The role of family decision in internal migration: the case of India

This paper analyzes the effects of family decisions and individual decisions on rural-urban migration in India under 2 different rural institutions--family farm and wage labor systems. An analytical framework for explaining family migration decisions reveals that whenever a member of the extended family migrates, he gives up his share in the produce of the family farm. When this happens, the number of adult members on the farm goes down and the total product is affected. 3 case studies of Indian villages are analyzed for this study. 2 empirical relations are examined: 1) if individual migration decisions are predominant, and 2) if family decisions are important in determining the overall flow of migration. Relationships between migration decisions and other variables, such as: 1) number of males in urban areas; 2) urban wages; 3) daily wage rate; 4) average agricultural income; 5) railway distance between rural and urban areas; 6) size of the labor market in destination region; 7) probability that a migrant arriving in an urban area will find a job; and 8) comsumption expenditure, in urban areas estimated by working class consumer price index, are determined. Results show that: 1) the market determined wage variable does not play a very significant role in migration decisions; 2) distance is one of the most important variables in analyzing migration; and 3) the aggregate flow of migration is affected if migration decisions are predominantly family decisions. These findings have relevant policy implications for less developed countries (LDCs), especially because large flows of rural-urban migration in recent years have forced governments to adopt policies for controlling the flows to reduce the burden of unemployment in the urban areas. Government policies affecting rural institutions will have an impact on migration flow; those that lead to a reduction of uncertainty in agriculture will affect average per-capita consumption levels in family farms and hence influence the flow of migration.     

Using data envelopment analysis approach to estimate the health production efficiencies in China

By using Data Envelopment Analysis approach, we treat the health production system in a certain province as a Decision Making Unit (DMU), identify its inputs and outputs, evaluate its technical efficiency in 1982, 1990 and 2000 respectively, and further analyze the relationship between efficiency scores and social-environmental variables. This paper has found several interesting findings. Firstly, provinces on frontier in different year are different, but provinces far from the frontier keep unchanged. The average efficiency of health production has made a significant progress from 1982 to 2000. Secondly, all provinces in China can be divided into six categories in terms of health production outcome and efficiency, and each category has specific approach of improving health production efficiency. Thirdly, significant differences in health production efficiencies have been found among the eastern, middle and western regions in China, and among the eastern and middle regions. At last, there is significant positive relationship between population density and health production efficiency but negative relationship (not very significant) between the proportions of public health expenditure in total expense and efficiency. Maybe it is the result of inappropriate tendency of public expenditure. The relationship between abilities to pay for health care services and efficiency in urban areas is opposite to that in rural areas. One possible reason is the totally different income and public services treatments between rural and urban residents. Therefore, it is necessary to adjust health policies and service provisions which are specifically designed to different population groups. __________ Translated from Jingji Yanjiu 经济研究 (Economic Research Journal), 2006, (7): 92–105     

农户人力资本投资与农民收入增长

Based on an analysis of some theories, this paper studies the relationships among rural household investments and their interaction with farmer income increase empirically by the data of 1983–2005. The findings are: (1) Health investment makes against the growth of farmer, human capital investments for other types, besides, it can not satisfy the needs of farmer. (2) Although migration investment is useful to the growth of farmer income, education and health investment, its effects is time lagged. (3) Education investment has the biggest effects on the growth of farmer income; besides, it also reduces the cost of migration. However, this reduction is a bit small. Finally, some brief suggestions are put forward based on the analysis. __________ Translated from Jingji kexue 经济科学 (Economic Science), 2007, (3): 26–35     

Lineage networks,urban migration and income inequality: Evidence from rural China

This work focuses on the role that Chinese lineage networks can play in alleviating income inequality in rural villages through their effect on migration from rural to urban areas. Unique panel data from rural China identifies lineage networks (ancestral hall and genealogy) and provides detailed information on income and migration experiences. Our key finding is that lineage networks increase migration for all social groups by lowering costs, and this pattern is more salient for the poor. Consequently, this population accumulates greater wealth, which decreases income inequality in origin villages. The estimation results remain robust to both the inclusion of exogenous subsamples and an instrumental variables strategy using the effect of historical natural disasters on current lineage ancestral hall or genealogy. The analysis in this paper, coupled with an emerging empirical literature on networks and migration, provides a new perspective on how income inequality in a fast-growing economy varies with access to social networks.     

