Hukou and Graduates’ Job Search in China*

This paper presents evidence that graduates from rural areas, classified as non‐urban Hukou, choose to invest in higher levels of job‐search effort (as measured by number of different search methods used and the number of employers contacted) and also set a lower reservation wage, reflected in acceptance of a lower starting salary, than do comparable graduates of urban Hukou, in China. The former also appear to have higher probabilities of being employed, in terms of both their higher probabilities of receiving offers and, more importantly, their higher probabilities of acceptance. The evidence thus suggests that graduates with non‐urban Hukou face more intense pressure to gain employment in the period leading up to graduation, than do their urban counterparts. More generally, the evidence suggests that effort invested in job search is rewarded in the graduate labor market in China.     

China's urban poor – Comparing twice poverty between residents and migrants in 2013 and 2018

Using data from the China Household Income Project in 2013 and 2018, this paper studies relative poverty among rural hukou holders living in urban China and urban hukou holders. People living in households with an income below a fixed percent of the median per-capita income and wealth below the same fixed percent of the median per-capita wealth among urban residents are deemed as relative poor. Although migrants with rural hukou living in urban China were more prone to twice poverty than urban residents in 2013, this was not generally the case in 2018.A multivariate analysis shows several factors to be related to the probability of being twice relative poor. Even considering these factors, a rural hukou status increased the probability of being twice relative poor in 2013. In contrast, such an excess risk of being twice relative poor was much lesser outspoken in middle and low-ranking cities in 2018. However, rural to urban migrants living in high-ranking cities had a somewhat higher risk of being relative poor than urban residents with the same characteristics in 2018.     

Return Migrants: The Rise of New Entrepreneurs in Rural China

This paper analyzes return migrants’ self-employment decision upon their return to their home villages, by using an original rural household survey conducted in Wuwei County (Anhui province, China) in 2008. We find that return migrants are more likely to be self-employed than nonmigrants, and that both return savings and the frequency of job changes during migration increase the likelihood for return migrants to become self-employed. These findings suggest that (a) return migration can help revitalize rural economies and alleviate poverty in less developed areas in China, and (b) repatriated capital is a key, stimulating factor in promoting rural entrepreneurial activities.     

Income inequality and subjective wellbeing: Panel data evidence from China

Using four waves of longitudinal data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), we examine the effects of income inequality on subjective wellbeing (SWB). We take a dual approach in measuring income inequality, and thus, we examine the effects of inequality using province-level Gini coefficient as well as between-group inequality or identity-related inequality defined as the income gap between migrants without urban household registration identity (hukou) and urban residents. We find negative effects of both province-level income inequality and between-group income inequality on SWB, measured by life satisfaction. Our results also show that the effects of income inequality on SWB is stronger for rural hukou residents compared to urban hukou residents. These findings are robust to alternative ways of measuring SWB and income inequality. In addition, we find evidence suggesting that neighbourhood trust is an important channel through which income inequality operates to reduce SWB. We suggest policies that promote trust in communities with high inequality with a view of addressing the negative effects of inequality on SWB.     

Effects of public health policies on the health status and medical service utilization of Chinese internal migrants

This paper examines the effects of the “Equalization Program of Basic Public Health and Family Planning Services for Migrants” (EHFPSM), a novel internal migrant-targeted public health policy, of China implemented in 2013. By combining the individual-level data from the “China Migrants Dynamic Survey” and city-level statistical data, we find that EHFPSM contributes to a 6.9% statistically significant increase in the probability of electronic health records coverage and a 7.2% increase in the probability of reimbursement in the last inpatient visit, as well as a 1.2% decrease in the probability of one-year prevalence. The mechanism test shows that this program promotes the migrants' understanding of the policies and social insurance coverage to enhance their health status. EHFPSM brings about more significant decreases in disease prevalence for male and less-educated migrants, and higher reimbursement probability for urban hukou migrants. Our paper facilitates better understanding of the role of public health policies in promoting the internal migrants' health from the perspective of China.     

