Survey data from urban China in 2002 show levels of life satisfaction to have been low, but not exceptionally so, by international comparison. Many of the determinants of life satisfaction in urban ...China appear comparable to those for people in other countries. These include, inter alia, unemployment, income, marriage, sex, health, and age. Communist Party membership and political participation raised life satisfaction. People appeared fairly satisfied with economic growth and low inflation, and this contributed to their overall life satisfaction. There was dissatisfaction over pollution, but this—like job insecurity—does not appear to have impacted on life satisfaction.
Has China crossed the river? Appleton, Simon; Song, Lina; Xia, Qingjie
Journal of Comparative Economics,
12/2005, Letnik:
33, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
In this paper, we examine the determinants of urban wages in China from 1988 to 2002. We find increased returns to education but a decrease in the returns to experience. The 2002 data imply that the ...widening pure gender gap and the growth in the premium to Communist Party membership may have come to an end. The reform of the state-owned enterprise (SOE) sector and the shift in industrial structure out of heavy industry is shown to impact wages of workers within those sectors. We use recall panel data for 1998 to 2002 to provide fixed effects estimates of the impact of sector ownership, Communist Party membership and unemployment on wages.
Journal of Comparative Economics
33 (4) (2005) 644–663.
This paper estimates trends in absolute poverty in urban China using the Chinese Household Income Project surveys. Poverty incidence curves are plotted, showing lower poverty in 2002 than in 1988 ...irrespective of the poverty line chosen. Incomes of the poorest fell during 1988–95, contributing to a rise in inequality. However, inequality has been fairly constant thereafter. Models of the determination of income and poverty reveal widening differentials by education, sex, and Communist Party membership. Income from government anti-poverty programs has little impact on poverty, which has fallen almost entirely due to overall economic growth rather than redistribution.
As the Chinese Communist Party has loosened its grip in a more market-oriented economy, why have membership and the economic benefits of joining risen? We use three national household surveys over 11 ...years to answer this question for wages in urban China. Individual demand for Party membership is treated as an investment in 'political capital' that brings monetary rewards in terms of a wage premium that has risen in recent years. However, this does not explain why the wage premium is higher for the personal characteristics that reduce the probability of membership. Rationing with a scarcity value for members with those characteristics provides an explanation.
Boys are more likely than girls to attend school in rural China. There is evidence that gender equity is a “luxury good”; the demand for female schooling is more income elastic than that for male ...schooling. Maternal education generally has a stronger effect on primary school enrollment and on educational expenditure than paternal education does. However, maternal education has a weaker effect on girls’ enrollment in secondary school than paternal education does. There appears to be no monetary return to schooling for women, but a modest benefit for men. Households also appear to face a higher opportunity cost when enrolling young women than when enrolling young men.
In nationally representative household data from the 2008 Chinese Rural to Urban Migration Survey, nearly two thirds of rural-urban migrants found their employment through family members, relatives, ...friends or acquaintances. This paper investigates why the use of social network to find jobs is so prevalent among rural-urban migrants in China, and whether migrants face a wage penalty as a result of adopting this job search method. Using a switch regression approach, we find evidence of positive selection effects of the use of networks on wages. Users of networks tend to be older, to have migrated longer ago and to be less educated. In addition, married workers and those from villages with more out-migrant are more likely to use networks, while those without local residential registration status are less likely. Controlling for selectivity, we find a large negative impact of network use on wages. Using job contacts brings access to urban employment, but at the cost of markedly lower wages.
Abstract
We use Synthetic Control Methodology to estimate the output loss in Tunisia as a result of the “Arab Spring.” Our results suggest that the loss was 5.5 percent, 5.1 percent, and 6.4 percent ...of GDP in 2011, 2012, and 2013 respectively. These findings are robust to a series of tests, including placebo tests, and are consistent with those from an Autoregressive Distributed Lag Model of Tunisia’s economic growth. Moreover, we find that investment was the main channel through which the economy was adversely impacted by the Arab Spring.
The recent policy of labour retrenchment in state-owned enterprises in China (known as
xia gang) has important implications for both efficiency and equity. This paper examines the individual-level ...determinants and consequences of the
xia gang policy, using a survey conducted in the year 2000. As many as 11% of urban workers had been retrenched, and 53% of these remained unemployed. The risk of retrenchment was higher for women, the less educated, the low skilled, the middle-aged, and those employed by local government or urban collectives. Reemployment rates are low and imply that unemployment will be long-term. The duration of unemployment is longer for the unhealthy, the less educated, and women with young children. Unemployment benefit has no effect on the duration of unemployment. The income losses from retrenchment stem largely from the loss of earnings while unemployed. However, reemployed workers are paid less than if they were never retrenched.
This paper examines change in wage gaps in urban China from 1988 to 2008 by estimating quantile regressions on CHIPS data. It applies the Machado and Mata (2005) decomposition, finding sharp ...increases in inequality largely due to changes in the wage structure. During 2002–08, changes in the returns to education and experience have been equalizing. However, changes in other categories of wage differential—by sex, occupation, ownership, industrial sector, and province—widened inequality. The gender gap continued to rise, as did the gap between white collar and blue collar workers, and between manufacturing and other sectors.
Should teachers stay at home? Appleton, Simon; Morgan, W. John; Sives, Amanda
Journal of international development,
August 2006, Letnik:
18, Številka:
6
Journal Article
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