Analysis of Gender differentials in the rate of return to education based on the gender wage gap

Abstract

The rate of return to education has been paid much attention by the labor market in China. The mainstream literature maintains that women's rate of return to education is higher than men’s. Based on the perspective of gender wage gap and discrimination, this study uses the CFPS 2018 data to examine the gender differences in the educational yields and the gender wage discrimination faced by women at different levels of education. Mincer income equation and Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition method are used to establish the following two major findings. First, the educational yields of Chinese urban female workers were about higher than that of male workers by 3.6 percent in 2018. Second, the unexplained part of the gender wage gap decreases with the increase of workers’ years of education. Compared with male workers with the same educational level as female’s, female workers with higher education face much less discrimination than those with lower education level. References are provided for education policy and construction of the labor markets.