农村劳动力迁移与中国工资收入不平等的地区差异:来自2005年全国人口抽样调查的证据

利用2005年全国1%人口抽样调查数据研究中国各地区农村劳动力流动和地区(县/区)内部工资性收入不平等的关系。中国地区间的差异是个人工资收入不平等最突出的决定因素,而地区内不平等程度也存在着很大的差别。农村劳动力人口的迁入有助于降低区内的收入不平等,而迁出则起相反的作用,而且这两种作用在县、县级市和市辖区间存在着显著差别。在研究中国劳动力流动与地区内和地区间的不平等关系时,应该从迁入、迁出两个角度分析其影响,并将城乡分割的二元劳动力市场状况考虑进来。     

户籍制度扭曲及放松对经济的影响:理论与实证

户籍制度是我国劳动力流动的主要障碍.那么,当前我国的户籍扭曲程度几何?户籍制度放松对经济又会有怎样的影响?对这些问题的回答将有助于政府评估户籍制度改革的空间和经济效益.文章在Hansen和Prescott(2002)的两部门劳动力流动模型基础上,将工人分为农业和非农户口,引入户籍扭曲因子,构建两部门两类工人的户籍扭曲模型;然后,使用1984?2013年宏观经济数据度量户籍扭曲程度,并对2013年我国户籍制度逐渐放松过程中经济变量的变化进行模拟;最后,文章建立了包含"农业与非农"和"本地与外地"户籍差异的省份异质性户籍扭曲模型.研究表明:(1)经济和户籍制度改革的不同步导致了1984?2013年我国户籍扭曲程度呈现倒"U"形变化,且相较于韩国尚有较大的改善空间;(2)以韩国为参照,若2013年我国户籍制度完全放开,经济达到均衡时,农业部门和非农部门的就业人数将分别下降58.83%和上升26.92%,工资率将分别上升19.44%和下降6.77%,社会增加值将增长15.33%,这说明社会经济效率将得到提升,贫富差距将缩小.文章丰富和完善了户籍扭曲的理论模型,从减少劳动力流动摩擦的视角为政府制定相关政策提供了参考.     

中国的永久移民

中国的户口制度阻碍了农村居民向城市的迁移。然而,农村居民仍能通过接受较好的教育、提干或参军等方式获得城市户口。利用2002年的大样本调查,我们发现永久移民的数量大约为1亿,约占现今城市居民的20%。与留在农村的农民相比,永久移民的经济状况得到了很大的改善。成为永久移民的概率与父母教育水平、汉族身份、父母党员身份等正相关。永久移民的经济状况与获得户口时的年龄有关。较年轻时就获得户口的永久移民的收入要高于城市原住民,较晚获得户口的永久移民的收入则要低于城市原住民。尽管大部分永久移民成功地融入了城市生活,但那些通过非职业途径获得户口的永久移民,却远非如此。     

The Hukou and Land Tenure Systems as Two Middle Income Traps--The Case of Modern China

China＇s prevailing hukou （household registration） system and land tenure system seem to be very different in their applications. In fact, they both function to deny the exit right of rural residents from a rural community. Under these systems, rural residents are not allowed to freely exit from collectives if they do not want to lose their entitlements, such as their rights to using collectively owned land and their land-based properties. Farmers are neither allowed to sell their houses to outsiders, nor allowed to sell to outsiders their rights to contracting a piece of land from the collective where their households are registered. For migrant workers from rural areas, it is extremely difficult for them to obtain an urban hukou with all its associated entitlements at an urban locality where they currently work and live. The combined effect of the two systems leads to serious distortions in labor and land markets, resulting in discrimination against migrant workers, sprawling yet exclusive urbanization, housing bubbles, and depressed domestic demand. These distortions further entrench the existing and much widened urban/rural divide. Unless these two systems are thoroughly reformed, the rural residents in Chinese mainland will be trapped in their comparatively much lower income and remain unable to share the gains from the agglomeration effects of urbanization.     

