Minimum wage effects on employment and working time of Chinese workers : evidence based on CHNS

This paper examines the impact of minimum wage policies on employment, income, and working time of Chinese workers. Using data from China Health and Nutrition Survey, we focus on identifying the effects of minimum wage adjustments using a pre-specified model. We control for lagged minimum wage standard, individual characteristics, provincial population and economic factors, and fixed effects of province and year. We find some evidence of minimum wage impacts on wages and employment for limited groups. Increase of minimum wage has positive effect on wage income only for low-income workers and has negative employment effect only for workers in private and individual enterprises. While minimum wage shortens the average working hours for employed workers, it does not have significant effect on the relative working times for different income groups. These findings may imply some beneficial effects of the minimum wage policies for Chinese workers.