Can self-employment activity contribute to ascension to urban citizenship? Evidence from rural-to-urban migrant workers in China

The ascension to urban citizenship and assimilation into urban life for rural to urban migrant workers is a pressing mission during the current process of rapid urbanization in developing China. However, the issue of how self-employed migrants, who account for up to 25 percent of total migrant workers in 2009 (Meng, 2012), acquire urban citizenship remains understudied. Using a unique sample from the 2009 Rural to Urban Migrants in China (RUMiC) survey, this paper explores whether self-employment choice contributes to migrant workers' ascension to urban citizenship and integration, and uncovers the underlying mechanisms. We find that although self-employed migrants are capable of earning a higher income, and improving their living conditions, their tendency to reside permanently in the city is not significantly different from their counterparts of wage workers. We argue that self-employed migrants, who are less covered by urban social securities and are more discriminated against by current urban household registration (Hukou) system, tend to lose faith in ascension to urban citizenship. It implies that a social security system with self-employed migrants being covered as well as an urban Hukou admission system favoring diverse human capital (especially taking into account entrepreneurship) would help accelerate the urbanization process.     

Return home and start new businesses: internal migration in China

Internal migration patterns in China are characterised by rapid urbanisation and cross‐regional movement and more recently by the return of migrants to their native counties. This study investigates the drivers of migrants' permanent return and their likelihood of starting new businesses in their counties of origin. The results suggest that migrants are discouraged from permanent resettlement in urban areas because of family ties and the aspiration to start businesses in their villages of origin. The study also provides evidence that the probability of starting a business upon return is affected by the migrants' accumulation of work experience, business experience, the savings earned while away, financial stability, and the social capital they have in their home counties. The results provide important insights for emerging countries in overcoming rapid urbanisation and imbalanced regional economic growth.     

Family size,birth order and educational attainment: Evidence from China

Using Chinese Household Income Project survey data from 2013, this paper investigates the effects of family size and birth order on children's educational attainment. The endogeneity of family size is an important identification issue in the test of the quantity-quality tradeoff. We use variations in a mother's exposure to various phases of China's family planning policies by Hukou type, ethnicity and regional differences in fine rates as instruments to identify the causal effects of family size. We find that family size has a negative effect on children's education. Using family fixed effects model, we find a positive birth order effect. In addition, both the family size and birth order effects are more pronounced for families where first-born children are females than those where the first-borns are males. Birth order effect is more evident in financially constrained families.     

Return Migration from Nineteenth Century Australia: Key Drivers and Gender Differences

This paper sheds new light on return migration from Australia to the UK in the latter nineteenth century. It uses data from shipping records, and from a random sample of the 23,000 Australian‐born in the 1911 Census of England and Wales. Based on these sources, it estimates some 20% of migrants to Australia returned: higher among the wealthy, but still 12% of semi‐ and unskilled working class migrants returned. There was a preponderance of women among returnees. From that, and other evidence such as the geographic spread of returnees across England, the paper argues that social networks played critical roles in decisions to return.     

旅游业发展对中西部地区劳动力回流意愿的影响

在城镇化和区域协调发展等战略背景下,中西部地区劳动力回流的现象日渐明显。文章以劳动力回流意愿为出发点,通过相关理论和文献剖析了旅游业发展与劳动力回流意愿之间的关系,并基于2017年中国流动人口动态监测调查数据与中西部地区城市的宏观数据,实证检验了旅游业发展对外出劳动力回流意愿的影响。研究发现:一方面,家乡旅游业的发展会显著提高劳动力的回流意愿。基于多种稳健性分析,结果依然成立。此外,旅游业发展能够通过提高劳动力的需求水平和城镇化水平间接提高外出劳动力的回流意愿;另一方面,在旅游业发展与回流意愿的关系上,基础交通条件对旅游业发展与回流意愿之间的关系具有积极的调节作用,而空气污染程度对二者之间的关系具有消极的调节作用。最后,通过对户籍和地区异质性的分析,发现农业户籍和西部地区劳动力的回流意愿更加强烈,各个地方应该利用自身独特的条件,发挥优势,因地制宜发展旅游业,吸引劳动力的回流。文章通过对劳动力回流意愿的探究为劳动力回流现象提供了新的解释,为进一步促进劳动者回流,进而促进地区经济和产业的发展提供思路。     

Birds of passage: Return migration,self-selection and immigration quotas

A key feature of migration in the late 19th and early 20th century is that many migrants returned to Europe after a few years in the United States. A common view is that most temporary migrants planned, upon entry, to eventually return home, yet there is little direct evidence to support this claim. I collect the first dataset on migrants' intentions to stay or return home from Ellis Island arrival records between 1917 and 1924. I find that fewer migrants planned to return home than actually did; many migrants, especially from Eastern and Southern Europe, left the United States unexpectedly. The high rate of unplanned returns implies that the first few years after arrival were more difficult than expected. However, this high rate of unexpected returns lowered after the 1920s migration quotas, suggesting improved outcomes for those lucky enough to enter.     

