Migrate to Skilled Cities: Human Capital Agglomeration and Urban-to-Urban Migration in China

Despite their increasing size and importance in the regional economy, urban-to-urban migrants in China have received little attention in the literature and are often grouped with rural-to-urban migrants. We attempt to fill this gap by quantifying the patterns and determinants of urban-to-urban migration in China. We first document the sharply diverging spatial distribution of urban migrants and the widening gap in regional ability to attract human capital. Using a skill-based directional migration model, we also find strong preference for destinations with high concentrations of human capital among urban migrants, particularly for provinces in eastern China.