论人口乡城迁移对我国农村养老保障体系的影响

我国传统的家庭养老模式在持续发生的大规模乡城迁移背景下面临着前所未有的挑战。从养老保障的供给方面看,人口乡城迁移有助于提高农村地区老年人的经济保障水平,但在生活照料和精神慰藉方面会有所欠缺。农民从农村走向城市,不仅提高了人均收入水平,而且在经济上为农村地区开展社会养老提供了可能。事实上,人口乡城迁移在促进我国产业结构升级和城市化进程的同时,也加快了我国农村地区养老观念的转变和养老保障体系的重建。     

A numerical simulation analysis of (Hukou) labour mobility restrictions in China

We use numerical simulation methods to analyze the Hukou system of permanent registration in China which many believe has supported growing relative inequality over the last 20 years by restraining labour migration both between the countryside and urban areas and between regions and cities. Our aim is to inject economic modelling into the debate on sources of inequality in China which thus far has been largely statistical. We first use a model with homogeneous labour in which wage inequality across various geographical divides in China is supported solely by quantity based migration restrictions (urban–rural areas, rich–poor regions, eastern-central and western (non-coastal) zones, eastern and central-western development zones, eastern–central–western zones, more disaggregated 6 regional classifications, and an all 31 provincial classification). We calibrate this model to base case data and when we remove migration restrictions all wage and most income inequality disappears. Results from this model structure points to a significant role for Hukou restrictions in supporting inequality in China. We then present a further model extension in which urban house price rises retard rural–urban migration. The impacts of removing Hukou restrictions on migration are smaller, but are still significant. Finally, we modify the model to capture labour productivity differences across regions, calibrating the modified model to estimates of both national and regional Gini coefficients. Removal of migration barriers is again inequality improving but less so.     

Age Patterns of China's Repeat Migration

This study analyzes the relationship between the age of first migration and the probability of repeat migration focusing on rural to urban migrants in China. It is based on the data of the 2015 Migrant Dynamics Monitoring Survey (MDMS). The data shows that 52.64% of migrants had experienced repeat migration before 2015, the amount of which is huge. The empirical results indicate an inverted U-shaped connection between age of first migration and the probability of repeat migration. The probability of making repeat migration from rural to urban areas reaches its peak if an individual experienced his/her first migration at around 16 years old. The probability for repeat migration continues to increase before the age of 16 and keeps dropping afterward. Additionally, this study explores the reason for this inverse U-shaped relationship, and it finds that reasons for first migration have great impacts. Specifically, the probability of repeat migration goes up with age if an individual first migrates before age 16 and is accompanied by parents. This probability decreases with age, if an individual first migrates after or at age 16, because of work.     

How migration restrictions limit agglomeration and productivity in China

China strongly restricts rural–urban migration, resulting in a well acknowledged surplus of labor in agriculture. But migration is also restricted within sectors. This paper argues that these intra-sector restrictions lead to insufficient agglomeration of economic activity in both the rural industrial and urban sectors, with resulting first order losses in GDP. For urban areas the paper estimates a city productivity relationship, based on city GDP numbers. The effects of access, educational attainment, FDI, and public infrastructure on productivity are estimated. Given these, worker productivity is shown to be an inverted U-shape function of city employment, with the peak point shifting out as industrial composition moves from manufacturing to services, as predicted by urban theory. As far as we know this is the first paper to actually estimate the relationship between output per worker and city scale for any country. The majority of Chinese cities are shown to be potentially undersized—below the lower bound on the 95% confidence interval about the size where their output per worker peaks. The paper calculates the large gains from increased agglomeration in both the rural industrial and urban sectors.     

Part‐Peasants: Incomplete Rural–Urban Labour Migration in China

The institutional settings in China, including the land allocation system and the household registration system, lead to a rural–urban labour migration pattern that differs from that in other countries. Individual peasants' labour is often split (typically over different times of the year) into two or more parts as a result of institutional factors. Individuals work both as peasants on the land and as temporary migrant workers in urban areas (or in rural non‐agricultural sectors). We examine this issue using province‐level panel data. The present study provides a new interpretation of the phenomenon of labour shortages in coastal cities and rising rural migrant wages in China in recent years, and discusses whether the Lewisian turning point has been reached. Under part migration, the rural labour supply to urban areas is smaller than would be the case with full migration of workers to urban areas, so that the Lewisian turning point occurs earlier. This finding has important policy implications for China's future development.     

