 From equality to polarization: Changes in urban China’s gender earnings gap from 1988 to 2016Xueyue Liu and Sharon Xuejing Zuo Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2023, vol. 205, issue C, 303-337 Abstract: This paper studies the evolution of urban China’s gender earnings gap from 1988 to 2016. We first document that an upward trend in gender inequality started to reverse after 2007 at the median and in the upper part of the earnings distribution but only for workers in the state–owned enterprises (SOEs). Women in the private sector at the top of the earnings distribution did not start to catch up with their male counterparts until 2012. The gender earnings gap at the low end of the distribution, meanwhile, was stuck at a high level after the mid–1990s. Polarization emerges both within the earnings distribution and across ownership types. Following Bayer and Charles (2018), we decompose the change in the gender earnings gap across the whole earnings’ distribution and find that a change in the wage structure dominantly drives the trend in gender inequality. Gender–specific factors, such as discrimination, play a minor role. Keywords: Gender inequality; Wage decomposition; Gender rank gap (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:205:y:2023:i:c:p:303-337 DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2022.11.009 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D. More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier |
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