ABSTRACT
The rise of rural labor markets is more important than its role of providing rural residents with a means to raise their incomes; labor markets also help drive changes in the structure of the economy and contribute to the nation’s modernization. This chapter introduces the data that are used for the analysis, which were collected by the authors in the fall of 2000. It describes employment trends between 1981 and 2000, focusing mainly on trends for women. The chapter utilizes multivariate analysis to explain the determinants of migration and examines how the participation of women in agriculture—either as household heads or as field workers—affects the efficiency of crop production. According to the China National Rural Survey, when considering the rate of off-farm employment among women in rural China, the newly emerging labor markets have begun to have positive effects on women’s relative welfare. Perhaps most poignantly, younger women are beginning to specialize by working solely in the off-farm sector.
