| The economic reforms and market liberalization in the early 1980 s injected vitality into China’s economic development.While the economy grew rapidly,the problems of income inequality and gender wage gaps became increasingly prominent.During the planned economy period,the government formulated and implemented protective policies to promote women’s employment and gender wage equality.The supply and demand of labor were not allocated by the market mechanism,and the income distribution was relatively equal between male and female workers.In the process of the reform,the market mechanism of the labor market has been continuously improved and perfected,and enterprises have gradually gained autonomy in employment and production decisions.The employment rate and labor participation rate of women have dropped significantly,and the gender wage gap in urban areas has gradually widened.At the same time,due to differences in human and material capital,marketization,and economic development in between provinces,the gender wage gap between regions gradually diverged.Gender equality is an important aspect that reflects national equity and social civilization.The improvement of gender equality will not only help promote women’s active participation in social reproduction activities,alleviate the problem of aging population and labor shortage,but will also have a positive impact on the improvement of social productivity.Gender wage gaps exist widely in various countries.Compared with some of the developed countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom,the labor market in China is formed late.The level of income inequality and gender wage gaps are relatively low compared with other countries.For the analysis of gender wage gaps,economics has developed many theoretical models such as human capital theory,compensation wage difference theory,and discrimination theory.In a perfectly competitive market,wages equal to the productivity.When the supply of labor is in the equilibrium,wage differences are caused by differences in abilities,productivity,or job attributes.Human capital theory holds that human capital could reflect productivity,and differences in human capital among groups of workers reflect differences in productivity,which in turn forms wage gaps.Compensating wage differential theory focuses on the discrepancy in working environment or attributes,and holds that wage difference is a compensation for the difference in utility between different jobs.Discrimination theory includes multiple branches,such as preference discrimination theory,statistical discrimination theory,monopsonistic discrimination theory,market segmentation and etc.Each theory explains different reasons for discrimination in the labor market.The former research analyzed the changes of the gender wage gap in the process of economic reform and measures the effect of gender differences in characteristics in resulting wage gap.They explored the degree of gender discrimination and its impact on the gender wage gap,as well as the gap caused by occupational segregation and differences in job promotion.Existing researches are valuable for understanding gender differences and income inequality in the labor market under marketization.However,it is worth noting that there are still controversies regarding the trend and influencing factors of the gender wage gap in China’s urban areas.Research on the regional differences in the gender wage gap is particularly in shortage.Based on the theoretical and empirical research on wage differences,this paper uses micro-econometric methods and multiple micro-databases such as China Household Income Survey Data(CHIPS)and China Health and Nutrition Survey(CHNS)to study the gender wage gap in urban areas of China from the late 1980 s to 2015.From the perspective of wage structure changes,it analyzes the influencing factors of gender wage gap and explores the regional differences of gender wage gap in China.Besides,a variety of measurement methods are used to solve the problem of sample selection bias,which provides an effective estimate for the trend of the gender wage gap over a long period of time.Based on the decomposition method,this paper analyzes the impact of the wage structure on the changes in the gender wage gap,and uses the differences in the employment structure of men and women as a starting point to explore the regional gender wage gap and its changes.This article systematically analyzes the gender wage gap in China’s urban areas based on the theoretical basis and China’s reality.First,based on three methods to correct sample selectivity bias,the trend of gender wage gap in the labor market in China’s urban areas is analyzed.Begun in the end of the 1980 s,the female labor participation rate has declined significantly in the marketization.Since the wages of unemployed women are unobservable,the estimated wage equation based on the income data of the laborer sample and the measurement of the gender wage gap may be biased due to biased information from the sample data.Based on the data from the Chinese Household Income Survey(CHIPS)from 1995 to 2013 and the Chinese General Social Survey(CGSS)from2003 to 2015,this research uses the Heckman sample selection correction method to estimate the gender wage difference and adjusted gap.By making conditional assumptions on the potential wage levels of non-laborers,we use simple imputation and repeated imputation methods to provide a median estimate of the gender wage gap.In addition,based on the minimum assumptions,by using the bound method to estimate the upper and lower limits of the median wage income,we provide the estimated range of the gender wage gap.The study found that gender wage inequality in China’s urban areas increased from 1995 to 2011.The gender wage ratio in mean estimated using Heckman correction method decreased from 93% in 1995 to 79% in2011,and the ratio estimated by applying the imputation method dropped from 93%to 80%.In recent years,the gender wage gap has narrowed.The estimation results show that the corrected gender wage ratio increased by about 5 percentage points between 2011 and 2015,indicating that the narrowing of the gender wage gap is indeed due to the increase in women’s relative income.The boundary method is based on the least assumptions,and provides the upper and lower boundaries of the gender wage ratio.Secondly,based on the gender difference in employment structure,the study explores the regional difference in gender wage gap.Using the data from the China Household Income Survey(CHIPS)2002 and 2013,the gender wage gap and its changes in the eastern,central and western regions were compared and analyzed.The research on the analysis of the regional gender wage gap is insufficient,and there is a lack of analysis from the perspective of gender employment structure.The study found that the gender wage gap is larger in regions where the degree of gender industrial segregation is higher.The faster the degree of segregation increases,the faster the gender wage gap grows.Gender industrial segregation has widened the difference in the rate of return on gender characteristics within the industry,which in turn led to an increase in the gender wage gap.In regions where the market economy develops slowly,the degree of gender industrial segregation is also greatly affected by gender discrimination.The existence of industrial