scholarly journals Returns to Education in Different Job Locations for Off-Farm Wage Employment: Evidence from China

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 455
Author(s):  
Weidong Wang ◽  
Yongqing Dong ◽  
Yunli Bai ◽  
Renfu Luo ◽  
Linxiu Zhang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Human Capital ◽  
Labor Markets ◽  
Labor Force ◽  
Returns To Education ◽  
Rural China ◽  
Rural Labor ◽  
Wage Employment ◽  
Big Cities ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
Representative Samples

In this study, we explore the returns to education among different job locations for off-farm wage employment using nationally representative samples from rural China. Through a series of robustness checks, we conclude that there is heterogeneity in returns to education for different job locations within the rural labor force. Specifically, we have found that the returns to education for laborers in big cities are significantly higher than those for laborers working both in ordinary cities and within counties. That is to say, the utility of education is better-reflected in big cities. We conclude that the returns to education in big cities are 5.4 percent, while the returns to education are no more than 1 percent in ordinary cities and within counties. These results suggest that labor markets in the underdeveloped regions of China have factors that undermine the productivity effect of human capital.

The evolution of China's rural labor market in the 21st century: an empirical study based on nationally representative survey data at the household level

2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tonglong Zhang ◽  
Xiaowen Huang ◽  
Lina Zhang ◽  
Linxiu Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Human Capital ◽  
Labor Market ◽  
Labor Markets ◽  
Representative Survey ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Rural Labor ◽  
Household Level ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
And Migration

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to assess the development of China's rural labor markets and the identification of the important factors that affect rural labor's off-farm employment and migration.Design/methodology/approachBased on a set of long-term panel data, this paper makes a clear judgment on the trend of rural labor transfer. High-quality survey design makes it possible to examine the development of the rural labor market from multiple dimensions. Adding household fixed effects to the empirical model alleviates endogenous problems.FindingsThe authors find that the increasing trend toward off-farm employment, which is dominated by migration, has continued. There are some other important findings: (1). young male workers dominated off-farm employment, but the gap between groups continues to narrow; (2). the structure of employment is a good response to the economic transformation and (3). the quality of off-farm laborers, especially in terms of human capital, has also enhanced significantly and has continued to support off-farm employment and migration. These findings all indicate that the China's rural labor markets have been constantly improving in recent years, although there is still segmentation.Originality/valueIt is the first paper that uses a nationally representative survey data to address the development of rural labor market in the 21st century. With the help of a long-term panel data structure and by controlling the household-level fixed-effect, the authors obtained a deeper and more robust conclusion. Specifically, this article finds that whether it is for the off-farm transfer or the migration, the influence of labor age, gender, human capital and marital status is gradually weakening.

scholarly journals The face of internet recruitment: Evaluating the labor markets of online crowdsourcing platforms in China

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 205316801875912 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaojun Li ◽  
Weiyi Shi ◽  
Boliang Zhu
Keyword(s):  
Labor Markets ◽  
The Political ◽  
Critical Question ◽  
National Surveys ◽  
Subject Recruitment ◽  
Internet Users ◽  
The Face ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
Internet Recruitment ◽  
Representative Samples

Zhubajie/Witmart and other online crowdsourcing platforms have proliferated in China, and researchers have increasingly used them for subject recruitment. One critical question remains, however: what is the generalizability of the findings based on these online samples? In this study, we benchmark the demography of an online sample from Zhubajie to nationally representative samples and replicate commonly asked attitudinal questions in national surveys. We find that online respondents differ from the general population in many respects. Yet, the differences become smaller when comparison is made with the internet users in benchmark surveys. Importantly, when predicting attitudes, our online sample with post-stratification weights is able to produce similar coefficients in most cases as these internet-active subsamples. Our study suggests that online crowdsourcing platforms can be a useful tool for subject recruitment, especially when researchers are interested in making inferences about Chinese netizens. We further analyze the political and social desirability issues of online subjects. Finally, we discuss caveats of using crowdsourcing samples in China.

Spatial Labor Markets and the Rural Labor Force

1996 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 206-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
JACK C. STABLER ◽  
M. ROSE OLFERT ◽  
JONATHAN B. GREUEL
Keyword(s):  
Labor Markets ◽  
Labor Force ◽  
Rural Labor

scholarly journals Wages Over the Course of Structural Transformation: Evidence from India

2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-158
Author(s):  
Rana Hasan ◽  
Rhea Molato
Keyword(s):  
Labor Force ◽  
Survey Data ◽  
Structural Transformation ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Formal Sector ◽  
Labor Force Survey ◽  
Wage Regressions ◽  
Wage Employment ◽  
Big Cities

This paper uses labor force survey data from India for 2000 and 2012 to examine how wages behave over the course of structural transformation. We find that wage employment between 2000 and 2012 displays the patterns one would expect for an economy undergoing structural transformation, with employment shares shifting from agriculture to industry and services, and from rural to urban areas and larger cities within urban areas. These shifts, as well as a shift to nonroutine occupations and routine manual occupations outside of agriculture, are associated with an improvement in average wages. Finally, simple Mincerian wage regressions confirm that jobs in larger firms and big cities are associated with significantly higher wages—even more so for women. Overall, our results are consistent with the notion that policies that encourage the expansion of the formal sector and employment in larger firms are crucial for development.

