Xiao-yuan Dong

The University of Winnipeg · Department of Economics

This paper investigates the effects of grandparent-provided childcare and the access to daycare services on the labor force participation of mothers with children under 7 years old in urban China. Using two-stage residual inclusion method, the analysis finds that grandparent-provided childcare and the access to daycare services both have strong pos...

As China embarked on the path of economic and social reforms, social provisions from the Maoist era were dismantled, and care responsibilities shifted back from the state to the household. Rural–urban migration, a steep decline in fertility, and increasing longevity have led to changes in the age structure of the population both overall and by regi...

This study explores how religious and ethnic norms and gender relations interact across the domestic and public spheres of work in rural China's minority-concentrated regions. It focuses on the roles that childcare and household composition play in the employment decisions of prime-age married individuals of Muslim and non-Muslim ethnicity. Using t...

Using synthetic data from the 2008 China Time Use Survey (CTUS) and the 2008 China Household Income Project (CHIP), this study estimates time-poverty rates and compares the profiles of time-poor men and women workers in urban China. In line with previous research, time poverty is defined as a lack of enough time for rest and leisure. Three time-pov...

This study empirically analyzes the impact of childcare costs on the labor force participation (LFP) and childcare utilization of migrant and local mothers of preschool-age children in urban China, using data from the 2010 National Dynamic Monitoring Survey of Floating Populations. The estimates show that childcare costs have a strong negative effe...

Using data from the 2010 Survey on Chinese Women's Social Status, this contribution estimates the effect of paid maternity leave on breastfeeding duration in urban China during the 1988–2008 period. The analysis applies a policy-based identification strategy to control for the endogenous relationship between paid leave entitlements and breastfeedin...

This study investigates how total work burden, including paid work and unpaid care work, affects the mental health of prime-age, employed women and men in urban China. Based on the 2010 China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), regression results indicate that total work burden is negatively related to the mental health of both men and women, consistent w...

本文采用随机抽样方法获取大样本数据，通过对样本小学四年级、五年级九千多名学生的调查，分析了西部农村小学生家长租房陪读现象，探讨了不同家庭经济条件学生家长在租房陪读上的差异及其原因。研究发现：家长租房陪读的小学生占西部农村小学生的1/4；低经济水平组家庭家长租房陪读的概率更高。农村学校布局调整后，为了让子女获得相同水平的教育，低经济水平家庭要付出更高的成本租房陪读，这是农村小学教育不公平的新特征。低经济水平家庭家长租房陪读概率高与农村学校布局调整政策、寄宿可得性、父母就业、房租和生活成本、择校等因素有关。

In recent decades, China undertook a series of agricultural land tenure reforms to increase the security of land use rights for rural households. While these reforms boosted agricultural production, they also increased landlessness among women due to patrilocal and patrilineal customs. Utilising data from China’s Women Social Status Survey conducte...

Domestic services represent a growing sector of the economy in many high- and upper-middle income countries. Demand for domestic workers for eldercare is especially high as a result of the rapid aging of the population in these countries. However, domestic eldercare employment is characterized as a low-pay, low-status occupation worldwide. This art...

This paper examines the effects of unpaid care work on the earnings of men and women in China by using data from the 2008 China Time Use Survey, the country's first, large-scale time-use survey. The study introduces three indicators to measure the degree to which unpaid care work may “interfere” with paid work, either by directly disrupting it or b...

Using data from the 2008 China Time Use Survey, this paper examines the gender patterns of time allocation over paid work, unpaid care work, and non-work activity and estimates the monetary value of unpaid care work. A seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) technique is applied to explore the tradeoff between the three types of activity. The estimate...

China''s transition from a centrally planned to a market economy has substantially eroded governmental support for child care, raising the concern about how the change of child care provision may affect women''s labor market participation. This article examines the impact of child care availability and affordability on the employment and child care...

China’s economic transition has fundamentally changed the mechanisms for allocating and compensating labour. This paper investigates how the economic transition has affected the wage gap between mothers and childless women in urban China using panel data for the period 1990–2005. The results show that overall, mothers earned considerably less than...

In the late 1990s, China's state-owned enterprises (SOEs) underwent dramatic labor retrench-ment, drawing considerable attention to how women fared relative to men during the retrenchment process. However, almost all the existing studies on the subject rely on individual-level data. In this paper, we study the gender patterns of SOE labor retrenchm...

The recent decade has witnessed dramatic labor adjustments in China’s state sector, as Chinese leaders have begun to directly address the problem of labor redundancy to reverse the money-losing situation of state-owned enterprises (SOEs). While industrial restructuring is an inevitable feature of market transition, such reforms have resulted in an...

China's economic reforms over the past three decades have dramatically changed the mechanisms for allocating goods and labour in both market and non-market spheres. This article examines the social and economic trends that intensify the pressure on the care economy, and on women in particular in playing their dual roles as care givers and income ea...

We examine the relationship between gender wage differentials and occupational segregation in small and medium-sized science and technology (S&T) firms in Beijing and Wuhan, using ethnographic material in addition to survey data from 202 firms. Although we find little evidence of overt discrimination against female workers, we discover significant...