segregation and gender wage gaps reflects that women are generally at a disadvantage in the labor market,and also reflects the unequal income distribution in various regions along with the development of market economy.The analysis of gender industrial segregation and regional gender wage gap shows that the employment structure has an important impact on the relative income of men and women,which also provides potential solutions for reducing the regional gender wage gap and promoting gender equality in the labor market.Third,based on the gender pay gap decomposition method and the Chinese Household Income Survey(CHIPS)2002 and 2013 data,the study analyzed of the industrial distribution as well as the entering thresholds for male and female workers,provided a new explanation for the changes in the gender wage gap in the context of marketization.The result shows that the gender wage gap has increased significantly with the progress of marketization,and female-to-male wage ratio fell by 8percentage points from 2002 to 2013.Besides,the influencing factors of gender wage gaps also changed significantly.At the beginning of the 21 st century,gender differences in human capital characteristics in the industry are the key factors that arousing the gender wage gaps,while only 11.2% of the gap was caused by gender industrial distribution differences.With the processing of marketization,gender differences in industry entrance barriers have increased,and the increase in of gender discrimination within and between industries is the main factor that widening the gap.The ownership reform is an important part in the process.The gender wage gap between state-owned units and non-state-owned units has expanded significantly during the development of the market economy.The female-to-male wage ratio dropped by 5.6% and 8.5% from 2002 to 2013.In the early stages of marketization,the gender wage gap in state-owned units mainly came from the observable differences between men and women within the industry.With the advancement of marketization,the increase in discrimination within the industry has become a major factor in the widening of the gender wage gap in state-owned units.In non-state-owned units,gender discrimination in the industry has always been the key to the formation of the gender wage gap,and the degree of influence has increased significantly along with the reforming process.The comparison between state-owned units and non-state-owned units provides the possibility to analyze the impact of marketization on gender income inequality and gender discrimination.The analysis in this article shows that the increase in gender discrimination reflects changes in the state-owned economy.As the driving force of economic development,market-oriented policies not only promote the efficiency of non-state-owned units,but also potentially brought changes to the state-owned units.Finally,based on the wage equation model and the decomposition of gender wage gaps,by using China Health and Nutrition Survey(CHNS)data from 1989 to2015,the impact of wage structure on changes in gender wage gaps is analyzed.The research finds that changes in the price of work-related characters play an important role in changing the gender wage gap.Although differences in human capital characteristics,such as education level,tend to narrow the gap,and women’s career changes also tend to increase women’s relative wage income,changes in the characteristic rate of return offset these changes to some extent,widening the gender wage gap.The decomposition results of the changes in the gender wage gap of various income groups in different periods reflect the differences in the effects of gender differences and wage structure effects on the gender wage gap of various income groups.The expansion of the gender wage gap from 1989 to 1997 was mainly due to the increase in the gender wage gap of high-income groups,and gender differences was the main reason for the increase in the wage gap of high-income groups.The increase in the gender wage gap between 1997 and 2009 was mainly due to the increase in the gender wage gap between low-and middle-income groups,and changes in the return to characters were the key to the increase in the gender wage gap in these groups.From 2009 to 2015,the gender wage gap in all income groups showed a downward trend,and the narrowing of the gap was mainly due to the decrease in the gender wage gap in low-income groups.The analysis of the changes in the gender wage gap in each period shows that occupational changes have widened the gender wage gap for low-income groups and narrowed the gender wage gap for high-income groups.The study believes that changes in occupation and price of work-related characters have a key impact on changes in the gender wage gap in urban areas.Based on existing research,the contributions of this article are mainly reflected in the following three aspects.First,the treatment of sample selection bias is relatively simple in the existing research on the gender wage gap in China’s urban areas.This article uses imputation method to correct sample selectivity bias and provides a robust estimate of the latest developments in China’s urban gender wage gap.Compared with the correction methods used in the previous analysis,the advantage of the interpolation method is that there are fewer assumptions,which reduces the measurement deviation caused by the error of the estimation equation and the error of the specific value,and thus improves the robustness and accuracy of the estimation result.The research in this article shows that the shrinking trend of the gender wage gap in recent years is a true progress that women have made in the urban labor market.Second,reviewing domestic and foreign research on regional differences in gender wage gaps,it is found that there are few domestic relevant studies.The conclusions of foreign researches do not conform to the actual situation in China.This article takes the gender difference in employment structure as a starting point,and analyzes the gender wage gap and its changes in regional differences based on gender industrial segregation.Because of the direct connection between employment and wage income,the employment gap between men and women has a key impact on the gender wage gap.The study found that in regions where the degree of gender industry segregation increases faster,the gender wage gap grows faster;Gender-industry segregation has widened the difference in the rate of return on gender characteristics within the industry,which in turn led to an increase in the gender wage gap.As far as the author knows,this article analyzes the regional differences in gender wage gap based on employment differences for the first time.Third,this article analyzes the changes in the urban gender wage gap from the perspective of employment and returns to characteristics,and finds that women’s career changes in the early stage of marketization have narrowed the gender wage gap,but in the subsequent period it has led to the expansion of the gender wage gap.The analysis of wage gap changes that cannot be explained by differences in observable characteristics,shows that the expansion of the difference in return to unobservable characteristics between male and female workers is the main factor that increase the gender income inequality. |
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