Migration,self‐selection and income distributions

Self‐selection in rural–urban migration is examined using three datasets from rural and urban China in 2002. We construct a migrant sample including both migrants who converted their hukou status from rural to urban (permanent migrants) and those who did not (temporary migrants). We find a strong positive selection for permanent migrants, but the selection for temporary migrants is ambiguous. We reach these conclusions by comparing migrants' counterfactual wage densities, assuming they are paid as rural local workers, to actual wage densities of rural local workers. Our results imply that permanent migration has negative effects on rural human capital accumulation and income levels.     

The impact of IT use on migration intentions in rural communities

The main goal of this study is to identify potential factors that close the urban-rural digital gap, as well as to determine how one's ‘degree of personal IT use’ enhanced through digital gap bridging efforts affects rural-urban migration intention. To accomplish the goal, an integrated structural model was established. A questionnaire was developed and distributed to residents in rural areas in Korea. Of 302 responses collected, 272 were usable. PLS (Partial Least Squares) were used for analysis. Main effects and moderating effects were both investigated. Perceived usefulness for job and perceived playfulness turned out to be the strongest variables influencing personal IT use in the rural area. However, influence of interpersonal norm and social norm were not significant. Elder people having positive perception of IT use are less likely to leave for urban areas. More educated people tend to more optimistically evaluate the value of IT use; however, they are more likely to leave for urban areas. Lower income families tend to have less negative perception of IT use as their degree of IT use increases. The findings stress the importance of rural adult education and extension, as well as IT infrastructure construction. The contribution of this study is to provide the ground work for a government or policy maker with the purpose of closing the digital gap and minimizing rural-urban immigration in selecting which group to target.     

中国农村劳动力转移动因与障碍的一种解释

农村劳动力转移是我国实现工业化必须面对的重大课题,也是解决我国“三农”问题的根本途径。本文运用动态宏观经济学的递归方法并结合推拉理论,通过所建立的模型表明城镇的拉力,特别是城镇工业技术进步,是农村劳动力转移的根本动因。而基于宏观经济变量的logit模型和基于微观经济变量的描述性分析都很好地验证了该结论。研究同时表明,加强农村基础文化教育对我国农村劳动力转移具有深远的意义;性别、家庭收入水平、区位等因素的差异也对农村劳动力转移有较明显的影响。     

Land use rights,market transitions,and labour policy change in China (1980–84)

This paper provides a systematic analysis of the way shifts in property utilization rights in China induced another sequence of institutional changes that led to the rise of rural–urban labour migration from 1980 to 1984, a critical period in the country’s market transition. The paper shows that the 1980s’ Household Responsibility System (HRS), which brought family farming back from the communal system, endowed rural households not only with land use rights, but also with de facto labour allocation rights. These shifts in property relations promoted a growth in agricultural market size as well as the emergence of intraprovincial non‐hukou rural–urban migration, which may have made labour retention policies such as the small township strategy ineffective, and may have given the government an incentive to deregulate its subsequent labour market policy.     

Migration decisions under ambiguity: Migration distance effects revisited

There is ample evidence that distance has a strong negative effect on migration. Despite its significance in migration decisions, scholars rarely explore the migration distance effect deeper than the first level of interpretation derived from the simple neoclassical theory of migration. This study revisits the migration distance effect in the spirit of Knightian distinction between risk and uncertainty. To this end, this study attempts to construct estimates of the risk premium migrants are willing to pay to avoid the risk associated with migration distance. The results show that the magnitude of the distance effect is not rationalized by risk aversion in the Arrow–Pratt sense (Arrow, 1965, The theory of risk aversion, Yrjo Jahnssonin Saatio, Helsinki, Finland, 90; Pratt, 1964, Econometrica, 32, 122). In particular, the risk premium demanded by distant rural residents is unjustifiably higher compared with that of those living closer to urban areas in their migration decisions. The results suggest that the migration distance effect is analogous to the equity home bias puzzle and the Ellsberg paradox in that the assumption of subjective expected utility can lead to seemingly irrational human behaviors. Some of the findings in this study shed light on the role of subjective aspects such as perception, confidence, and pessimism in migration decisions, which have been neglected in the literature.     