This paper analyzes the gender wage gap in the post-reform Chinese industry using a unique employer-employee matched dataset. The analysis shows that the sex-related wage premiums at the firm level account for almost all the portion of the gender wage gap that is not explained by observed personal characteristics. It is found that firms which have...

This paper examines the gender patterns of occupational mobility in post-reform Urban China using a national representative dataset. The results reveal marked differences between married men and women: women are more likely than men to undergo lateral or downward occupational changes, but are less likely to experience upward mobility. The results a...

This analysis of the impact of internal migration on the time allocation patterns of the left-behind elderly and children in rural China, 1997–2006, contributes to the literature on changes in the well-being of the left-behind population. Based upon the China Health and Nutrition Survey, the multivariate analysis demonstrates that the migration of...

The aging of the population and the dramatic increase in women's labor force participation have made eldercare and women's labor market outcomes a subject of considerable policy importance not just in industrialized countries but also in transition and developing countries. This study examines the impact of parental care on married women's labor su...

In this paper we undertake a comparative study of productivity in the manufacturing sector for China and India using data from survey of manufacturing industries for the two countries. We find that productivity of manufacturing industries in China relative to that in India improved substantially over the 1998–2003 period. Specifically, the average...

Economic reforms and trade liberalization have brought profound changes to the Chinese labor market. In this paper, we apply the technique of decomposing the coefficient of variation to examine the impact of changes in married women's employment and earnings on income inequality among Chinese urban households. Using the Chinese Household Income Sur...

JEL classification: H3 J2 J6 L2 L3 O5 P5 Keywords: Public-sector downsizing Restructuring Timing and sequencing China Dong, Xiao-yuan, and Xu, Lixin Colin—Labor restructuring in China: Toward a functioning labor market This paper examines the patterns and determinants of the labor restructuring process in China using two large firm-level datasets f...

We use firm-level data to analyze male–female wage differences in Chinese industry in the late 1990s. Our estimates indicate that employers' discrimination against women was not a significant source of the gender wage gap in Chinese state-owned enterprises. Instead, we find that the relative wage of unskilled female to male workers was higher than...

This paper provides the first systematic analysis of the reasons why women endure longer unemployment durations than men in post-restructuring urban China. This analysis is based upon data obtained from a national representative household survey. Rejecting the view that women are less earnest than men in their desire for re-employment, this analysi...

In this paper we undertake a comparative study of productivity in the manufacturing sector for China and India using data from survey of manufacturing industries for the two countries. We find that productivity of manufacturing industries in China relative to that in India improved substantially over the 1998–2003 period. Specifically, the average...

A simple dynamic model is used to explain farmland price behavior in Canada and to explore the possible impact on land values of the elimination of direct government payments to agriculture. Based on the classic income capitalization approach, farmland prices are explained in terms of expected farmland earnings, incorporating a distributed lag stru...

This article analyzes the socioeconomic characteristics of the financially excluded in Canada using the 1999 Statistics Canada Survey of Financial Security and two surveys sponsored by the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada in 2001 and 2005. The authors find that financial exclusion is more concentrated among low-income Canadians; low-income, low-...

Around the turn of the century, China experienced perhaps the largest labour restructuring program in the world. This paper uses a new dataset of Chinese industrial enterprises to examine what leads to downsizing, and tries to understand the effects of labour downsizing on firms' technical efficiency, financial performance and employee wages. We fi...

We use firm-level data to analyze male–female wage discrimination in China's industry. We find that there is a significant negative association between wages and the share of female workers in a firm's labour force. However, we also find that the marginal productivity of female workers is significantly lower than that of male workers. Comparing wag...

We use firm-level data to analyze male-female wage discrimination in China's industry. We find that there is a significant negative association between wages and the share of female workers in a firm's labour force. However, we also find that the marginal productivity of female workers is significantly lower than that of male workers. Comparing wag...

This article examines the impact of village-sponsored infrastructural investment and social services on the productivity of Chinese farm households, using detailed farm-level data for the period 1986-90. The main findings are that the public facilities and services provided by village collectives augmented productivity growth of farm households, an...

By using a large new panel of individual data, including objective measures of worker performance, we provide some of the most rigorous evidence to date on several related dimensions of enduring debates surrounding upward-sloping earnings-tenure profiles. Most importantly we provide the first direct test of the relative validity of human capital an...

China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) is an important milestone in the integration of this nation into the world economy. Substantial reduction in trade barriers by China, one of the world's largest and most rapidly growing economies, is expected to have a significant impact, both on China itself and on the global economy. In asse...

Since 1978 China has been undergoing transition from a socialist to a capitalist economy and the opening up to international trade and investment. This process has been accelerated by WTO membership. This article presents an overview of the gendered processes and outcomes associated with China's reforms, mainly focusing on the post-1992 period when...

Despite spectacular output growth and significant employment creation, recent findings suggest that China's TVEs are “under-employing”’labour relative to the competitive benchmark. The paper reconfirms these findings on a new data set, discusses the possibility that it is caused by enterprises confronting upward-sloping labour supply curves, and pe...

