Climbing the development ladder: Economic development and the evolution of occupations in rural China
研究了中国农村经济发展过程中职业的演变模式，发现职业从传统农业向现代制造业和服务业逐步升级，形成类似攀登阶梯的规律。
We study how occupations evolve across space and time during the development of an economy. Using a data set on more than 200 villages from 8 provinces in China, we examine the main occupations that have characterised China's labour markets since the economic reforms. Our findings reveal a systematic evolutionary pattern of occupational emergence: the evolution of occupations proceeds from traditional and fairly simple forms of subsistence agriculture to modern, more complex manufacturing and service firms. Our findings suggest that rural development in China is being built by a process that can be described by the climbing of a development ladder with each step up the ladder denoting the economy's transition into a more complex occupational regime.