Gender Wage Gap in Urban China

This paper analyses the gender wage gap and returns to education in urban China using data collected from Fangshan, Beijing. The traditional Oaxaca decomposition shows that the unexplained part seems to dominate the gender wage gap in urban China. The Appleton decomposition, which takes into account sectoral location, shows that the gender gap is mostly within sector and most of the intra-sector wage gap is unexplained. The gender pay differential due to sectoral location is small; in fact, the overall sectoral location favours female in urban China.