Glass Ceiling or Sticky Floor? Examining the Gender Pay Gap across the Wage Distribution in Urban China, 1987-2004

Abstract

Using 1987, 1996, and 2004 data, we show that the gender pay gap in the Chinese\nurban labor market has increased across the wage distribution, and the increase was\ngreater at the lower quantiles. We interpret this as evidence of the “sticky floor” effect.We use the reweighting and recentered influence function projection method proposed\nby Firpo, Fortin, Lemieux (2005) to decompose gender pay differentials across the\nwage distribution. We find that the gender differences in the return to labor market\ncharacteristics, also known as the “discrimination effect” or “unexplained gender pay\ngap”, contribute most to the increase in the overall gender pay gap. The Firpo, Fortin,\nand Lemieux method allows us to further decompose the gender pay gap into the\ncontribution of each individual variable. We find that the “sticky floor” effect may be\nassociated with a particularly low paid group of female production workers with\nrelatively less education working in non-state owned enterprises.