Abstract: Based on the couples’ paired samples of China’s UHS (Urban Household Survey) during the period of 1988-2009, this paper studies the impact of the married women employment on income gap among families in urban China at a single time-point by using the decomposition formula by income source of the variable coefficient and the various counterfactual income distributions. The results show that women employment can play the role of promoting more equalized income distribution among families. Compared with the research results of other market economy countries, this kind of reducing effect is more significant. Moreover, the staged study finds that the impact of the married women employment on the income gap among families has rather significant difference at different stages of China’s reform of economic system. By making further use of the variance decomposition formula at different time-point, this paper studies the impact of the changes of married women employment on the changes of income gap among families. The results indicate that the drop of the employment rate of married women has enlarged the income gap among families, especially during the period of 1997-2002. The changes in family employment patterns resulted from the drop of the employment rate of married women can account for the 37.12 percent extension of the income gap among families.

Key words: women employment; income gap among families; coefficient of variation; counterfactual reference distribution