Occupational segregation and earnings inequality: Rural migrants and local workers in urban China

Zhang, Zhuoni; Wu, Xiaogang

doi:10.1016/j.ssresearch.2016.06.020

Cited by 124 publications

(65 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…Urban residents often receive the most and best benefits from local governments (e.g., pension, healthcare, education, housing); rural residents receive fewer benefits than urban residents do, but still get more than migrants (whether holding urban or rural nonlocal hukou), who are usually not eligible for the welfare benefits and social entitlements in their destination areas. Moreover, rural hukou holders, especially rural migrants, are commonly discriminated against in the labor market, thus receiving lower wages, fewer employment opportunities, lowerstatus occupations, and lower job security than their urban counterparts (Lu and Wang, 2013;Zhang and Wu, 2017).…”

Section: Background and Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Chinese Dream: Hukou, Social Mobility, and Trust in Government

Huang

2020

Social Science Quarterly

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Objective Social mobility plays an important role in stabilizing the political order. This article leverages China's hukou (household registration) reforms to examine the effects of state‐engineered social mobility on individuals’ trust in the government. Methods Using China General Social Survey data for 2010 and entropy balancing for causal effects, this article provides empirical evidence for the attitudinal effects of social mobility at the individual level. Results It finds that, first, individuals with the rural‐to‐urban hukou change are more likely to experience upward mobility, while individuals with the nonlocal‐to‐local hukou change are more pessimistic about their prospects of upward mobility; second, the rural‐to‐urban hukou change increases beneficiaries’ trust in the central government, while the nonlocal‐to‐local hukou change increases beneficiaries’ trust in the local government. Conclusion The Chinese authoritarian regime's co‐optation tactic of engineering upward social mobility via the hukou reforms contributes to its performance‐based political legitimacy as it effectively bolsters individuals’ trust in government.

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Section: Background and Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Chinese Dream: Hukou, Social Mobility, and Trust in Government

Huang

2020

Social Science Quarterly

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“…In the physical world, rural individuals have been suffering from occupational segregation that only allows them to take the low-end and low-skilled jobs that urban people would not want (Z. Zhang & Wu, 2017), and they also live marginalized lives in urban areas because they are constantly discriminated due to both political and cultural reasons (Fu, Wong, Li, & Song, 2006). Kwai's phenomenon in 2016 to 2017 allows us to catch a glimpse of the transplantation of this cultural hierarchy from the physical world to the cyberspace.…”

Section: Cultural Dynamics and Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

From invisible to visible: Kwai and the hierarchical cultural order of China’s cyberspace

Liu

2019

Global Media and China

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Contemporary China owns over 750 million Internet users, and a short-video-sharing app named Kwai has over 600 million users. From 2016 to 2017, when Kwai emerged as the largest short-video-sharing app and the fourth largest social media app in China, its major competitor Dou Yin was just released, and no other similar app could post a serious threat to Kwai. However, the emergence of Kwai to the mainstream public was tightly intertwined with a media discourse that established Kwai as a representation of rural China and low culture. Words like “vulgar,” “low,” “absurd,” and so forth were constantly used to describe Kwai and its users, and Kwai embodied a representativeness of rural and low culture that carries a taken-for-granted characteristic. This article unpacks Kwai’s controversial emergence and examines the power relations and cultural dynamics that were at play when Kwai was established by the mainstream media discourse a rural and culturally low. It interrogates the media discourse that constructs a regime of representation of Kwai, as well as how it contributes to the establishment of a regime of truth about Kwai, rural China, and rural Chinese. I unearth the seemingly natural condition of this representativeness and argue that Kwai’s controversial emergence from 2016 to 2017 signifies China’s rural–urban dichotomy, as well as a dominance of urban culture. I also indicate that we see a flow of this cultural dynamic from the physical world to the cyberspace, where the urban culture exercises the power to define and marginalize the rural.

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“…Furthermore, although income for different occupational positions may result in unequal wages, the study found that the effect may vary between different work units (danweis). The largest earning inequality among occupations can be found in state institutions, whereas there is less occupational segregation in private enterprises (Zhang and Wu 2016). Moreover, other factors may also contribute to uneven income distribution.…”

Section: H1 Privatisation Is Negatively Correlated With Income Inequmentioning

confidence: 99%

Income inequality and privatisation: a multilevel analysis comparing prefectural size of private sectors in Western China

Bakkeli

2017

J. Chin. Sociol.

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In 2000, the Chinese government initiated a campaign to develop Western China and reduce local and regional inequality. Privatisation has been a central component of the campaign. This article studies the relationship between privatisation and income inequality in Western China, based on survey data from 11 Western provinces collected between 2004 and 2005. This study first explores the link between privatisation and income inequality at the prefecture level, investigating whether a higher degree of privatisation can be linked to increased income inequality. Using multilevel random coefficient modelling, it then studies whether the impact of an individual's socioeconomic position on their income varies across regions with different degrees of privatisation. The final part presents simulations of economic inequality based on the random slope model. The study shows that income inequality is higher in regions with higher degrees of privatisation, and larger privatisation correlates with lower individual income. Furthermore, the study confirms that individual income is strongly affected by education, occupation, employment sector and household registration status. Income differences based on these factors do not vary with the level of privatisation; however, a finding that contradicts market transition theory in the context of Western China.

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Occupational segregation and earnings inequality: Rural migrants and local workers in urban China

Cited by 124 publications

References 51 publications

The Chinese Dream: Hukou, Social Mobility, and Trust in Government

The Chinese Dream: Hukou, Social Mobility, and Trust in Government

From invisible to visible: Kwai and the hierarchical cultural order of China’s cyberspace

Income inequality and privatisation: a multilevel analysis comparing prefectural size of private sectors in Western China

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