Performance Pay in China: Gender Aspects

We provide an in‐depth analysis of gender differences in performance pay in China based on a unique dataset — the Life Histories and Social Change in Contemporary China — that provides information on the different components of pay including performance pay and base pay as well as a wide array of pay determining characteristic. The share of performance pay is documented and its determinants, including gender, analysed. Particular attention is paid to gender differences in the different dimensions of performance pay: the probability of receiving it; the magnitude conditional upon receiving it; and their product being the overall unconditional magnitude. Gender differences in these dimensions are decomposed into components due to male–female differences in the endowments of characteristics that explain these dimensions of pay, and gender differences that arise even when men and women have the same endowments of such characteristics with the later component, often taken to reflect discrimination.