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The evolution of the wage gap between rural migrants and the urban labour force in Chinese cities
Author(s) -
Zhang Dandan
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
australian journal of agricultural and resource economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.683
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1467-8489
pISSN - 1364-985X
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8489.12338
Subject(s) - cites , wage , earnings , poverty , urbanization , assimilation (phonology) , demographic economics , development economics , labour economics , geography , economic growth , economics , philosophy , linguistics , accounting , fishery , biology
An increasing earning gap between rural migrants and urban residents has recently aroused public concern about rising urban poverty asscociated with migration of rural people into Chinese cities. To address the issue, this paper explores the possibility of wage assimilation for rural migrants towards their urban counterparts and its determinants between 1999 and 2009, by applying an economic assimilation model to analyse a repeated cross‐sectional data for seven Chinese cites at the individual level. The results show that rural migrants' earnings do not assimilate to their urban counterparts, although the situation improves gradually over time. This implies that institutional and policy barriers impede the assimilation process of rural migrants, which supports the call for further labour market reforms.