摘要
制造业大规模的技术升级将重塑劳动力市场供需结构和分配机制。理论上,工厂车间的生产线升级会降低对运动能力的要求,而强调对认知技能的需求,由于男性与女性分属于不同技能束,当认知技能回报上升,女性工资将大幅增长。本文利用广东南海制造业雇主-雇员匹配数据的研究发现:(1)生产线升级的确给女性带来了比男性更多的工资增长,于是性别工资差距得以收敛。(2)生产线升级对于缩小低技能工人的性别工资差距的作用有限,但却能大幅地缩小高技能工人的性别工资差距。(3)生产线升级对于缩小技能回报性别差异以及由此引起的性别歧视,起到关键作用。本文从工厂车间的技术变革视角为消弭性别不公问题提供新的政策启示。
It is well known that the Chinese manufacturing industry competes in the international market with relatively traditional production technology and lower labor costs.However,the situation is gradually changing.With the aging of the population and growing labor costs,the advantage of the manufacturing industry with respect to low labor costs no longer exists.Chinese entrepreneurs are fully aware of the potential shortcomings of the original development path and are actively upgrading their production technology,such as through the large-scale upgrading of the production line in plants.The recent wave of large-scale“machine replacements”in the manufacturing industry in the Pearl River Delta directly reflects this phenomenon.The production line is one of the observable objects that most directly reflect the manufacturing technology.Technological advances in plant production lines are biased,having different effects on various skill groups.By reshaping jobs and competition mechanisms,manufacturing technological innovation has profoundly affected labor participation and income distribution among different groups in the labor market.Recently,China s labor market has witnessed several structural changes.Women have become increasingly favored in the manufacturing sector,and the share of female employment has increased and the gender wage gap has narrowed.The literature shows that women have comparative advantages in cognitive skills,while men have comparative advantages in motor skills.Based on the literature,we speculate that compared with the old lines,the advanced production line,as a form of skill-based technology innovation,tends to reduce both the physical exertion required and the need for motor skills,but increases the need for cognitive skills.The growing rewards of cognitive skills eventually narrow the wage gap between men and women.This paper attempts to examine empirically how the upgrading of manufacturing industry lines impacts the gender payoff convergence.It thus provides evidence on the effect of the labor market under the condition of large-scale upgrading of the production line in China.This research is based on data from the Manufacturing Employer-Employee Matching Survey(2016)conducted in Nanhai District,Guangdong Province,China.This survey covered nearly 145 companies and more than 3,000 employees and reflected the living environment,the business conditions and the current difficulties of transformation in the manufacturing industries in the Chinese frontier developed regions.In this paper,a variety of analytical methods,including the treatment effect model,Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition and quantile decomposition,are used to guarantee the robustness of the results.We find that(1)while the upgrading of the production line brings more wage premiums to both men and women workers,women have a higher return.Therefore,the optimization and upgrading of the production line can reduce the gender wage gap effect.(2)The upgrading of the production line has a limited effect on reducing the gender wage gap for low-skilled workers,although it sufficiently narrows the gender wage gap for highly skilled workers.(3)Based on the mean and quantile decomposition,the gender wage gap is mainly due to higher skill returns rather than better male skill endowments.Production line upgrading significantly reduces internal gender discrimination within enterprises.At the top of the wage pyramid,the upgrading of the production line plays an even greater role in narrowing the wage gap.This article provides a new perspective on the gender wage structure in the current labor market in China.It also provides a new policy insight into the reality of gender inequality from a technical innovation perspective.In the context of the upgrading of the production line,it is important and meaningful to encourage women to develop cognitive skills so as to improve gender equity.To our knowledge,no Chinese literature has directly associated the upgrading of the production line with the gender wage gap.In addition,the employer-employee data we use in this paper are relatively new and easy to control for unobservable heterogeneity,which can also be considered a contribution.
作者
魏下海
曹晖
吴春秀
WEI Xiahai;CAO Hui;WU Chunxiu(Institute of Economic Development and Reform,Huaqiao University;School of Economics,Shanghai University;School of Economics and Management,South China Normal University)
出处
《经济研究》
CSSCI
北大核心
2018年第2期156-169,共14页
Economic Research Journal
基金
国家社会科学基金青年项目"女性就业视阈下我国性别失衡的劳动力市场效应研究(16CRK017)"阶段性成果
关键词
生产线升级
性别工资差距
技能回报
Production Line Upgrading
Gender Wage Gap
Skill Return
