Study On The Income Discrimination Against Migrant Workers: Measurement, Solving Path And Suggestions

CCP decision on deepening the reform of some major issues proposed some suggestions on improving the wage determination and the normal growth mechanism, improving the minimum wage and the wage payment security system, perfecting the system of collective wage negotiations. It emphased on improving the labor,capital,technology,management and other factors to participate in distribution according to contribution mechanism.It also emphased that the initial distribution and redistribution must give consideration to efficiency and fairness. The policy showed the urgency to speed up the reform of income distribution and narrowing the income gap.Only through quantitative analysis, can we determine the cause of widening income gap. The wage gap between rural migrant workers and urban residents is the most representative. Analyzing deeply on the wage gap’s reasons; measuring on the degree of income discrimination against migrant workers in the labor market and discussing the inner-formation mechanism provide an important research aspect in solving China’s rising income gap.Based on a 2012 national Wage Survey conducted by Henan University of Economies and Law, this paper firstly measures the wage discrimination, employment discrimination and post promotion discrimination against rural migrant workers which existed in different quintiles of the wage distribution, different regions, ownership sectors, industries and occupational posts by use of Mincer wage equation and different wage decomposition methods. Secondly this paper estimates the factors and effects on the income discrimination. Finally, this paper designs the solving paths from different aspects and proposes some suggestions on how to eliminate rural migrant workers’ income discrimination.This paper brings forth new ideas on considering Labors market Segregation into studying and proposes a solving path of income discrimination against rural migrant workers for the first time. The thesis has drawn some important conclusions and provided some policy recommendations based on the estimated results as follow:Firstly, this paper analyses the reasons and characts of income discrimination against rural migrant workers by studying the wage discrimination, employment discrimination and post promotion discrimination. The results show that the different return rates of education and the following gap effect are the main reasons for wage discrimination while the inequality of opportunities appearing in employment and post promotion resulting from the Segregation of labor markets are the main reasons for employment discrimination and post promotion discrimination. The paper thinks that discrimination against rural migrant workers is institutional discrimination. Wage discrimination can be mostly regarded as statistic discrimination, employment discrimination can be mostly regarded as monopoly discrimination and post promotion can be mostly regarded as prejudice discrimination.Secondly, this paper estimates rural migrant workers’ discrimination totally by quantitative study. The results show that discrimination’s occupies 29.58 percents of the wage gap between migrant workers and urban residents, which implies that the wage differentials result mainly from the characteristics effect. Factors influencing the wage level of migrant workers are stratum, occupational post, region, industry, ownership and human capital, According to the element return rates ranking in human capital, factors are individual technological level, health degree, working years and education background. The above results contribute to design solving nationwide path and partial path.Thirdly, this paper analyzes the income discrimination against rural migrant workers on different quintile of the wage distribution.The results show that the wage gap between rural migrant workers and urban residents becomes bigger while the discrimination shows just the reverse with the wage quintile increasing. Income discrimination is very serious to the low-income labors. To the lower-income, middle-income and higher-income workers, the income discrimination exits but the percentage of characteristics effects continuously increases. Income discrimination against rural migrant workers disappears in the high-end of wage distribution.Fourthly, this paper does a research on income discrimination in different regions. The results show that the better region developed, the bigger wage gap between the migrant workers and urban residents; The better region developed, the higher return rates of education, which implies the wage gap resulting from the inequality of education return rates is prominent. The income discrimination against migrant workers exits in all regions while the discrimination in one region has little relationship with region’s economic development and economic environment. Economically advanced area I show a bigger percentage of discrimination while the under-development area III shows a wider range of discrimination. The discrimination in the other two areas has no representative.Fifthly, this paper does a research on income discrimination against rural migrant workers in different ownership sectors. The result shows that the wage differentials between rural migrant workers and urban residents are lower in collective enterprises, individual enterprise, freelancers while those in foreign-owned enterprises and private enterprise are larger. The wage differentials are not obvious in government and state-owned enterprises. The employment discrimination and wage discrimination are lowest in collective enterprises while are seriously higher in foreign-owned enterprises.The private enterprises have no employment discrimination but high wage discrimination. However, government and state-owned enterprises have relative higher employment discrimination’s but lower wage discrimination.Sixthly, this paper analyzes income discrimination in industry and occupational post. The results show that discriminations on wage and promotion are more serious in Catering and Retailing while post promotion discriminations are more serious in Manufacturing, Constructing and Service and Telecommunication sectors. Chances of post promotion are related closely with Human capital but wage discrimination and employment discrimination can not be neglected in Banking and Transportation. Employment discrimination is obvious in Government, Science Education Culture and Hygiene.Finally, this paper designs a solving path of eliminating income discrimination against rural migrant workers and proposes some suggestions. The solving path design takes the range, depth and representative of income discrimination into consideration, which also ranks for the policy measures of improving migrant workers’ wage level and eliminating discrimination. The results contribute to understand the reasons for the wage gap between migrant workers and urban residents, the regulation of income discrimination against migrant workers. The suggestions of solving income discrimination from different aspects can also relieve the pressure of income inequality appearing in areas, industries and stratum.