IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/mes/chinec/v50y2017i6p425-433.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Informal Employment and China’s Economic Development

Author

Listed:
  • Ying Chen
  • Zhun Xu

Abstract

We measure the size of informal employment using both labor market as well as energy consumption approaches. We find that the share of informal employment in total employment was increasingly most of the time between the mid-1990s and mid-2000s, and started steadily decreasing after that until now. This has two contradicting implications for the Chinese economy. On the one hand, it is good news for China’s progress in human development as the process of formalization often brings better income and welfare. On the other hand, for China’s capitalism this could be bad news since the labor costs are likely to continue increasing with a decline in the reserve army of labor.

Suggested Citation

  • Ying Chen & Zhun Xu, 2017. "Informal Employment and China’s Economic Development," Chinese Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(6), pages 425-433, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:mes:chinec:v:50:y:2017:i:6:p:425-433
    DOI: 10.1080/10971475.2017.1380115
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/10971475.2017.1380115
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/10971475.2017.1380115?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 search for a different version of it.

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Rayees Ahmad Sheikh & Sarthak Gaurav & Trupti Mishra, 2021. "Race among equals? An inquiry into the segmentation of Indian labor market," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(4), pages 2180-2206, November.
    2. Tshepiso Gaetsewe, 2020. "Characteristics of Firms in Botswana's Informal Economy," Working Papers 74, Botswana Institute for Development Policy Analysis.
    3. Devesh Roy & Sunil Saroj & Mamata Pradhan, 2022. "Nature of employment and outcomes for urban labor: evidence from the latest labor force surveys in India," Indian Economic Review, Springer, vol. 57(1), pages 165-221, June.
    4. Facundo Quiroga‐Martínez & Esteban Fernández‐Vázquez, 2021. "Education as a key to reduce spatial inequalities and informality in Argentinean regional labour markets," Regional Science Policy & Practice, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 13(1), pages 177-189, February.
    5. Shashwati Banerjee & Kishor Goswami, 2020. "Self-employed or Paid Employed: Who can Earn more among the Slum Dwellers and Why?," Progress in Development Studies, , vol. 20(1), pages 7-25, January.
    6. Danquah Michael & Schotte Simone & Sen Kunal, 2021. "Informal work in sub-Saharan Africa: Dead end or stepping-stone?," IZA Journal of Development and Migration, Sciendo & Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 12(1), pages 1-44, January.
    7. Mpendulo Harold Thulare & Inocent Moyo & Sifiso Xulu, 2021. "Systematic Review of Informal Urban Economies," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(20), pages 1-18, October.
    8. Fareena Noor Malhi, 2024. "Invisible No More: Unmasking the Underestimated Female Labour Market Work," South Asia Economic Journal, Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka, vol. 25(2), pages 158-183, September.
    9. Mustafizur Rahman & Debapriya Bhattacharya & Md Al-Hasan, 2019. "Dimensions of Informality in Bangladesh Labour Market and the Consequent Wage Penalty," South Asia Economic Journal, Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka, vol. 20(2), pages 224-247, September.

    More about this item

    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:mes:chinec:v:50:y:2017:i:6:p:425-433. 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/MCES20 .

    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.