China has reached the Lewis turning point

Xiaobo Zhang, Jin Yang and Shenglin Wang

China Economic Review, 2011, vol. 22, issue 4, 542-554

Abstract: In the past several years, labor shortage in China has become an emerging issue. However, there is heated debate on whether China has passed the Lewis turning point and entered a new era of labor shortage from a period of unlimited labor supply. Most empirical studies on this topic focus on the estimation of total labor supply and demand. Yet the poor quality of labor statistics leaves the debate open. In this paper, China's position along the Lewis continuum is examined though primary surveys of wage rates, a more reliable statistic than employment data. Our results show a clear rising trend of real wages rate since 2003. The acceleration of real wages even in slack seasons indicates that the era of surplus labor is over. This finding has important policy implications for China's future development model.

Keywords: Dual economy; Surplus labor; Lewis model; Labor market (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J20 J31 O12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (171)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1043951X11000587
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: China has reached the lewis turning point (2010)
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:eee:chieco:v:22:y:2011:i:4:p:542-554

DOI: 10.1016/j.chieco.2011.07.002

Access Statistics for this article

China Economic Review is currently edited by B.M. Fleisher, K. X. D. Huang, M.E. Lovely, Y. Wen, X. Zhang and X. Zhu

More articles in China Economic Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().