We study how the migration decision of young women in rural China is shaped by the return arrangement and opportunities of college education. Women outnumbered men in young rural-urban migrants in the early 2000s, but the surplus of young women has recently disappeared. We propose that the...

This paper analyzes the regional variation of minimum wage in China. We first introduce the institutional background of China's minimum wage policy, and then describe the regional variation of the minimum wages using detailed minimum wage data since the late 1990s. Large regional variation...

We use census and household survey data to document China's educational assortative marriage and its evolution between 1990 and 2009. Empirical results suggest that men are increasingly likely to marry with women with similar education levels in China since the early 1990s, which is also true...

China has long aimed to restrict population growth in large cities but encourages growth in small and medium-sized cities. At the same time, various government policies favor large cities. We conjecture that larger cities in China have more urban amenities and a better quality of life. We thus...

The rapid and massive increase in rural-to-urban worker flows to the coast of China has drawn recent attention to the welfare of migrants working in urban regions, particularly to their working conditions and pay; serious concern is raised regarding pay discrimination against rural migrants....

We document and discuss the implications of a sharp increase in the regional dispersion of skill premia in China in recent years. This has previously been little noted or discussed. We use three urban household surveys for 1995, 2002, and 2007 and estimate skill premia at provincial and city...

We use three waves of urban household survey from 1995 to 2007 to investigate the trends of residual inequality and its determinants. First, we find that the enlargement in both the overall and residual inequality was larger at the upper half of the wage distributions between 2002 and 2007....

We use household surveys from 1995, 2002, and 2007 to examine how changes in job structure contributed to China¡¯s rising urban wage inequality, considering three job characteristics: occupation, industry, and firm ownership. The explanatory power of job structure for wage inequality increased...

We document the sharp expansion of higher education in China beginning in 1999 and analyze its impacts on the unemployment of college graduates, using nationally representative population surveys from 2000 and 2005. We show that the expansion policy has increased the probability of college...

This paper analyzes the regional variation of minimum wage in China. We first introduce the institutional background of China's minimum wage policy, and then describe the regional variation of the minimum wages using detailed minimum wage data since the late 1990s. Large regional variation...