Marriage Penalty in Transitional Urban China: Evidence from Gender Disparity on Job Mobility

Guangye He, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Drawing data from the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) in 2008, the pattern of career dynamics by gender is investigated to examine the varying effect of family related events on both genders in reform-era urban China. The results from discrete-time event history model show that as the state intervention declines over time, marriage and having children become more and more prominent on shaping people’s career trajectory. Compared with male counterparts, women are more affected by the marriage and dependent children, they are more likely to withdraw from labor market and they are also less likely to experience career upward mobility especially in the later period of the reform as economic instability and inequality deepens rapidly. And moreover, the loss of upward opportunities of women further explains the enlarging gender gap on earnings, the supplementary decomposition results suggest that if women have the same distribution of upward mobility would significantly increase the earnings of women.