Dongshu Ou

One Country Two Peoples

This article weighs the demographic evidence for either assimilation or separation among Hong Kong residents who were born in British Colonial Hong Kong or Mainland China. Using successive waves of Hong Kong census data from 1991 to 2011, we show the effects of nativity on four indicators of social distance and differentiation: residential segregation, linguistic assimilation, wage inequality and educational opportunity. On the one hand, there is some evidence of assimilation in terms of residential location and home language. On the other hand, in terms of wage inequality and access to postsecondary education, our findings suggest that Hong Kongs population could become more divided depending upon birthplace.

In Search of a Better Life: The Occupational Attainment of Rural and Urban Migrants in China

This paper investigates the occupational attainment and job mobility of permanent rural-to-urban migrants and compares them with migrants who were born with an urban hukou. Using data from the 2003 China General Social Survey, we examine how much of the gaps in occupational-prestige scores between rural- and urban-born migrants can be explained by differences in observable characteristics up to the time of migration. We find that, with controls for these characteristics, the difference in occupational attainment between rural and urban migrants becomes statistically insignificant or even positive for some subgroups. In contrast, our analysis of job mobility reveals that rural migrants are generally more mobile and also more likely to move to better jobs by changing work units, whereas urban migrants are more likely to be promoted within a work unit.

In search of a better life

This article investigates the occupational attainment and job mobility of permanent rural-to-urban migrants and compares them with migrants who were born with an urban hukou. We examine how much of the gap in occupational-prestige scores between rural-to-urban and urban-to-urban migrants can be explained by differences in observable characteristics up to the time of migration. With controls for these characteristics, the difference in occupational attainment between rural and urban migrants becomes statistically insignificant or even positive for some subgroups. In contrast, job mobility analysis reveals that rural migrants are generally more mobile and also more likely to move to better jobs by changing work units, whereas urban migrants are more likely to be promoted within a work unit.

The universal provision of primary education: who benefits?

Few studies have investigated the causal spillover effects of compulsory education on childrens siblings. Using a regression discontinuity method, I find that Hong Kongs 1971 free compulsory primary education policy reduced the dropout probability for the eldest siblings of full policy beneficiaries, especially for children in low-income families. Having younger brothers who were full policy beneficiaries did not affect the elder childs educational attainment. Having younger sisters who were full policy beneficiaries increased the eldest childs educational attainment, especially for the eldest sister. The results shed light on how sibling sex composition might affect intra-household resource allocation of human capital investment among children.

Immigrants and earnings inequality across gender: evidence from Hong Kong

Using 1991 to 2011 data from Hong Kong, this paper documents how the earnings distribution of immigrant and native workers changed over time and how the pattern differs by gender. To understand how immigrants of different origins relate to earnings inequality in Hong Kong, I decompose earnings inequality to explore how the changes in immigrants’ share of total earnings have affected the inequality. I find that the increase in overall inequality can be explained by the increase in the within-group variance of natives. Further, I find that a large part of the within-group inequality resulted from the change in the share of employees and that the reduced share of Chinese immigrant employees contributed to decreasing inequality among men A large part of within-group inequality among women came from wage dispersion. A nonnegligible part of the increase in inequality among women was due to the expansion of between-group variance associated with the large inflow of foreign domestic helpers. Once I removed the foreign domestic helpers from the analysis, the pattern of wage inequality became similar for men and women.