Gender role attitudes and male-female income differences in China

Abstract By investigating deep-rooted cultural norms, this paper explores whether and how traditional gender role attitudes impact income gaps between men and women and identifies causal effects via instrumental variable and other causal inference methods. Based on data from the Chinese General Social Survey in 2013, the results show that traditional gender role attitudes have a strong negative effect to the earnings of women but have no significant effect on men’s incomes. Through Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition, this research finds that the different effects of gender role attitudes on the incomes of men and women appear to play a prominent role in causing the gender gap in earnings. In addition, gender role attitudes have an indirect and broad effect on gender income inequality through educational attainment, labor force participation, working hours, and occupational status. These results provide us with a new perspective for understanding the persistence and mechanisms of gender income stratification under educational equalization and have implications for gender equality policies.