88 lines
2.8 KiB
YAML
88 lines
2.8 KiB
YAML
abstract: 'Over the past few decades of economic reform, China''s labor markets have
|
|
|
|
been transformed to an increasingly market-driven system. China has two
|
|
|
|
segregated economies: the rural and urban. Understanding the shifting
|
|
|
|
nature of this divide is probably the key to understanding the most
|
|
|
|
important labor market reform issues of the last decades and the decades
|
|
|
|
ahead. From 1949, the Chinese economy allowed virtually no labor
|
|
|
|
mobility between the rural and urban sectors. Rural-urban segregation
|
|
|
|
was enforced by a household registration system called ``hukou.{''''}
|
|
|
|
Individuals born in rural areas receive ``agriculture hukou{''''} while
|
|
|
|
those born in cities are designated as ``nonagricultural hukou.{''''} In
|
|
|
|
the countryside, employment and income were linked to the commune-based
|
|
|
|
production system. Collectively owned communes provided very basic
|
|
|
|
coverage for health, education, and pensions. In cities, state-assigned
|
|
|
|
life-time employment, centrally determined wages, and a cradle-to-grave
|
|
|
|
social welfare system were implemented. In the late 1970s, China''s
|
|
|
|
economic reforms began, but the timing and pattern of the changes were
|
|
|
|
quite different across rural and urban labor markets. This paper focuses
|
|
|
|
on employment and wages in the urban labor markets, the interaction
|
|
|
|
between the urban and rural labor markets through migration, and future
|
|
|
|
labor market challenges. Despite the remarkable changes that have
|
|
|
|
occurred, inherited institutional impediments still play an important
|
|
|
|
role in the allocation of labor; the hukou system remains in place, and
|
|
|
|
72 percent of China''s population is still identified as rural hukou
|
|
|
|
holders. China must continue to ease its restrictions on rurala is an
|
|
|
|
element of urban migration, and must adopt policies to close the
|
|
|
|
widening rural-urban gap in education, or it risks suffering both a
|
|
|
|
shortage of workers in the growing urban areas and a deepening
|
|
|
|
urban-rural economic divide.'
|
|
affiliation: 'Meng, X (Corresponding Author), Australian Natl Univ, Res Sch Econ,
|
|
Coll Business \& Econ, Canberra, ACT, Australia.
|
|
|
|
Australian Natl Univ, Res Sch Econ, Coll Business \& Econ, Canberra, ACT, Australia.'
|
|
author: Meng, Xin
|
|
author-email: xin.meng@anu.edu.au
|
|
author_list:
|
|
- family: Meng
|
|
given: Xin
|
|
da: '2023-09-28'
|
|
doi: 10.1257/jep.26.4.75
|
|
eissn: 1944-7965
|
|
files: []
|
|
issn: 0895-3309
|
|
journal: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES
|
|
keywords-plus: URBAN CHINA; EDUCATION; INEQUALITY; POLICY; INCOME
|
|
language: English
|
|
month: FAL
|
|
number: '4'
|
|
number-of-cited-references: '73'
|
|
pages: 75-101
|
|
papis_id: 8ea1f0abf2283c9b1b3a58adad9bdd64
|
|
ref: Meng2012labormarket
|
|
times-cited: '230'
|
|
title: Labor Market Outcomes and Reforms in China
|
|
type: article
|
|
unique-id: WOS:000310776500005
|
|
usage-count-last-180-days: '12'
|
|
usage-count-since-2013: '100'
|
|
volume: '26'
|
|
web-of-science-categories: Economics
|
|
year: '2012'
|