CHEN Dong,LIU Jindong：Does Strict Labor Protection Help to Narrow VGE's Relative Income Gap? ——Evidence From the Implementation of Labor Contract Law in 2008

Abstract：This paper takes the implementation of Labor Contract Law in 2008 as a natural experiment to impose strict labor protection and evaluates its effect on the relative income gap of vulnerable groups of employment (hereafter VGE for short) including women and the disabled with CHNS micro panel data between 2004 and 2011, using the difference-in-difference method. The result shows that, the implementation of the new Labor Contract Law enhances the contractual guarantee for both types of VGE, but at the cost of relative income gap which has been significantly enlarged. Strict labor protection cannot completely make up for the treatment differences brought about by the market, but only transform the treatment differences from the contract guarantee into the income level.

Key words： VGE    Income Gap    Difference-in-difference Method    Labor Contract Law

source:Finance & Trade Economics ,No.12,2014