专业选择还是性别歧视?——男女大学生起薪差距成因解析

College Majors or Gender Discrimination?An Empirical Analysis of Entry Wage Differentials of Male and Female College Graduates

本文利用2007届和2008届"中国大学毕业生求职与就业能力调查"数据,拓展平均工资差距的分解方法,从教育程度的差异转向侧重于考察同等教育程度上专业隔离对男女大学生起薪差距的作用。研究结果发现,尽管专业分布存在显著的性别差异,但男女大学生起薪差距主要来源于专业内部而非专业之间(专业分割的作用),且专业内起薪差距只有28.65%—43.16%能够被就业能力和实习经历等生产力特征变量的差异所解释。针对男女大学生起薪差距的分解,可以剥离市场工作经验、晋升和生育等因素的影响,因此,控制前市场的专业选择差异后,专业内部依然有大部分起薪差距不能被生产力特征变量所解释,这为现有研究把性别收入差距的成因部分地归因于性别歧视提供了强有力的支持性证据。

College majors represent an important source of male-female wage differenti- als. We analyze the effects of majorand gender discrimination on new college graduates usingdata from national surveys of graduate employment in 2007 and 2008. Although the distribu- tions of majors are quite different for women and men, we find that only 28. 65 to 43. 16 per- cent of the total gender wage differential is attributable to differences in endowments and that more of the unexplained differentials are results from within--rather than across--broad ma- jor categories. A major advantage of working with starting salaries of new college graduates is that we can remove the possible influences of gender differences in experience, promotions, job changes and other factors. Therefore we provide a strong evidence for gender discrimina- tion in China＇s labor market of skilled workers.