IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/rcejxx/v11y2018i2p108-125.html

The role of China’s household registration system in the urban-rural income differential

Author

Listed:
  • Ernest Boffy-Ramirez
  • Soojae Moon

Abstract

Together with the rapid growth of the Chinese economy, there has been a growing divide between the earnings of urban and rural residents. This paper focuses on China’s household registration system, or ‘hukou’, as a potential source of the earnings gap. Using multiple waves of data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey from 1993 to 2011, we take advantage of variation in hukou status generated by individual-level changes. We control for fixed individual-specific characteristics that determine earnings and estimate an urban hukou ‘premium’. Urban hukou holders earn almost 30% more than rural hukou holders, but after we account for individual fixed characteristics, the urban hukou premium drops to 6–8%. We also find important differences between men and women. The empirical evidence indicates the hukou system is a component of the urban-rural earnings differential, but its importance should not be overstated. The elimination of the hukou system alone cannot address long-standing inequities in access to social services between rural and urban populations.

Suggested Citation

  • Ernest Boffy-Ramirez & Soojae Moon, 2018. "The role of China’s household registration system in the urban-rural income differential," China Economic Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(2), pages 108-125, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:rcejxx:v:11:y:2018:i:2:p:108-125
    DOI: 10.1080/17538963.2018.1453103
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/17538963.2018.1453103
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/17538963.2018.1453103?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Wang, Yueyue & Bai, Hengrui, 2023. "The impact and regional heterogeneity analysis of tourism development on urban-rural income gap," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 1539-1548.
    2. Liao, Yu & Zhang, Junfu, 2021. "Hukou status, housing tenure choice and wealth accumulation in urban China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J30 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - General
    • J80 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Standards - - - General
    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration
    • R23 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:rcejxx:v:11:y:2018:i:2:p:108-125. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/rcej .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.