Four Essays On Labour Economics PDF Download

The thesis consists of four self-contained essays. Essay I, This paper examines the gender differential in the payoff to schooling in rural China. The analyses are based on a framework provided by the over education/required education/under education literature, and the decomposition developed by Chiswick and Miller (2008). It shows that the payoff to correctly matched education in rural China is much higher for females than for males. Associated with this, the wage penalty where workers are under qualified in their occupation is greater for females than for males. Both of these factors are linked to the higher payoff to schooling for females than for males. Over educated females, however, are advantaged compared with their male counterparts, though this has little effect on the differential in the payoff to schooling between males and females. These findings are interpreted using the explanations offered for the gender differential in the payoff to schooling in the growing literature on earnings determination in China. Essay II, Studies of the return to education in urban China have reported that this has increased over time, and that females typically have a higher return than males. In this paper we adopt a framework provided by the over education/required education/under education literature, and the decomposition developed by Chiswick and Miller (2008), to investigate the reasons for these findings. The finding by Chen and Hamori (2009), from analysis of data for 2004 and 2006, of the return to schooling for males exceeding that for females, is also examined using this decomposition. Essay III, This paper uses data from the 1993 wave of the China Health and Nutrition Survey to explore the determinants of fertility in rural China. Using an ordered logit model, our analysis shows that measures of family planning including fines for above the quota children, subsidies for "one child" families, and the Hukou status of the "one child" have affected fertility. However, the influences of these factors differ among women with different household income. Our results show that, 15 years after the one child policy was enacted in 1979, family planning was not the unique factor underlying the fertility decline in China. Socio-economic factors such as education, marriage age and occupations of women have also affected fertility in rural China. Essay IV, Using the 1991-2009 waves of China Health and Nutrition Survey, we explore whether there is any evidence of gender gap in children health outcomes in rural China and then its determinants in different size of families, which is influenced by family planning policy to a very great extent in China. We find that the existence of gender gap in child health only in non-one-child households but not in one-child households. We further observe that sibling rivalry does not affect boys' health but worsens girls' health in non-one-child households. Our findings also show that the increase of household income and father s education can reduce the gender gap in child health to some extent. The degree of gender bias in child health is computed based on Oaxaca and Blinder decomposition model.