Which Type of Urbanization Better Matches China＇s Factor Endowment： A Comparison of Population-Intensive Old Puxi and Land-Capital-Intensive New Pudong

Based on a comparative study of New-Pudong （East Shanghai） and Old-Puxi （West Shanghai） in their respective ability to absorb rural migrants, the very essence of urbanization, this paper finds that, constrained by the current hukou （household registration） system and land tenure system, although New-Pudong has emerged as one of the most modernized urban areas in the world, it did so under an urbanization model that is government-dominant and characterized by high land-intensity and capital-intensity. This model represents a serious mismatch in terms of China＇s factor endowment that is characterized with a large but relatively poor rural population. In sharp contrast, guided by the market mechanism under private land ownership and free migration, Old-Puxi emerged as an urbanization model that was very adaptable to China＇s factor endowment and stage of development. Therefore, as a model of endogenous urbanization, Old-Puxi is more efficient and inclusive, at the same time more sustainable economically and environmentally, and for this reason more applicable to China at a time when China needs to urbanize most of its rural population urgently to avoid the further worsening of the rural/urban divide and income disparity.     

Migration,self‐selection and income distributions

Self‐selection in rural–urban migration is examined using three datasets from rural and urban China in 2002. We construct a migrant sample including both migrants who converted their hukou status from rural to urban (permanent migrants) and those who did not (temporary migrants). We find a strong positive selection for permanent migrants, but the selection for temporary migrants is ambiguous. We reach these conclusions by comparing migrants' counterfactual wage densities, assuming they are paid as rural local workers, to actual wage densities of rural local workers. Our results imply that permanent migration has negative effects on rural human capital accumulation and income levels.     

Earnings, Education, and Fixed-Term Contracts

We explore the relationship between earnings, education, and fixed‐term contracts using data from the 1997 British Social Attitudes Survey. We find that the log hourly wage of workers employed under such contracts is approximately 13% lower than that of their ‘permanent’ counterparts, even after controlling for a plethora of personal and job characteristics. Standard decompositions indicate that the vast majority of this differential (more than 70%) is attributable to price effects, which may reflect discrimination on the part of the employer. Such findings may, therefore, suggest that employment protection is appropriate for individuals employed under fixed‐term contracts.     

Modeling migration barriers in a two-sector framework: A welfare analysis of the hukou reform in China

The present paper constructs a two-sector labor market model for China featuring endogenous internal labor mobility and heterogeneous costs of migration induced by the Chinese household registration system (hukou). The main novelty of our model is to divide migrants into those with more family responsibilities and those with fewer to explain the empirical fact that almost all young people with rural hukou have migrated to cities, while people who stay in the rural area are older and have more family responsibilities. We conduct two policy experiments using the model: one experiment concerned with reducing costs of living for younger migrants and the other for older migrants. The main results are that the first policy would unambiguously increase social welfare, while the reduced-cost policy for older migrants would reduce poverty and inequality although some urban natives may experience a wage reduction.     

国家职业资格证书、工人技能水平和收入效应——来自5家制造型企业21个生产车间的经验证据

推行国家职业资格证书是我国劳动就业政策的重要内容,也是广大劳动者非学历职业教育的主要方式,对加强技能人才培养、促进劳动力市场建设等方面具有重要意义。本文利用5家制造型企业21个生产车间的调查数据,对国家职业资格证书与工人的技能水平和年收入之间的关系进行了研究。研究发现,获得国家职业资格证书的工人在技能水平上显著高于无证工人,证书等级越高,技能水平越高。与无证工人相比,初级工和中级工证书的收入效应约为9.5%,高级工证书的收入效应为11.0%,技师及以上等级证书的收入效应显著上升至24.0%。进一步的分析揭示,初级工、中级工和高级工证书的收入效应主要是因为工人技能水平提高带来的;技师以上等级证书的收入效应一方面来源于工人技能水平的提高,另一方面则是由一些非技能因素造成的。     

Estimating returns to education using twins in urban China

This paper empirically estimates the return to education using twins data that the authors collected from urban China. Our ordinary least-squares estimate shows that one year of schooling increases an individual's earnings by 8.4%. If we use a within-twin fixed effects model, the return is reduced to 2.7%, but rises to 3.8% after the correction of measurement error. These results suggest that a large portion of the estimated returns to education is due to omitted ability or the family effect. We further investigate why the true return is low and the omitted ability bias high, and find evidence showing that it may be a consequence of China's education system, which is highly selective and exam oriented. More specifically, we find that high school education may mainly serve as a mechanism to select college students, but as a human capital investment per se it has low returns in terms of earnings. In contrast, both vocational school education and college education have a large return that is comparable to that found in the United States.