普通话能力与农民工工资——来自“中国企业-劳动力匹配调查”的实证解释

Mandarin Skills and Migrant Workers' Wages——Empirical Explanation from“China Employer-Employee Survey”

语言人力资本在提升农民工工资水平、缩小农民工与城市工人的工资差距上具有重要作用。以现有文献就普通话对农民工工资影响效应的相关研究为基础,本文从语言能力角度出发,运用"中国企业-劳动力匹配调查"(CEES)数据,就普通话能力对农民工工资的影响效应进行实证检验。通过普通最小二乘(OLS)的基准回归发现,与普通话能力较低的农民工群体相比,普通话能力中等和较高的农民工群体在工资水平上分别高出19. 4%～21. 0%和30. 3%～34. 9%,这表明普通话能力对农民工工资具有显著的正向影响。在充分剔除选择性偏误的影响后,倾向得分匹配(PSM)的估计结果表明,普通话能力对农民工工资的影响满足相关性推断的统计要求。因此,相关建议为:国家政策应引导农民工在工作和生活中加强普通话的使用;在现有基础教育体系中,应加强在校学生尤其是农村青少年学生的普通话能力培养,重视普通话能力在人力资本积累中的重要作用。

Language human capital plays an important role in promoting the wage level of migrant workers and reducing the wage gap between migrant workers and urban workers. Based on the previous literature which made some preliminary empirical tests on the influence of using mandarin on the wages earned by migrant workers, in this paper, we focus on the language ability and examine the contributions from the mandarin ability to the marginal income of migrant workers by using the data from China Employer-Employee Survey (CEES). As the OLS regression model reveals, the migrant workers with medium and excellent mandarin skills make 19.4%~21.0% and 30.3%~34.9% higher wages respectively when compared to the workers with lower mandarin skills, which shows that mandarin skills have an increasing marginal return on migrant workers' wages. After completely eliminating the influence of selective bias, the estimation of PSM suggests that the contribution from mandarin skills to the wages of migrant workers satisfies the statistical requirements of causal inference. Thus, relevant suggestions are given as follow: First of all, national policies should guide the migrant workers to strengthen the skills of using mandarin in their work and lives;moreover, the contemporary basic education system should make more efforts in training the students to practice their mandarin at schools, especially teenager students in the rural areas. Besides, the significant roles of mandarin ability in the accumulation of the human capital should be emphasized.