中国收入差距的特点、变化趋势与形成原因——基于劳动力市场的视角

The Pattern,Changes and Causes of Income Inequality in China: From a Labor Market Perspective

本文利用中国综合社会调查(CGSS)2003年和2012年的调查数据,考察中国十年间在不同维度上收入差距的变动趋势。通过多种收入差距的测量指标可以看出,尽管中国人均收入水平在过去十年显著提高,但收入差距仍然保持在高位。按性别、受教育水平、地区、城乡等维度分组后发现,不同组间的收入存在明显差距。此外,同一组内的收入差距也非常显著,特别是在收入水平较低的组内收入差距更大。在此基础上,本文运用基于回归方程的分解方法对收入差距的成因进行分解分析,发现受教育水平差异对收入差距的影响最大,而受教育水平的差异却主要来源于个人无法控制的外界因素,尤其是受到家庭背景的影响非常显著,说明教育代际固化现象已经形成。此外,性别、地区、家庭背景等因素对总体收入差距的解释力在过去十年也明显增加,说明非市场因素对收入差距的影响依然很大。据此,本文提出改善经济欠发达地区的基础教育质量、促进教育公平、降低劳动力市场歧视、进行户籍制度改革等政策建议。

This study examines the evolution of income inequality in different dimensions in China in the past decade based on CGSS 2003 and 2012 datasets. According to the change in different inequality indices, we find that although the average income increased a lot in the past decade, income inequality also grew dramatically and has reached a very high level. We then conduct a disaggregated analysis to investigate the inter-group and intra-group income inequality by dividing the whole sample into different subgroups by gender, education level and region etc. We discover that not only the inter-group inequality is large, within group inequality also accounts for a large proportion in overall inequality. In particular, the intra-group inequality is the highest in low income groups, which deserves more attention. Furthermore, the paper employs a regression-based decomposition method to examine the factors that have contributed to income inequality, and finds that education plays a large role in explaining income inequality. Furthermore, the difference in education mainly comes from factors beyond individuals＇ control such as family background, implying the phenomenon of intergenerational education persistence. Finally, non-market factors such as gender, region and parental education also affect income inequality, and opportunities has also risen. Based on empirical findings, the paper proposes suggestions to reduce income inequality. inequality of some policy