Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.1080/1331677X.2019.1592695
Experience, tenure and gender wage difference: evidence from China
Dan Qu
; School of Economics and Trade, Hunan University, Changsha, China
Saisai Guo
; School of Economics and Resource Management, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
Lafang Wang
; School of Economics and Trade, Hunan University, Changsha, China
Abstract
This paper studies the returns to general labour market experience and firm-specific tenure, using data from China. Specifically, it focuses on explaining the gender wage difference from the perspective of general human capital and specific human capital. It applies the Heckman maximum likelihood estimator and Topel two-step estimation methodology to correct sample selection bias and individual heterogeneity. After correcting the errors, the authors find that returns to experience are higher for men than women, especially for married men and women. Furthermore, the return to tenure is higher than that to general experience. For men, the former is about 6% higher than the latter. But for women, tenure contributes 7–8% more to the wage growth than experience. The return of general experience mainly contributes to gender wage difference in China. Empirical results also show that the cross section analysis downward biases the returns to potential experience and a simple Topel-2S estimation in the panel study upward biases the returns
Keywords
Return to experience; return to tenure; gender wage difference
Hrčak ID:
228753
URI
Publication date:
22.1.2019.
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