Returns to education in China: Evidence from the great higher education expansion

China experienced a near 5-fold increase in annual Higher Education (HE) enrolment in the decade starting in 1999. Using the China Household Finance Survey, we show that the Great HE Expansion has exacerbated a large pre-existing urban-rural gap in educational attainment underpinned by the hukou (household registration) system. We instrument the years of schooling with the interaction between urban hukou status during childhood and the timing of the expansion – in essence a difference-in-differences estimator using rural students to control for common time trends. We find that the Great HE raised earnings by 17% for men and 12% for women respectively, allowing for county fixed-effects. These Two Stage Least Squares (2SLS) estimates, which are robust to additional controls for hukou status at birth fully interacted with birth hukou province, can be interpreted as the Local Average Treatment Effect (LATE) of education on earnings for urban students who enrolled in HE only because of the Great HE Expansion. For the selected subsample of respondents with parental education information, we find that the 2SLS returns for students from more disadvantaged backgrounds are at least as high as their more advantaged counterparts, for both genders.     

Land Ownership as an Urban Employment Disincentive for Rural Migrants in China

When landowning rural migrants in urban areas in China become unemployed, they retain the option to return home to agricultural work. As a result, the opportunity cost of the loss of employment for these migrants declines. In addition, the potential wealth arising from compensation for expropriated rural land increases significantly with ongoing urbanization in China. This weakens the incentive for landowning rural migrants to work as hard in urban employment as they might otherwise. In this paper, we employ the Floating Population Dynamic Monitoring Survey for Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou in 2012, as surveyed by the Municipal Population and Family Planning Commission to assess the employment disincentives induced by rural land ownership. We find that compared with landless rural migrants, landowning rural migrants generally have less job stability and lower salaries.     

Expropriation with hukou change and labour market outcomes in China

We study the labour market outcomes of Chinese household members changing their registration status (hukou) from rural to urban as a result of land expropriation using panel data from the 2008–2010 Rural Urban Migration in China (RUMiC). While it is largely unclear the extent to which expropriation can be viewed as an event exogenous to individual and household choices, we deal with the potential selection bias of being expropriated by using the methodology proposed by Oster (2019). Gaining an urban hukou is found to improve the labour market outcomes of expropriated household heads and spouses relative to comparable rural stayers and rural-urban migrants. In particular, hukou-changers gain better access to permanent jobs in the public sector through formal search channels. We also find that expropriated parents invest substantially more in children's human capital as compared to rural parents, suggesting that leveling the hukou status among children can contribute to reducing intergenerational inequality.     

户籍门槛、发展型政府与人口城镇化政策——基于大中城市面板数据的经验研究

文章从制度变迁视角分析了户籍改革难以突破的原因,在发展主义理念的指引下,如果户籍改革对地方经济增长或财政收支产生负面影响,地方政府可能会拖延或阻碍改革进程。基于大中城市面板数据的实证研究显示,特大城市提高门槛对地方人均产出有正面影响,户籍改革动力最弱。其他城市虽然可以通过降低户籍门槛提高人均产出水平,但率先放开户籍制度可能引发流动人口大量涌入抵消政策效果,地方政府的户籍改革动力随着城市人口规模增长逐步下降。同时,户籍人口增长会带来财政支出的显著增加,为避免户籍化政策对财政支出产生压力,地方政府会通过户籍门槛对流动人口进行筛选,将对财政收入贡献较低或产生明显财政支出的群体排斥在户籍门槛之外。本文认为中国大中城市的户籍制度存在刚性,可以通过收回地方制定落户政策的权力强制推动户籍制度改革,或利用财政政策降低户籍化成本,激励地方政府推动改革。     

