Research On The Changes And Causes Of The Wage Inequality Of Laborers In China

How does the wage inequality change in China? What are the important factors that lead to the formation of wage inequality? The existing empirical research fails to provide us with a clear answer,and thus fails to make a clear direction for the policy-making.According to the report of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China,by 2035,China will realize socialist modernization,make people’s life more happy,increase the proportion of middle-income groups significantly,narrow the gap between urban and rural regional development and residents’ living standards significantly,and put forward clear requirements for narrowing the income gap.The expansion of the income gap in China mainly comes from the unfair distribution of wage income.As an important part of the income gap,the research on its changes and causes can not only fully understand the changes of the wage inequality in China,but also deeply understand the causes of the wage inequality in different quantiles,understand the origin of the wage inequality in China as a whole,and propose policy to narrow it.Based on the data of CHNS in 1991,2000,2009 and 2015,this paper explores the changes of China’s wage inequality and its important influencing factors in three periods through RIF unconditional quantile regression and FLL decomposition method.The main findings of this paper as follows: first,the wages of the wage distribution of the sub population generally increased from 1991 to 2015,but the wage growth rate of the high-income population was faster than that of the low-income population,which led to the widening of the wage inequality;second,the change of the wage return rate with different labor characteristics(wage structure effect)is the main cause of the widening of the wage inequality of Chinese laborers;The wage inequality caused by the change of the mean value of the characteristics of the labor market(composition effect)is secondary or even insignificant;the third,the gender wage inequality and household registration wage inequality on the low wage distribution are significant,the education return rate on the high wage distribution is higher,and the return rate of work experience continues to decline;the fourth,the expansion of the wage inequality in 1991-2000 is mainly due to the distribution of education changes and household registration discrimination,population mobility significantly reduced the wage inequality in this period.The main factors of wage inequality expansion in 2000-2009 are household registration discrimination and regional wage inequality.The wage inequality in 2009-2015 mainly comes from the difference of ownership wage inequality and education return rate.According to the above conclusions,we put forward policy suggestions to promote the urbanization of rural residents,establish the wage decision and growth mechanism of state-owned enterprises,promote the coordinated development of regions,reduce poverty,and continue to promote the popularization and equalization of education.