In books one finds a house of gold: Education and labor market outcomes in urban China

Journal of Contemporary China

Volumn 15, Issue 47, 2006, Pages 215-231

  Maurer Fazio, Margaret ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT; EMPLOYMENT; LABOR MARKET; URBAN POPULATION;

ASIA; CHINA; EURASIA; FAR EAST;

EID: 33745091816     PISSN: 10670564     EISSN: 14699400     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/10670560500534848     Document Type: Article

References (25)

1. Zhongguo laodong tongji nianjian [China Labour Statistical Yearbook ] (Beijing: Zhongguo tongji chubanshe, 1998).
2. Li reports State Statistical Bureau estimates of 15 million redundant employees. Ning Li, 'Promising reemployment project', Beijing Review, (18-24 August 1997), pp. 9-13. Li also quotes the former Minister of Labor, Li Boyong, as reporting 11.51 million lay-offs in 1997, of which 7.87 million were from state-owned enterprises.
3. Ning Li, 'Re-employment: A solemn scheme in 1998', Beijing Review, (18-24 May 1998), pp. 9-13.
4. Zhongguo laodong tongji nianjian [China Labour Statistical Yearbook ] (Beijing: Zhongguo tongji chubanshe, 2000).
5. John Giles, Albert Park and Juwei Zhang, 'What is China's true unemployment rate?', China Economic Review 16(2), (2005), pp. 149-170.
6. Rural Development Institute, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, 1997-98, Zhongguo nongcun jingji xingshe fenxi yu yuce [China's Rural Economic Situation - Analysis and Forecast 1997-98] (Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 1998).
7. Simon Appleton et al., 'Labour retrenchment in China: Determinants and consequences', China Economic Review 13(2-3), (2002), pp. 252-275.
8. Xin Meng, 'Economic restructuring and income inequality in urban China', Review of Income and Wealth 50(3), (September 2004), pp. 357-379.
9. The Urban Labor Market Integration Project was funded by the Ford Foundation, Beijing Office and was carried out by principle investigators: Fang Cai (Population Institute, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences), Margaret Maurer-Fazio (Department of Economics, Bates College), Xin Meng (Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australia National University), and Hansheng Wang (Department of Sociology, Peking University).
10. Approximately half the firms had both migrant and laid-off workers. About one third of the firms had laid-off workers but no migrant employees. A smaller number of the enterprises (approximately 15%) had hired migrants and had never laid-off members of their urban-resident work force. The remainder of the firms hired only urban residents and had no laid-off workers on their rolls.
11. Zhongguo laodong tongji nianjian, 2000, p. 14.
12. The term 'returns to education' is used here in the economic sense of a return on an investment. That is, a return of 5% to an additional year of schooling, implies that investing in an additional year of schooling will, on average, raise incomes by 5%.
13. Xin Meng and Michael Kidd, 'Labor market reform and the changing structure of wage determination in China's state sector during the 1980s', Journal of Comparative Economics 25(3), (1997), pp. 403-421.
14. Margaret Maurer-Fazio, An Analysis of the Emerging Labor Market in the People's Republic of China and its Effect on Rates of Return to Investments in Education, Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh (1994).
15. See, for example, Margaret Maurer-Fazio, 'Education and earnings in China's transition to a market economy: Survey evidence from 1989 and 1992', China Economic Review 10(1), (1999), pp. 17-40
16. John Knight and Lina Song, 'Why urban wages differ in China', in Keith Griffin and Renwei Zhao, eds, The Distribution of Income in China (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993), pp. 216-284
17. and Li Shi and Bjorn Gustafsson, 'Zhongguo chengzhen zhigong shouru de xinbie chayi fenxi' ['An analysis of gender differences in urban workers' income'], in Zhao Ren Wei et al., eds, Zhongguo jumin shouru fenpei zai yanjiu: Jingji gaige he fazhan zhong de shouru fenpei [Further Research on the Distribution of Chinese Household Income: The Distribution of Income During Economic Reform and Development ] (Beijing: China Finance and Economics Publishing House, 1999), pp. 556-593.
18. See Junsen Zhang, Yaohui Zhao, Albert Park and Xiaoqing Song, 'Economic returns to education in urban China, 1988 to 2001', Journal of Comparative Economics 33(4), (2005), pp. 730-52 for evidence of increasing rates of return to education in urban China in the mid- and late-1990s.
19. Jacob Mincer, Schooling, Experience and Earnings (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974).
20. Health status in this data set is self-reported as poor, average, or good.
21. Margaret Maurer-Fazio et al., 'Inequality in the rewards for holding up half the sky: Gender wage gaps in China's urban labour market, 1988-1994', The China Journal 41, (January 1999), p. 83.
22. Zhang, Zhao, Park and Song report a dramatic and robust increase in the returns to education in urban China from 1988 to 2001 from 4.0 to 10.2% (see Zhang et al., 'Economic returns to education in urban China').
23. This likelihood of layoff is observed after weighting observations for probability of inclusion in the sample.
24. Fang Cai, 'The consistency of China statistics on employment: Stylized facts and implications for public policies', unpublished paper, Institute of Population and Labor Economics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (2004).
25. Margaret Maurer-Fazio and Dinh Ngan, 'Differential rewards to, and contributions of, education in urban China's segmented labor markets', Pacific Economic Review 9(3), (October 2004), pp. 173-189.