Migrants as second-class workers in urban China? A decomposition analysis

Sylvie Démurger, Marc Gurgand, Shi Li () and Yu Ximing ()
Additional contact information
Yu Ximing: School of Finance,Renmin University of China, Beijing, China

No 808, Working Papers from Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon St-Étienne (GATE Lyon St-Étienne), Université de Lyon

Abstract: In urban China, urban resident annual earnings are 1.3 times larger than long term rural migrant earnings as observed in a nationally representative sample in 2002. Using microsimulation, we decompose this difference into four sources, with particular attention to path dependence and statistical distribution of the estimated effects: (1) different allocation to sectors that pay different wages (sectoral effect); (2) hourly wage disparities across the two populations within sectors (wage effect); (3) different working times within sectors (hours effect); (4) different population structures (population effect). Although sector allocation is extremely contrasted, with very few migrants in the public sector and very few urban residents working as self-employed, the sectoral effect is not robust to the path followed for the decomposition. We show that the migrant population has a comparative advantage in the private sector: increasing its participation into the public sector does not necessarily improve its average earnings. The opposite holds for the urban residents. The second main finding is that population effect is significantly more important than wage or hours effects. This implies that the main source of disparity is pre-market (education opportunities) rather than on-market.

Keywords: chinese labor market; discrimination; earnings differentials; migration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J31 J71 O15 P23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2008
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna, nep-dev, nep-hrm, nep-lab, nep-mig and nep-tra
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
ftp://ftp.gate.cnrs.fr/RePEc/2008/0808.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Migrants as second-class workers in urban China? A decomposition analysis (2009)
Working Paper: Migrants as second-class workers in urban China? A decomposition analysis (2009)
Working Paper: Migrants as second-class workers in urban China? A decomposition analysis (2009)
Working Paper: Migrants as second-class workers in urban China? A decomposition analysis (2008)
Working Paper: Migrants as second-class workers in urban China? A decomposition analysis (2008)
Working Paper: Migrants as second-class workers in urban China? A decomposition analysis (2008)
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