Inequality of Opportunity in Earnings in Rural China

Xinjie Shi ()

No 277016, 2018 Conference, July 28-August 2, 2018, Vancouver, British Columbia from International Association of Agricultural Economists

Abstract: This paper seeks to quantify the role of inequality of opportunity in individual earnings that is associated with family background, gender, ethnic minority status, region of birth and birth cohorts in rural China. Using the China Labour-force Dynamics Survey (CLDS) for 2014, we find that the share of inequality of opportunity in individual earnings in rural China for the full sample is 20.4 percent. A Shapley-value decomposition approach reveals the contribution of each of the circumstances. This result varies across birth cohorts: the youngest cohort 1981-1990 has the lowest total inequality in earnings, but it turns out to be the one with highest circumstantial inequality as well as the partial inequality of opportunities stemming from each of the circumstances, with the only exception of gender. A closer investigation shows that three effort variables own education, off-farm employment and marital status are pivotal in determining income inequality, but migration is not. Circumstances influence individual earnings, not only directly, but also indirectly through these three effort variables. Acknowledgement : The author is most grateful for the technical assistance (sharing related Stata and R codes) provided by Dr. Francisco H. G. Ferreira at the World Bank, Professor Markus J ntti at Stockholm University in Sweden and Dr. Florian Ch vez Ju rez at the National Laboratory for Public Policy in Mexico City,and also for the insightful comments made by Dr. Jane Golley at the Australian National University.

Keywords: Labor; and; Human; Capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna and nep-gth
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/277016/files/587.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:iaae18:277016

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.277016

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2018 Conference, July 28-August 2, 2018, Vancouver, British Columbia from International Association of Agricultural Economists Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().