China’s new rural pension program (NRPP), a fully funded defined contribution plan among the rural residents with heavy government subsidy toward contributions, has expanded rapidly since its introduction in 2009, and is expected to achieve universal coverage by the end of 2012. Empirical...

This paper first reviews the history of social insurance policy and coverage in urban China, documenting the evolution in the coverage of pensions, medical and unemployment insurance for both local residents and migrants, and highlighting obstacles to expanding coverage. The paper then uses two...

This paper examines the gender patterns of occupational mobility in post-reform urban China using a national representative dataset. The results show there are marked gender differences in both direction and self-reported cause of occupational mobility. With respect to the direction of mobility,...

While there is evidence that return migration promotes entrepreneurship and self-employment of those who migrated, previous studies have not focused on whether migration provides the same benefits to individuals who did not migrate. Using a unique dataset that provides information on both...

This paper explores the rural labor market impact of migration in China using cross-sectional data on rural households for the year 2007. A switching probit model is used to estimate the impact of belonging to a migrant-sending household on the individual occupational choice categorized in four...

Can having more education than a job requires reduce one’s chances of being offered the job? We study this question in a sample of applications to jobs that are posted on an urban Chinese website. We find that being overqualified in this way does not reduce the success rates of...