Inequality of Opportunity in China's Labor Earnings: The Gender Dimension

• Published date: 01 January 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/cwe.12266
• Author: Yixiao Zhou,Meiyan Wang,Jane Golley
• Date: 01 January 2019

©2019 Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

China & World Economy / 28–50, Vol. 27, No. 1, 2019

28

Inequality of Opportunity in China’s Labor Earnings:

The Gender Dimension

Jane Golley, Yixiao Zhou, Meiyan Wang*

Abstract

This paper investigates the inequality of opportunity in China’s labor earnings, dened

as the component of inequality determined by personal circumstances that lie beyond the

control of an individual, of which gender is one, as opposed to the component determined

by personal efforts. Using the Survey of Women’s Social Status in China (2010), we

measure the share of inequality of opportunity in the total inequality of individual labor

earnings for people aged 26–55 years, and separately for six birth cohorts and for female

and male subsamples. Gender is revealed as the single most important circumstance

determining nationwide individual labor earnings, with one’s region of residence,

father’s occupation, father’s education, birth cohort and holding rural or urban hukou

also playing signicant roles. A further investigation into the roles of circumstances and

personal efforts (including education level, occupation, Communist Party membership,

migration and marital status) conrms that circumstances play an alarmingly high role

in shaping labor earnings distribution in China, and reveals notable gender differences

that cannot be attributed to personal effort alone. These results provide the basis for

recommending ways to improve gender equality of opportunity in the future.

Key words: China, gender, inequality of opportunity

JEL codes: D31, D63, J16

I. Introduction

Compared to the millennia-long history and culture that traditionally favored men,

the establishment of the People’s Republic of China has led to marked improvement

in the socioeconomic status of Chinese women. During the Maoist era (1949–1976),

agricultural collectivization and the Great Leap Forward brought millions of Chinese

*Jane Golley, Acting Director, Australian Centre on China in the World, Australian National University,

Australia. Email: jane.golley@anu.edu.au; Yixiao Zhou, Lecturer, School of Economics, Finance and

Property, Curtin University, Australia. Email: yixiao.zhou@curtin.edu.au; Meiyan Wang, Professor, Institute

of Population and Labor Economics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, China. Email: wangmy@cass.

org.cn. This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 71473267 and

71642003).

©2019 Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

Inequality of Opportunity in China’s Labor Earnings 29

women into the productive sphere, where they were considered essential for socialist

construction and required to “hold up half the sky.” The principle of gender equality

was written into China’s Constitution in 1954, entitling women to “equal pay for equal

work,” with significant advances in marriage laws, paid maternity leave and other

protective policies favoring women. In the post-Mao era, successive leaders have

affirmed China’s commitment to “the basic national policy of equality between men

and women.” This was evident in President Xi Jinping’s address to the Global Leaders

Meeting on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment in September 2015, where

he, like Mao, stressed women’s important role in “holding up half the sky,” and called

for global efforts to ensure that women would share equally in the “achievements of

development” (MFA, 2015).

However, as in all countries across the globe, achieving gender equality in China

has been easier said than done. In urban China, despite a narrowing of the gender gap

in educational attainments in recent years – to the point where young urban Chinese

women now “out-educate” their male contemporaries (Li, 2010; Zhang and Chen,

2014; Golley and Kong, 2018) – there has not been a concomitant narrowing of the

gap in individual earnings. Instead, a number of studies have confirmed an increase

since the mid 1990s, much of which is attributed to gender discrimination rather than

observable factors, such as gender differences in human capital or occupational choices

(e.g. Wang and Cai, 2008; Zhang J. S. et al., 2008; Li et al., 2011). In rural China,

gaps in both education and earnings are even more substantial (e.g. Zhang et al., 2007;

Hannum et al., 2009; Zeng et al., 2012).

Of course, gender is not the sole dimension of the income inequalities that have

characterized China’s rapid growth and development since the late 1970s – well-

documented inequalities along regional, urban−rural and socioeconomic divides

have also been substantial. Recent overviews on the causes of income inequality in

China include Gustafsson et al. (2008), Li et al. (2013), Knight (2014) and Zhou and

Song (2016). Researchers in this area have also probed various causes in more detail.

Kanbur and Zhang (2005) and Golley (2007) focused on regional inequalities; Sicular

et al. (2007) examined rural−urban inequalities; Piketty et al. (2017) looked at wealth

inequality; and Golley and Kong (2013) probed inter-generational inequalities in

education. But what if gender was the most signicant of all of these? For women to

have an equal share in the “achievements of development,” fundamental changes would

need to occur.

This paper sets out to explore the factors that have contributed to inequality of

opportunity in China’s individual labor earnings, with a particular focus on gender.

The economic literature on inequality of opportunity begins with the premise that