The Gender Wage Gap in Urban and Rural Labor Force Using China Health and Nutrition Survey Data

[Translated]

Urban and rural people's income is increasing gradually with a new round of rapid economic development, and the different changes have taken place for urban and rural labor on the labor choice and the wage determination. This paper, makes full use of the micro survey data from China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) 1997, 2000, 2006 and 2009, and does the comparative study on urban and rural labor force choice and gender differences of wage in recent ten years.There are three main research findings: Firstly, the gender difference on the labor choice of the urban and rural labor exists. "Inverted U" relationship between age and the employment probability of the urban labor force exists. Although the peak age of urban women is less than men, the value is increasing, indicating that urban women have increased the input of the work energy. Education can significantly increase the probability of employment of the labor force in urban and non-farm production probability in rural labor force. Education for the impact of urban women is bigger than men on the employment choice, and education for the impact of rural women is less than men on the non-farm production options. Impact on the marital status for urban and rural labor force labor choice is the greatest. Married men will greatly increase the probability of employment of urban men, while which will reduce the urban women's employment probability and the non-agricultural production probability of rural women, and the impact of marriage on women in rural areas is bigger than cities.Secondly, the urban and rural labor has gender differences on the decision-making in the wage. The "inverted U" relationship between experience and income wages exists. The experience peak of men is bigger than women. The experience peak of the urban labor force is higher than rural. The education level can greatly improve the income wages of the labor. The higher the level of education is, the more the relative income wages increases. The relative yield on the same degree is also increasing over time, but the width of growth on the rural labor force was weaker than the urban. The education return of women is bigger than men in other years with the exception of urban women from 2006 to 2009. The wage rate of White-Collar occupations and workers of state-owned sector is generally higher than other occupations and sectors. The urban labor force have the much broader choice right on the occupations and sectors. The rural labor force was mainly concentrated in Blue-Collar occupations, and the occupational segregation between the gender on the urban and rural areas exists.Thirdly, the wage gap between the gender on the urban and rural labor is widening. In General, the average log wage ration between urban women and men falls from 76.98% to 71.08%, and the average log wage ration between rural women and men falls from 76.22% to 72.14%. The decomposition results of urban and rural gender wage equation show that the majority of the gender wage gap on the urban and rural labor is explained by the discrimination factor. The unexplained part of the city increases from 73% to 78.5%, while the unexplained part in rural areas increases from 80.7% to 96.4%. The unexplained part in rural areas increases more than the city on the gender differences.

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