China’s Urban Gender Wage Gap

This chapter uses data from the urban household CHIP surveys for the years 1995, 2002, 2007, and 2013 to provide consistent estimates of the gender wage gap in urban China and it investigate those factors that have contributed to this gap. The gender wage gap widened substantially and progressively from 1995 to 2007, but from 2007 to 2013 the gender wage gap narrowed. In 2013 the gender wage gap was between 19 and 25 percent. Oaxaca-Blinder decompositions reveal that the contributions of the differences in the characteristics of women and men to the wage gap declined over time; by 2013 the gap was largely unexplained. Key factors underlying the gender wage gap in recent years include individual characteristics, such as age, education, marriage, and children, as well as employment sector and occupation.