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Labor Market Segmentation by Public-Private Sector and Its Influence on Gender Wage Gap

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Economic Transition and Labor Market Reform in China

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Abstract

It is known that because socialism policies which promote social equality were enforced by Chinese government, the gender gap in wage and employment was little during the planned economy system period in urban China. The gender wage gap became enlarged during the economic transition period. What factors can explain the gender wage gap in the 2000s? As described in Chap. 3, to counter the developing countries and the other economic transition countries in central and eastern Europe, there exists the labor market segmentation between public sector and private sector which is a special labor market structure for China. Does the labor market segmentation by public sector and private sector affect the gender wage gap in China? Chapter 5 focuses on this issue which is not noticed in the previous studies and provides some evidence to answer the question. Some interesting findings are obtained. For example, it is found that the problem of discrimination against female workers in a given ownership sector (public or private sectors) is becoming more serious, and is the main factor which causes the gender wage gap expanding in urban China from 2002 to 2013.

This chapter is a revised version of Ma, X. (2018). Ownership Sector Segmentation and Gender Wage Gaps in Urban China during the 2000s. Post-Communist Economies, June 2008, 1–30. Copyright ©: Taylor & Francis Ltd.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Brown et al. (1980) analyzed the effect of occupational segregation on gender wage gaps, and divided the causes of gender wage gaps into two parts: inter-occupation differentials and intra-occupation differentials.

  2. 2.

    Although Reimers (1983), Cotton (1988), Neumark (1988), Oaxaca and Ransom (1994), and Fortin (2008) argue the “index number” problem in the basic Blinder–Oaxaca model, the classifications of the unexplained differentials and the unexplained differentials are similar to Blinder (1973) and Oaxaca (1973) in these studies.

  3. 3.

    For the issue of sector segmentation and gender wage gaps in the TVPs (township, village, and privately-owned enterprises), which are in the rural regions, please refer to Meng and Miller (1995), Meng (1998a, b), Meng and Zhang (2001), Rozelle et al. (2002), and Dong et al. (2003).

  4. 4.

    In order to simplify the expression of equations as follows, all constant items are omitted.

  5. 5.

    Appleton et al. (1999) tried to utilize a non-discrimination wage function in the Brown et al. (1980) model to address the index number problem based on the idea which is similar to Reimers (1983), Cotton (1988), Neumark (1988), Oaxaca and Ransom (1994), and Fortin (2008), but there is a lot of argument about the Appleton et al. (1999) model. Thus this study only employs the basic model, the Brown et al. model, to do the analysis, which is similar to the most of the previous studies.

  6. 6.

    That variable values are not in the range of “mean value ± three times S.D.” that is defined as an abnormal value here.

  7. 7.

    In CHIPs 2002, the sample of workers working in foreign-owned enterprises is relatively small and cannot be analyzed in the decomposition analysis; consequently the workers who are working in POEs or FOEs are combined into one group.

  8. 8.

    Experience years = age-6-years of schooling.

  9. 9.

    There are sixteen industry categories in CHIPs 2002, and fifty in CHIPs 2013.

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  1. Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, Japan

    Xinxin Ma

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Ma, X. (2018). Labor Market Segmentation by Public-Private Sector and Its Influence on Gender Wage Gap. In: Economic Transition and Labor Market Reform in China. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1987-7_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1987-7_5

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