Appropriation,migration, and unemployment

This article builds general equilibrium models to explore the relationship among appropriation, rural–urban migration, the minimum wage and unemployment. We find that the proportion of appropriated capital plays a key role in the effects of appropriation on unemployment and rural–urban migration. When the proportion of appropriated capital is large, a stronger control on appropriation by the government results in a lower unemployment rate and more rural–urban migrants, and vice versa. In the extended models, the conclusion may be different when the plundered factor changes from capital to land. In the situation with the agricultural sector employing unskilled labour and capital, appropriation has no impact on unemployment, and the effect on migration remains the same. We also discuss the implications of the minimum wage, and find that under plausible conditions, the rise of the minimum wage can alleviate appropriation and reduce unemployment. The situation of migration is ambiguous due to the impacts of two opposite factors.     

Technical efficiency of small scale farmers: An application of the stochastic frontier production function to rural and urban farmers in Ondo State,Nigeria

Abstract

The main objective of this study was to estimate empirically the technical efficiency of rural and urban small-scale farmers in Ondo State, Nigeria, using the stochastic frontier production function. With the rapid urbanization being currently experienced in Nigeria, the socio-economic and the farming environment in both the rural and urban centres are undergoing transformation. This study involved collection and analysis of data on 200 food crop farmers from rural and urban centres in Ondo state of Nigeria. The results of analysis show that there are wide differences in the socio-economic and production inputs of the farmers from rural and urban centres. While farmers from rural centres have relatively larger farms, the urban farmers have better access to production inputs, especially, fertilizer. However, rural farmers, with a mean technical efficiency of 0.66 are found to be more technically efficient than urban farmers, who have a mean technical efficiency of 0.57. There is a wide confidence interval around the point estimates of the technical efficiency scores. Level of education, farming experience and land are found to have negative effects on technical inefficiency of both rural and urban farms. The marginal effect of inefficiency variables is, however, found to be highest for education among both rural and urban farms.     

The impact of non-cognitive skills and risk preferences on rural-to-urban migration in Ukraine

This paper provides evidence on the impact of non-cognitive skills and attitudes towards risk on the decision to migrate from rural to urban areas. Our analysis is based on a unique four-wave panel of the Ukrainian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey for the period between 2003 and 2012. Adopting the Five Factor Model of personality structure, and using it in the evaluation of non-cognitive skills, our results suggest that the personality trait openness to new experience increases the probability of migration. On the other hand, the non-cognitive skills conscientiousness and agreeableness are found to be negatively associated with the propensity to migrate. The impact of an increased willingness to take risks is more complex in that it increases the proclivity to move from rural areas to cities but lowers the migration intention from rural areas to towns. The effects are quantitatively significant and are robust to several sensitivity checks, including tests of reverse causality.     

财政分权、公共品供给与城乡收入差距

基于1994年～2004年间省级面板数据的估计结果显示,农村公共品供给增加对降低城乡收入差距有显著的作用.而地区间预算外收入和宏观税负的提高都是拉大城乡收入差距的因素.财政分权程度、政府财政支出的结构也对城乡收入差距有显著的影响.另外,中国持续扩大的城乡收入差距与农村发展落后有关,城市化未能带来城乡收入差距的缩小.     

Climate change, health and migration in urban China

In this paper, I empirically investigate the effect of climate change on health and migration in China. Using urban survey data sets from different Chinese cities, I find that an increase in female morbidity is associated with current high temperature change, especially for the symptom of frailty; past hot weather is related to the exacerbation of health problems in women, and the effect on females is larger than that on males who migrate from rural areas to cities; past temperature change is also correlated with a higher probability of chronic symptoms for females. I also find that migration preference from a rural area to a city is correlated with avoiding exposure to hot weather shocks, which shows a regressive tendency. Finally, the migration preferences of male residents who migrate from one city to another city are not associated with the effects of past low temperature changes on health.     

以城乡互动推进就地就近城镇化发展分析

“伪城镇化”、“半城镇化”现象的背后是中国城乡二元经济“一元化”过程中的“农民进城”与城市吸融功能不足的矛盾、“小城镇化浪潮”与农村城镇化的发展潜力不足的矛盾。结合中国国情的高质量城镇化发展模式在于守地式的就近就地城镇化发展,而守地式发展的关键在于农村产业发展,农村产业的发展又依赖于城乡市场与产业的互动。这需要发展立足农村的“产供销一体化”大型商贸企业,破解农村市场劳动力流转、土地流转、融资与技术及管理水平低下问题,构建城乡产业互动的交换利益基础,优化城乡产业体系配套和互补的对接方式,提升城乡产业合作的分工层次。