Self-Deprecation or Self-Sufficient? Discrimination and Income Aspirations in Urban Labour Market Sustainable Development

Dan Li, Yulei Weng, Xiaocong Yang and Kai Zhao
Additional contact information
Dan Li: School of Management, Xi’an Polytechnic University, Xi’an 710048, China
Yulei Weng: School of Economics and Management, Northwest University, Xi’an 710127, China
Xiaocong Yang: School of Public Administration, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou 510006, China
Kai Zhao: School of Economics and Finance, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710061, China

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 22, 1-18

Abstract: This research contributes to previous studies through exploring the association between individual psychological aspirations and hukou discrimination in the Chinese urban labour market. Applying data from the 2010 China General Social Survey, we divided the sample into local hukou residents and non-local migrants (includes urban-urban migrants and rural-urban migrants). We then examined the relationship between these sub-categories with different hukou status and their income aspirations (i.e., expected wage levels). The estimated results suggest that, in comparison with urban-urban migrants, rural-urban migrants are more likely to self-deprecate. Discrimination against rural-urban migrants significantly restricts their income aspirations. These findings imply that it is urgent to eliminate these negative impacts caused by hukou discrimination in the Chinese urban labour market, and understanding the structure of labour force quality such as psychological condition appears to be important in determining the long-term sustainable development of labour market. Theoretical and empirical implications, limitations and further research directions are also discussed.

Keywords: income aspirations; hukou discrimination; urban labour market; sustainable development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/22/6278/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/22/6278/ (text/html)

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:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:22:p:6278-:d:284899

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().