The changing texture of the city-size wage differential in Chinese cities – Effects of skill and identity

This study examines the city-size wage premium (CSWP) for local urban hukou holders (citizens) and rural migrants by utilizing data from the Chinese Household Income Project surveys (CHIP 2002 and 2013) employing OLS and Propensity Score Matching method. Heterogeneity of skills (measured by level of education) is found to be one determinant of the city-size wage disparity. But irrespective of skills, citizens receive a higher city-size premium than the rural migrants; nevertheless, the premium received by rural migrants has increased over the past few years. Within the similar occupation and type of firm, a highly skilled citizen received a CSWP of Yuan 880.08 in 2013 (Yuan 347.48 in 2002) on average per month. Whereas, a highly skilled rural migrant received an average monthly premium of Yuan 601.71 in 2013, and an insignificant premium in 2002. The corresponding values for low skilled citizens and rural migrants in 2013 are Yuan 415.67 and 267.27 respectively. Our results establish that there has been a positive effect on rural migrants from the relaxation of policies and labour laws, and a move towards equalization within the same level of skills.     

两类外来人口的劳动合同签订与社会保险获得差异

近期的城市外来人口社会保障缺失研究把持有非本地城市户口的外来市民纳入观察对象,城乡分割因素的解释范围缩小到外来市民与外来农民工这两类外来人口参与社会保险差异上来。为在这一方向上深化研究,本文首先考察城市劳动制度转型过程,揭示农民工的劳动合同制度缺位问题;在此基础上分析户籍身份、劳动合同订立与社会保险获取之间的关系,提出研究假设;选取抽样调查数据,做相应的实证分析;最后形成结论并提出政策启示。     

身份认同对流动人口家庭在流入地消费的影响

流动人口在城市的社会融合是健康城市化的重要内容，并且其本身也产生众多经济影响。文章利用2014年国家卫计委"流动人口社会融合与心理健康专题调查"的调查数据，分析流动人口不同的本地城市人身份认同对其家庭消费水平、家庭消费结构的影响。由于身份认同受到很多因素影响，具有内生性，因此我们在OLS基准回归之外，采用流动人口"本地话掌握水平"及"流出地土地面积"作为工具变量处理可能的内生性问题。我们也进行了替代变量的稳健性检验以及各种异质性检验。我们发现流动人口不同的身份认同程度对家庭消费水平、家庭消费结构有显著影响：更认同本地城市人身份的流动群体消费更高、恩格尔系数更低。同时，身份认同的消费影响在不同群体间存在一定异质性：这种效应对于年长的流动人口以及农村户籍流动人口更显著，这些异质性发现也符合预期。文章也进行了影响的可能机制检验，发现认可本地人身份的流动人口更倾向于在本地买房、长期工作生活和落户，减少在老家购房和生活的可能。研究结果对认识身份认同经济影响有一定学术价值；同时，文章的政策含义是，促进流动人口本地身份认同可以促进城市消费活力和居民生活质量。     

Are International Remittances Altruism or Insurance? Evidence from Guyana Using Multiple-Migrant Households

While international remittances provide significant disposable income for many households in less-developed countries, there is no consensus on migrants’ remittance motivation. Two principal competing explanations for remittances are altruism and risk sharing. This paper employs previously unanalyzed data to bring new evidence to the debate. We develop a simple theoretical model that yields distinct testable predictions for each motivation. Among the model’s testable predictions is differential remittance behavior by migrants from households with multiple versus single migrants under altruism and risk sharing. Our estimation finds significant differences in remittance behavior of multiple and single migrants and these differences support the altruistic incentive to remit.     

The impact of gender differences on determinants of job satisfaction among Chinese off–farm migrants in Jiangsu

This study examines the effect of own income versus reference group income and the subjective factors considered important in a job for a sample of off–farm migrants in China. We find that own income has a positive effect on job satisfaction while the effect of reference group income is gender specific. We find evidence that males experience a tunnelling effect (higher income co-workers increase their job satisfaction) while females experience a jealousy effect (higher income co-workers lower their job satisfaction). We explain this result in terms of men reacting more positively in competitive environments and that, in China, males have better prospects for promotion. We find that compared with employees in western countries, off–farm migrants in China place much more emphasis on income and less importance on collegiality and job stability.