The regional distribution of skill premia in urban China: Implications for growth and inequality

John Whalley and Chunbing Xing

International Labour Review, 2014, vol. 153, issue 3, 395-419

Abstract: Based on urban household survey data, the authors find that skill premia increased significantly across all regions of China between 1995 and 2002, but only in coastal regions between 2002 and 2007. By then, these regions also displayed much wider wage inequality and thus contributed more to overall urban wage inequality than non-coastal regions. While privatization was the main driver of skill premia in 1995–2002, China's (regionally uneven) integration into the global economy became the dominant influence in 2002–07. Reducing skill premia and inequality, the authors argue, calls for reform of the Hukou registration system which impedes skilled labour mobility and possibly also growth.

Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/j.1564-913X.2014.00009.x (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:bla:intlab:v:153:y:2014:i:3:p:395-419

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0020-7780

Access Statistics for this article

International Labour Review is currently edited by Mark Lansky

More articles in International Labour Review from International Labour Organization Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().