Education’s role in determining worker incomes in China’s rapidly changing urban labor markets is investigated in this paper. Using worker data from a 1999-2000 urban enterprise survey, we examine the effects of education on the current earnings of continuously-employed urban workers, migrants, and laid off but subsequently re-employed workers, as well as on the most recent earnings of laid-off (but not subsequently re-employed) workers. We also decompose the earnings differentials between each of these groups of workers and then assess the contribution of education to explanations of the differentials. The empirical results demonstrate that educational attainment remains an important explanator of earnings differentials between institutionally-differentiated groups of workers in China’s urban labor markets. An interesting hierarchy of returns to education has developed. The education of migrants is generally poorly rewarded. The moderate returns to educational investments of the continuously-employed urban residents rank next. Re-employed urban residents experience the highest rewards to their education, especially those who used a competitive means to find their post-layoff employment. When we assess the earning differentials between groups using the continuously-employed urban residents as the basis of comparison, differences in educational attainments alone contribute between 16 and 52 percent of the explanation of the total inter-group wage gaps.
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Length: 32 pages Date of creation: 02 Jun 2002 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:wdi:papers:2002-508
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Find related papers by JEL classification: J20 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - General J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, and Vacancies - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search J71 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - Hiring and Firing O15 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration O53 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Asia including Middle East P23 - Economic Systems - - Socialist Systems and Transition Economies - - - Factor and Product Markets; Industry Studies; Population P36 - Economic Systems - - Socialist Institutions and Their Transitions - - - Consumer Economics; Health, Education, Welfare, and Poverty
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