A Meta-Analysis of the Hukou-Based Wage Discrimination in China

Despite the large volume of researches on the hukou wage gap, the outcomes demonstrate great variation. This paper offset the gap in meta-analysis literature in studying the special hukou-based discrimination in China's urban labor market. The meta-regression analysis (MRA) is based on 245 estimates taken from 65 papers published both in English and Chinese. The goal is to understand the heterogeneity of outcomes in empirical results by identifying significant study characteristics. The results show that the types of hukou discrimination (either rural-urban dichotomy or local-migrant dichotomy) being estimated matters, where rural discrimination is larger and migrant discrimination is smaller than others. Using the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition method gives rise to discrimination sizes. As for the misspecification of wage equations, the omission of healthcare status has a consistent negative effect, while the omission of regional variables has a positive effect. The impact of study characteristics might differ across methods and time as shown in our heterogeneity tests. We also provide evidence on the declining discrimination trend over time. We place particular emphasis on potential dependence and publication bias problems that confront most meta-analysts