Variation in Educational Returns of Floating Population across Cities in China

• In Event: 267 - Section on Sociology of Population Paper Session. Demography and Inequality

Abstract

It has been known widely that a true labor market had not formed and the returns to education were depressed in cities with high levels of economic growth in China. However, we argue that most people in earlier cohorts are still working and paid under the older payment system rather than relocated by the market, which might be hard to change. To see if the true labor market is forming, we need to check on the educational returns of those who joined the labor market after the start of the economic reform. Thus we conduct research on the floating workers to test if the relationship between educational return and the level of development still contradicts the traditional market theory in China. Higher educational return is observed for those working in more developed cities, which indicates the true labor market is forming in China and is relatively mature for floating workers.

Authors

• Menghan Zhao, University of Pennsylvania

• Yongai Jin, Renmin University of China