Research on the Segmentation Problem of China's Labor Market - Industrial Economics Doctoral Library

Author: Xu Linqing
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-02-01
Features: During the transition of China's economy, the labor market is also experiencing a series of disorder and conflicts. Unemployment, income inequality, and the shortage of human capital accumulation are severely troubling the further development of China's economy. This book attempts to explore these issues in greater depth using the theoretical framework of labor market segmentation. The reasons for labor market segmentation in China differ from those in mature market economies, and the degree of segmentation is also far greater than in these countries. For mature market economies, labor market segmentation is related to the characteristics of product markets. However, in China, labor market segmentation arises from a series of institutional arrangements, with the household registration system being a typical example. After the reform and opening-up, the labor-intensive industrial structure and the volatile product market are creating a vast secondary urban labor market, with the differentiation between the primary and secondary markets becoming increasingly evident. The prerequisite and key to solving many of the problems in China's labor market lie in restoring the regulatory function of market mechanisms in the labor market, abolishing the household registration system and related labor institutions that carry obvious discriminatory features and are based on identity discrimination, and facilitating the flow of labor between urban and rural areas to gradually establish a unified urban-rural labor market that is more flexible.