scholarly journals Sheepskin Effects in the Returns to Education in a Developing Country

1991 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tayybb Shabbir
Keyword(s):  
Human Capital ◽  
Developing Country ◽  
Basic Education ◽  
Returns To Education ◽  
Educational Status ◽  
Step Function ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Log Linear

This paper tests for the sheepskin or diploma effects in the rates of return to education in a developing country, Pakistan; presumably the only study for me country that explicitly investigates this important question. One reason forthis paucity of work may have been lack of appropriate data on an individual's educational status. The Mincerian log -linear specification of the earnings function is generalized to allow for the possibility that the returns to education increase discontinuously for the ~ears when diplomas/degrees are awarded. This provision is made in three different ways, i.e., by (a) introducing dummy variables for diploma years, (b) by specifying a disoontinuous spline function, and (c) by specifying a step function. Empirical evidence based on a nationally representative sample of male earners shows that substantial and statistically significant sheepskin effects exist at four important certification levels in Pakistan, namely, Matric, Intennediate, Bachelor's, and Master's. This froding is consistent with the screening rather than the convential human capital view of the role of education. However, it should be noted that while diplomas seem to matter, it is not true that only diplomas maUer; since even after controlling for diploma years the schooling coefficient, albeit smaller than before, is still substantial. Again, regarding the diploma effects, another interesting froding is that such effects are not significant in case of the Primary and the Middle levels of schooling. In tenns of the policy implications, it follows that, in the case of Pakistan, education is an important and significant influence on the individual earnings. However, to the extent that the diploma effects are significant, the potential for education as a source of enhancing worker productivity is lessened, thus reducing the scope of an activist public policy in this regard. This is particularly true for the Secondary levels of education. In fact, the frodings suppon a reallocation of the available public funds away from the teniary/higher education and towards the basic education, where the productivity enhancing human capital effects are relatively more apparent.

Labor Force Participation in Southern Rural Labor Markets

1977 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 266-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
Loren C. Scott ◽  
Lewis H. Smith ◽  
Brian Rungeling
Keyword(s):  
Labor Markets ◽  
Labor Force ◽  
Labor Force Participation ◽  
Rural Labor

Changes in returns to education for off-farm wage employment: evidence from rural China

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Weidong Wang ◽  
Yongqing Dong ◽  
Renfu Luo ◽  
Yunli Bai ◽  
Linxiu Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Returns To Education ◽  
Tertiary Education ◽  
Rural China ◽  
Ordinary Least Squares ◽  
High Rate ◽  
Wage Determination ◽  
Heckman Selection Model ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Nationally Representative

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the role of education in the labor market and to understand how returns to education change over time in rural China.Design/methodology/approachUsing nationally representative survey data from 2004 to 2015, this study provides insights on wage determination in the labor market and examines how the returns to education in rural China differ with time and educational endowment. This study applies ordinary least squares estimation and the Heckman selection model to estimate the returns to education.FindingsThe returns to education decreased during the observed years from more than 6 percent in 2004 to only about 3 percent in 2011, rising to nearly 4 percent in 2015. The overall trend is robust and observed within groups defined by education. Additionally, the returns to education vary greatly with educational endowment. Tertiary education has always maintained a high rate of returns at nearly 10 percent, while returns to senior high school education and below have gradually diminished.Originality/valueThe authors believe that the results will not only enrich studies on the returns to education in rural China, but also provide a basis for diagnosing the changes of rural labor market in the early twenty-first century.

scholarly journals Human Capital and China’s Future Growth

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hongbin Li ◽  
Prashant Loyalka ◽  
Scott Rozelle ◽  
Binzhen Wu
Keyword(s):  
Growth Rate ◽  
Human Capital ◽  
Labor Force ◽  
College Education ◽  
Policy Recommendations ◽  
Rural Labor ◽  
Rural Workers ◽  
Urban Workers ◽  
Look Ahead

In this paper, we consider the sources and prospects for economic growth in China with a focus on human capital. First, we provide an overview of the role that labor has played in China's economic success. We then describe China's hukou policy, which divides China's labor force into two distinct segments, one composed of rural workers and the other of urban workers. For the rural labor force, we focus on the challenges of raising human capital by both increasing basic educational attainment rates as well as the quality of education. For the urban labor force, we focus on the issues of further expanding enrollment in college education as well as improving the quality of college education. We use a regression model to show the typical relationship between human capital and output in economies around the world and demonstrate how that relationship has evolved since 1980. We show that China has made substantial strides both in the education level of its population and in the way that education is being rewarded in its labor markets. However, as we look ahead, our results imply that China may find it impossible to maintain what appears to be its desired growth rate of 7 percent in the next 20 years; a growth rate of 3 percent over the next two decades seems more plausible. Finally, we present policy recommendations, which are rooted in the belief that China continues to have substantial room to improve the human capital of its labor force.

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