Publication: The Impact of the Global Financial Crisis on Off-Farm Employment and Earnings in Rural China
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Published
2011
ISSN
0305750X
Date
2012-03-30
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This paper examines the effect of the financial crisis on off-farm employment of China's rural labor force. Using a national representative dataset, we find that there was a large impact. By April 2009 off-farm employment reached 6.8% of the rural labor force. Monthly earnings also declined. However, while we estimate that 49 million were laid-off between October 2008 and April 2009, half of them were re-hired in off-farm work by April 2009. By August 2009, less than 2% of the rural labor force was unemployed due to the crisis. The robust recovery appears to have helped avoid instability.
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Publication The Impact of the Global Financial Crisis on Off-farm Employment and Earnings in Rural China(2010-10-01)This paper examines the effect of the financial crisis on off-farm employment of China's rural labor force. Using a national representative data set collected from across China, the paper finds that there was a substantial impact. By April 2009 the reduction in off-farm employment as a result of the crises was 6.8 percent of the rural labor force. Monthly earnings also declined. However, while it is estimated that 49 million were laid-off between October 2008 and April 2009, half of them were re-hired in off-farm work by April 2009. By August 2009, less than 2 percent of the rural labor force was unemployed due to the crisis. The robust recovery appears to have helped avoid instability.Publication Impact of the Global Financial Crisis in Rural China : Gender, Off-farm Employment, and Wages(Taylor and Francis, 2013-08-16)This contribution documents the effect of the global financial crisis on women's off-farm employment in China's rural labor force. It begins by comparing the difference between the actual off-farm employment rate and the off-farm employment rate under the assumption of “business as usual” (BAU – a counterfactual of what off-farm employment would have been in the absence of the crisis). The study also examines how the impact of the financial crisis hit different segments of the rural off-farm labor market. Using a primary dataset, the study found that the global financial crisis affected women workers. By April 2009, there was a 5.3 percentage point difference between off-farm employment under BAU and actual off-farm employment for women, and the monthly wages of women declined. Most of this impact affected migrant wage earners; however, the impact did not fall disproportionately on women. The recovery of women's employment was as fast as that of men's employment.Publication Does It Pay to Be a Cadre? Estimating the Returns to Being a Local Official in Rural China(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-06)Recruiting and retaining leaders and public servants at the grass-roots level in developing countries creates a potential tension between providing sufficient returns to attract talent and limiting the scope for excessive rent-seeking behavior. In China, researchers have frequently argued that village cadres, who are the lowest level of administrators in rural areas, exploit personal political status for economic gain. Much existing research, however, compares the earnings of cadre and non-cadre households in rural China without controlling for unobserved dimensions of ability that are also correlated with success as entrepreneurs or in non-agricultural activities. The findings of this paper suggest a measurable return to cadre status, but the magnitudes are not large and provide only a modest incentive to participate in village-level government. The paper does not find evidence that households of village cadres earn significant rents from having a family member who is a cadre. Given the increasing returns to non-agricultural employment since China's economic reforms began, it is not surprising that the returns to working as a village cadre have also increased over time. Returns to cadre-status are derived both from direct compensation and subsidies for cadres and indirectly through returns earned in off-farm employment from businesses and economic activities managed by villages.Publication Changes in Trade and Domestic Distortions Affecting China's Agriculture(2009)This paper assesses the implications of China's trade and domestic policies for incentives to producers in China. It uses a price comparison methodology (nominal rates of assistance--at the border and the farmgate), with adjustments for exchange rate distortions in the first part of the sample period (1981-1994). On average, distortions to agricultural incentives have been reduced. In the early 1980s, on average, China's domestic prices were far below international prices. There were substantial variations, however, between imported (which were being protected) and exported goods. During the 1980s and 1990s the gap between domestic and international prices for both imports and exports narrowed initially mainly due to the elimination of domestic policy distortions. Between the mid-1990s and 2004, trade liberalization policy furthered narrowed the gap between world and China farmgate prices. By the mid-2000s, China's agriculture was operating with only small price distortions.Publication Evidence for an Incipient Decline in Numbers of Missing Girls in China and India(2009)The apparently inexorable rise in the proportion of "missing girls" in much of East and South Asia has attracted much attention among researchers and policymakers. An encouraging trend was suggested by the case of South Korea, where child sex ratios (males to females under age 5) were the highest in Asia but peaked in the mid-1990s and normalized thereafter. Using census data, we examine whether similar trends have begun to manifest themselves in the two most populous countries of this region, China and India. The data indicate that child sex ratios are peaking in these countries, and in many subnational regions are beginning to trend toward lower, more normal values. This suggests that, with continuing economic and social development and vigorous public policy efforts to reduce son preference, the "missing girls" phenomenon could eventually disappear in Asia.
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