IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/
MyIDEAS: Log in (now much improved!) to save this article

Has China run out of surplus labour?

Author Info

Listed author(s):
  • Golley, Jane
  • Meng, Xin

Abstract

Many recent studies claim that China has reached a Lewisian ‘turning point’ in economic development, signalled by rising wages in urban areas and the exhaustion of rural surplus labour. In this paper we show that despite some evidence of rising nominal urban unskilled wages between 2000 and 2009, there is little in the data to suggest that this wage increase has been caused by unskilled labour shortages. China still has abundant under-employed workers with very low income in the rural sector. We argue that China's unique institutional and policy-induced barriers to migration have both prevented many rural workers from migrating to cities and also reduced the migrants' length of stay. We project that under alternative institutional settings, the migrant stock could easily be doubled from the current 150million to 300million by increasing either the average length of migrant stay, or the migrant inflow, or both.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.

File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1043951X11000629
Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.

Article provided by Elsevier in its journal China Economic Review.

Volume (Year): 22 (2011)
Issue (Month): 4 ()
Pages: 555-572

as
in new window

Handle: RePEc:eee:chieco:v:22:y:2011:i:4:p:555-572
DOI: 10.1016/j.chieco.2011.07.006
Contact details of provider: Web page: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/chieco

Keywords: Chinese labour markets; Surplus labour; Rural-urban migration;

Find related papers by JEL classification:

  • O14 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Industrialization; Manufacturing and Service Industries; Choice of Technology

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:

as
in new window


  1. Démurger, Sylvie & Gurgand, Marc & Li, Shi & Yue, Ximing, 2009. "Migrants as second-class workers in urban China? A decomposition analysis," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(4), pages 610-628, December.
  2. "Minami, Ryoshin", 1968. "The Turning Point in the Japanese Economy," Economic Review, Hitotsubashi University, vol. 19(3), pages 220-229, July.
  3. Nazrul Islam & Kazuhiko Yokota, 2008. "Lewis Growth Model and China's Industrialization ," Asian Economic Journal, East Asian Economic Association, vol. 22(4), pages 359-396, December.
  4. Sylvie DÉMURGER & Martin FOURNIER & Yi CHEN, 2007. "The Evolution Of Gender Earnings Gaps And Discrimination In Urban China, 1988-95," The Developing Economies, Institute of Developing Economies, vol. 45(1), pages 97-121.
  5. Chun-Chung Au & J. Vernon Henderson, 2006. "Are Chinese Cities Too Small?," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 73(3), pages 549-576.
  6. Knight, John & Deng, Quheng & Li, Shi, 2011. "The puzzle of migrant labour shortage and rural labour surplus in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 585-600.
  7. Ryoshin Minami, 1968. "The Turning Point in the Japanese Economy," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 82(3), pages 380-402.
  8. John Knight & Lina Song & Jia Huaibin, 1999. "Chinese rural migrants in urban enterprises: Three perspectives," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(3), pages 73-104.
  9. Gustav Ranis, 2004. "ARTHUR LEWIS's CONTRIBUTION TO DEVELOPMENT THINKING AND POLICY," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 72(6), pages 712-723, December.
  10. Leng Lee & Xin Meng, 2010. "Why Don’t More Chinese Migrate from the Countryside? Institutional Constraints and the Migration Decision," Chapters,in: The Great Migration, chapter 2 Edward Elgar Publishing.
  11. Meng, Xin & Zhang, Junsen, 2001. "The Two-Tier Labor Market in Urban China: Occupational Segregation and Wage Differentials between Urban Residents and Rural Migrants in Shanghai," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 485-504, September.
  12. Tao Ran & Ray Brooks, 2003. "China's Labor Market Performance and Challenges," IMF Working Papers 03/210, International Monetary Fund.
  13. Zhang, Junsen & Zhao, Yaohui & Park, Albert & Song, Xiaoqing, 2005. "Economic returns to schooling in urban China, 1988 to 2001," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 730-752, December.
  14. Simon Appleton & John Knight & Lina Song & Qingjie Xia, 2004. "Contrasting paradigms: segmentation and competitiveness in the formation of the chinese labour market," Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 2(3), pages 185-205.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.

as
in new window


Cited by:
This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Access and download statistics

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:chieco:v:22:y:2011:i:4:p:555-572. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Dana Niculescu)

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

This information is provided to you by IDEAS at the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis using RePEc data.