The Impact Of Gender Difference In Job Mobility On The Gender Wage Gap

The gender wage gap（GWG）in the labor market has a long history and cannot be explained after controlling many factors.This paper tries to supplement existing research from the perspective of job mobility.Since individuals can improve job matching quality through job mobility and thus obtain wage increase,if women fail to make full use of job mobility as a wage increase channel compared with men,the GWG will widen.The difficulties in testing the above hypothesis are as follows: First,the decision-making of job mobility is endogenous,leading to the bias of OLS coefficient.Second,the relevant literature usually takes wage as the explained variable and the interaction term of gender and job mobility as the main explanatory variable to study the " gender difference in return of job mobility",and there are few suitable proxy variables for "gender difference in job mobility rate" to study its impact on the GWG.Therefore,this paper uses "the promulgation of Labor Contract Law in 2008" as a proxy variable of "gender difference in job mobility rate",and uses DID method and CHNS data to prove the gender difference in job mobility rate will widen the GWG.It is found that the gender difference in job mobility rate significantly reduces female’s wage by 3.368 yuan/hour,but does not affect male’s.This conclusion is robust after a series of robustness tests such as PSM-DID,FE-DID and placebo test.Heterogeneity analysis shows that the GWG is only affected by the gender difference in job mobility rate among the group over 40 years old and those with low education.Further discussion shows that the reasons why women cannot make full use of job mobility as a wage increase channel are from three aspects: family division of labor,risk preference and the labor market.Women have more family responsibilities and spend less time and more cost on job search.Women are more averse than men to the risks of job mobility.Statistical discrimination in the labor market can make it more difficult for women to move around and reduce their efforts to find jobs.The above analysis provides an empirical evidence for improving the implementation of flexible work system,male parental leave and household labor compensation system.This paper gives a new explanation for the GWG in the labor market from the perspective of "job mobility".The causes of gender differences in job mobility rate are further discussed,and some suggestions are put forward.This helps narrow the GWG.