Are all Migrants Really Worse off in Urban Labour Markets?: New empirical evidence from China

Jason Gagnon, Theodora Xenogiani and Chunbing Xing

No 278, OECD Development Centre Working Papers from OECD Publishing

Abstract: The rapid and massive increase in rural-to-urban worker flows to the coast of China has drawn recent attention to the welfare of migrants working in urban regions, particularly to their working conditions and pay; serious concern is raised regarding pay discrimination against rural migrants. This paper uses data from a random draw of the 2005 Chinese national census survey to shed more light on the discrimination issue, by making comparisons of earnings and the sector of work between rural migrants on one hand, and urban residents and urban migrants on the other. Contrary to popular belief, we find no earnings discrimination against rural migrants compared to urban residents. However, rural migrants are found to be discriminated in terms of the sector in which they work, with a vast majority working in the informal sector lacking adequate social protection. L’augmentation rapide et massive des mouvements ruraux-à-urbains d’ouvriers vers la côte de la Chine a appelé à l’attention récente le bien-être des migrants travaillant dans des régions urbaines, en particulier vis-à-vis de leurs conditions de travail et de salaire ; la préoccupation a d’autant plus augmenté concernant la discrimination de salaire contre les migrants ruraux. Ce document emploie des données d’un tirage aléatoire du recensement national chinois de 2005 pour éclaircir la question de la discrimination en faisant des comparaisons de revenus et de secteur de travail entre les migrants ruraux d’une part, et les résidents et migrants urbains de l’autre. Contrairement à la croyance populaire, nous ne trouvons aucune discrimination de revenus entre migrants ruraux et résidents urbains. Cependant, les migrants ruraux s’avèrent être distingués en termes de secteur dans lequel ils travaillent, une grande majorité d’entre eux travaillant dans le secteur informel, caractérisé par un manque d’accès à une protection sociale adéquate.

Keywords: China; Chine; discrimination; discrimination; emploi informel; informal employment; migration; migration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 J71 O15 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-06-30
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna, nep-dev, nep-lab, nep-mig, nep-tra and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

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https://doi.org/10.1787/221523621330 (text/html)

Related works:
Working Paper: Are All Migrants Really Worse Off in Urban Labour Markets? New Empirical Evidence from China (2012)
Working Paper: Are All Migrants Really Worse Off in Urban Labour Markets? New Empirical Evidence from China (2011)
Working Paper: Are all migrants really worse off in urban labour markets: new empirical evidence from China (2009)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oec:devaaa:278-en

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