流入的女性流动人口规模降低1.090%,而男性为1.275%。(4)引入经济发展差距(GDP)和收入差距变量后,各变量的影响程度和方向发生变化,女性表现出学历、收入水平越高迁移得越远的特征。     

Maternal Work and Child Care in China: A Multi‐Method Analysis

The majority of women in China, including mothers of young children, are in the labor force. This article investigates the relationship between mothers' work and child care and explores how type of work affects level of involvement in children's care. Substantive understandings of the relationship between mothers' work and child care may well depend on the way work is conceptualized and measured, especially nonwage work. Nearly two‐thirds of women in China live in rural areas, where nonwage work predominates. Analysis of data from eight provinces indicates that wage workers spend less time in child care, but so do women with heavy nonwage demands. Women's involvement in multiple economic activities has consequences for both work‐child care compatibility and work intensity, and may be especially important in efforts to categorize women's work in industrializing economies. Because the majority of the world's women do not work in the wage sector, the implications of these findings extend beyond China.     

Occupational segregation and the gender wage gap

The role of occupational segregation in the determination of gender wage differentials is assessed. It is found (1) that occupational segregation plays less of a role in explaining wage differentials than do traditional human capital variables; (2) that earnings profiles generated with data that include a percent female (PF) measure of occupational segregation are not ideal for testing human capital predictions yet nonetheless yield parameters consistent with neoclassical theory; and (3) that lifetime work considerations, such as the degree of one's labor force intermittency, are important in determining both one's occupation and wage. The implications are that government antidiscrimination policies based on outcome measures are in general inefficient. Instead, the government should concentrate on creating incentives for women to participate in the labor market on an equal basis as males.