Non-Routine Tasks and The Gender Wage Gap: Evidence from China

Xinxin Ma, Jiachen Han and Shi Li

No 779, Discussion Paper Series from Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University

Abstract: This study uses national survey data from the Chinese Household Income Project from 2002, 2013, and 2023 and constructs an indicator of non-routine task intensity to examine the influence of task-based factors on the gender wage gap (GWG) in China. We employ decomposition methods to explore the two channels through which tasks influence the GWG. The results indicate that the wage premium for non-routine tasks is higher for women than for men, and several robustness checks support this conclusion. The gender differences in the non-routine task wage premium differ by age and education groups, and across the wage distribution. The decomposition results suggest that gender disparities in wage premiums for non-routine tasks (price effect) helped to narrow the GWG in the three sample periods, while their effects decreased from 2002 to 2023. The gender differences in the allocation of non-routine tasks (endowment effect) widened the GWG in 2002 and 2023 and narrowed it in 2013. Additionally, both the endowment and price effects on GWG differ across the wage distribution in each period.

Keywords: non-routine task; gender wage gap (GWG); wage premium; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 J31 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 42 pages
Date: 2026-06
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hit:hituec:779

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