中国城镇非正规就业:规模、特征和收入差距

Informal Employment in Urban China:Its Size,Features and Earning Disparity

文章利用全国普查性数据描述中国城镇非正规就业的规模和特征,并分析其对收入分配差距的影响。研究表明,2005年,非正规就业已占中国城镇就业的58.85%,正规与非正规就业者之间的小时收入差距达到1.65倍,其中约有1/4是由劳动力市场歧视造成的。与此同时,非正规就业人员的内部收入不平等程度很高,对总体收入不平等的贡献达到51.09%,而正规和非正规就业的组间收入差距,对总体收入不平等的贡献达到13.68%。文章的主要观点是:非正规就业已成为中国收入分配差距的重要来源,因此,实现非正规就业的正规化,是缩小中国收入差距的有效政策之一。

This paper is the first attempt to estimate the size and describe the features of informal employment in urban China. Specifically, it analyzes the impacts of informal employment on income disparity by using the 2005 China one percent census data. Our estimate shows that informal employment makes up a high proportion of China＇s urban employment, at 58.85% , and that the hourly earnings of formal workers was 1.65 times that of informal workers in 2005. Inquiring into the factors that have caused this gap, we find that one quarter of them come from labor market discrimination. Which is to say, informal workers experience greater earnings ine- quality than that of formal workers, which contributes roughly half of the earnings inequality among all the work- ers. The earnings gap between informal and formal workers also makes up 13.68% of the overall earning ine- quality. This means that, in theory at least, formalizing informal employment will be able to significantly reduce China＇s income disparity.