This paper provides the first systematic analysis of the reasons why women endure longer unemployment durations than men in post-restructuring urban China. This analysis is based upon data obtained from a national representative household survey. Rejecting the view that women are less earnest than men in their desire for re-employment, this analysi...

This paper provides the first systematic analysis of the reasons why women endure longer unemployment durations than men in post-restructuring urban China using data obtained from a national representative household survey. Rejecting the view that women are less earnest than men in their desire for employment, the analysis shows that women's job se...

Using panel data on 165 rural and urban firms from Nanjing municipality and its environs, we investigate the pattern and consequences of property rights reform and privatization in the late 1990s. We find that privatization policies appear to have targeted the weakest firms in the urban sector, whereas no correlation is found between performance an...

These Explorations, by eight authors from Canada, China, the US, and the UK, examine the current status of women in economics (with an eye mainly toward their status in the academic branch of the profession). The four sections of the work analyze results of surveys that show the distribution of academic positions among women economists in universit...

This paper examines the magnitude, patterns, and determinants of the labor restructuring process in China's industrial sector using a firm-level dataset for the period between 1998 and 2002. The results show that the SOE sector has undergone substantial labor retrenchment. The removal of employment guarantees for state workers has led to substantia...

These Explorations, by eight authors from Canada, China, the US, and the UK, examine the current status of women in economics (with an eye mainly toward their status in the academic branch of the profession). The four sections of the work analyze results of surveys that show the distribution of academic positions among women economists in universit...

Using a worker–firm matched sample, this paper compares the changes of wage structures of urban and rural enterprises following public sector restructuring in China's manufacturing sector. While the wage responses of rural firms with respect to firm characteristics are found to have declined steadily, compensation of urban workers has become increa...

This paper uses a new data set of Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and private firms to evaluate the effects of labor downsizing on firms' technical efficiency, financial performance, and employee wages. Since downsizers and non-downsizers differ greatly in firm characteristics, we use propensity score matching to deal with firm heterogeneity...

We examine the contrast in the experience of ownership reforms between urban SOEs and rural TVEs using a panel of industrial enterprises in Nanjing municipality for the period from 1994 to 2001. Our objectives are twofold. First, we study how the reform program of “grasp the large and let go of the small” has been carried out in practice by compari...

The soft budget constraint hypothesis of Kornai (1980) offers an attractive explanation of over-manning in public enterprises. Sometimes overlooked in the literature is the fact that governments, especially in transition economies, often use state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to pursue non-financial objectives and to finance the resulting social burden...

The present paper examines the impact of market reforms on gender earnings gaps in China’s rural economy using two cross-sections of data for 1988 and 1995. The results show that the raw gender wage gap was sizeable and predominated by the unexplained part. However, no evidence was found to suggest that the reform policies and market competition le...

We study the evolution of employment and wage outcomes in Chinese SOEs during the first decade of economic reforms, using a panel of data for almost 1000 enterprises covering the years 1980-90. Unlike the 1990s, which were marked by growing labor redundancy in the SOE sector, we find that CPE-fostered capital-intensity remained so extreme during th...

The need to lay off redundant employees emerged as an important policy issue in urban China in the 1990s. The degree of over-manning can be estimated by comparing estimates of the marginal product of labor with estimates of the full wage, including bonuses, subsidies, and non-cash benefits. We present estimates from a panel of 752 industrial SOEs f...

The first section of this article reviews the role of SOEs in China's industrialization process between 1952 and 1978, placing special emphasis on employment creation. The second section begins our discussion of the reform process. The third section examines the role of property rights, the first of two issues to which we devote special attention....

This paper concerns employment and wage determination in the state industrial sector in China during the period preceding market-oriented economic reforms. We argue that in that period, the sector as a whole faced an effective cost of labor that was increasing in employment. We present a two-sector model in which the Chinese state acts as a monopso...

This paper examines the employment and wage behavior of Chinese township and village enterprises (TVEs), based on a panel of data for the years 1984–1990. The relative weight of employment to wage earnings in the TVEs' objective function is estimated to be between zero and unity. The proemployment bias of TVEs is found to be sensitive to the financ...

This paper concerns employment and wage determination in the state industrial sector in China, focusing on the pre-reform era as a baseline. We argue that in that period, the sector faced an upward sloping supply curve of labor, and we provide statistical evidence for this proposition. We then present a two-sector model in which the Chinese state a...

We use a stochastic production frontier approach to examine the technical efficiency of Chinese township and village enterprises (TVEs) and variations in that efficiency. Our data cover enterprises in 10 provinces in the years 1984 to 1989. We find that the average technical efficiency level of the sampled TVEs resembles that of industrial enterpri...

The two-tier land tenure system has been widely blamed for the problems in land allocation and in land-specific investment observed in the postreform rural China. Greater privatization of property rights in land has been proposed to enable productive farmers to acquire more land, to promote land circulation , to improve farmers' access to credit, a...