贸易自由化对中国城镇劳动力市场性别歧视的影响

贸易自由化既可缩小也可扩大性别工资差。绝大多数实证研究,例如Oosdendorp(2004),都采用的是较宏观的行业加总数据,并着重于职业性别工资差。然而,行业加总的职业工资不能控制教育水平和经验变量,因此很难判断性别工资差的变化到底来自个人特征因素还是贸易自由化。文章运用中国城镇居民家庭的微观数据,运用difference-in-difference的方法,在消除了不随时间改变的固定效应和随时间变化的系统冲击的基础上,检验了1988年到1995年中国第一次贸易自由化兴起时期,贸易开放度的变化对不同教育水平的性别工资差的影响。结果显示,这一时期贸易开放度和性别工资差之间的相互关系主要来源于进口开放度的变化:随着进口开放度的上升,低教育人群的性别工资差显著扩大,而高教育人群的性别工资差却呈现相反趋势。出口开放度的上升对低教育人群的性别工资差没有显著影响,但与进口开放度的上升一样,它缩小了高教育人群的性别工资差。

Effect of Trade Liberation on the Marketable Gender Discrimination to Town Labor in China

Theoretical and empirical studies predict that trade liberalization could either narrow or widen the gender wage gap. But most of the empirical studies use aggregate data and focus on the occupational gender wage gap. As mentioned in Oosdendorp (2004), one of their drawbacks is that aggregate data for occupational wage cannot control for education levels and experience, so that it is hard to tell whether the change in gender wage gap is due to personal characteristics or trade liberalization. By using two household surveys of China and difference-in-difference method, this paper examines the effects of change in openness on the change in residual log gender wage gaps for workers having different education levels between 1988 and 1995, the first upsurge of trade liberalization in China. Under the rational assumption that the difference in productivity between male and female does not change much overtime, the difference-in-difference method could eliminate the time invariant factors, one of which is the gender wage gap generated by productivity difference, so that the real gender wage gap generated by gender discrimination in the labor market. The empirical results show that the correlation between trade liberalization and gender rage gap came mostly from the import liberalization. With the liberation of import, the gender wage gap in the low educated (12 years of education and below) group is significantly widened, while that in the high educated group showed opposite trend. The export liberalization did not significantly affect the gender wage gap among low educated group, but with the liberation of import, it narrowed the gender wage gap among the high educated group.