IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/femeco/v15y2009i3p163-190.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Women's Employment and Family Income Inequality during China's Economic Transition

Author

Listed:
  • Sai Ding
  • Xiao-yuan Dong
  • Shi Li

Abstract

Economic reforms and trade liberalization have brought profound changes to the Chinese labor market. In this paper, we apply the technique of decomposing the coefficient of variation to examine the impact of changes in married women's employment and earnings on income inequality among Chinese urban households. Using the Chinese Household Income Surveys from 1988, 1995, and 2002, we explore the differences between two phases of economic transition: the gradualist reform period (1988-1995) and the radical reform period (1995-2002). Our analysis shows that the public-sector labor retrenchment of the late 1990s has led to a drastic decline in the employment rates of women, especially those married to low-earning husbands, and the change in women's employment was a major force driving income inequality in post-restructuring urban China.

Suggested Citation

  • Sai Ding & Xiao-yuan Dong & Shi Li, 2009. "Women's Employment and Family Income Inequality during China's Economic Transition," Feminist Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(3), pages 163-190.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:femeco:v:15:y:2009:i:3:p:163-190
    DOI: 10.1080/13545700802526541
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13545700802526541
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/13545700802526541?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.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fan Gang & Mariarosa Lunati & David O’Connor, 1998. "Labour Market Aspects of State Enterprise Reform in China," OECD Development Centre Working Papers 141, OECD Publishing.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Meng, Bingchun & Huang, Yanning, 2017. "Patriarchal capitalism with Chinese characteristics: gendered discourse of ‘Double Eleven’ shopping festival," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 75196, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    2. Xiao-yuan Dong & Jin Feng & Yangyang Yu, 2017. "Relative Pay of Domestic Eldercare Workers in Shanghai, China," Feminist Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(1), pages 135-159, January.
    3. Xiao-yuan Dong & Jin Feng & Yangyang Yu, 2014. "Relative Pay and its Underlying Determinants for Domestic Eldercare Workers in Urban China," Departmental Working Papers 2014-01, The University of Winnipeg, Department of Economics.
    4. Liu, Qian, 2012. "Unemployment and labor force participation in urban China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 18-33.
    5. Ali T. Cem Başlevent, 2014. "Social Transfers and Income Inequality in Turkey: How Informative Is the Survey of Income and Living Conditions?," Ekonomi-tek - International Economics Journal, Turkish Economic Association, vol. 3(3), pages 23-42, September.
    6. Shuang Chen, 2022. "The Positive Effect of Women’s Education on Fertility in Low-Fertility China," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 38(1), pages 125-161, March.
    7. Cem Baslevent, 2016. "Social Transfers and Income Inequality in Turkey: How Important is the Gender Dimension?," Working Papers 1013, Economic Research Forum, revised Jun 2016.
    8. Dong, Xiao-yuan & Pandey, Manish, 2012. "Gender and labor retrenchment in Chinese state owned enterprises: Investigation using firm-level panel data," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 385-395.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Thierry Mayer, 2006. "Policy Coherence for Development : A Background paper on Foreign Direct Investment," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-01065640, HAL.
    2. Grosfeld, Irena & Kolenikov, Stanislav & Paltseva, Elena & Sénik-Leygonie, Claudia & Verdier, Thierry, 1999. "Dynamism and Inertia on the Russian Labour Market: A Model of Segmentation," CEPR Discussion Papers 2224, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Chamon, Marcos & Liu, Kai & Prasad, Eswar, 2013. "Income uncertainty and household savings in China," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 164-177.
    4. Yuming Fu & Stuart A. Gabriel, 2001. "Transistions to Private Employment: Earnings Determination, Worker Employment Preferences, and Job Turnover in Urban China," Working Paper 8636, USC Lusk Center for Real Estate.
    5. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/10184 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. repec:spo:wpecon:info:hdl:2441/10184 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Grosfeld, Irena & Senik-Leygonie, Claudia & Verdier, Thierry & Kolenikov, Stanislav & Paltseva, Elena, 2001. "Workers' Heterogeneity and Risk Aversion: A Segmentation Model of the Russian Labor Market," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 230-256, June.
    8. Guang, Y., 1999. "Facing unemployment : urban layoffs and the way out in post-reform China (1993-1999) : an empirical and theoretical analysis," ISS Working Papers - General Series 19053, International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam (ISS), The Hague.
    9. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/10184 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Yuming Fu & Stuart A.Gabriel, 2000. "Location, Market Segmentation, and Returns to Human Capital: The Privatization of China's Labor Markets," Working Paper 8650, USC Lusk Center for Real Estate.
    11. Xiaolan Fu & V.N.Balasubramanyam, 2004. "Exports, FDI, Growth Of Small Rural Enterprises And Employment In China," Working Papers wp286, Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge.
    12. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/10184 is not listed on IDEAS

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Income inequality; assortative mating; women's employment; China; JEL Codes: D13; J16; P21;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D13 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Production and Intrahouse Allocation
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • P21 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist and Transition Economies - - - Planning, Coordination, and Reform

    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:femeco:v:15:y:2009:i:3:p:163-190. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 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/RFEC20 .

    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.