Chapter from: 'Rising Inequality in China: Challenge to a Harmonious Society', edited by Shi Li, Hiroshi Sato and Terry Sicular.

We analyse the impact of internal migration in China on natives' labour market outcomes. We find evidence of a large positive correlation of the city share of migrants with natives' wages. Using different sets of control variables and instruments suggests that the effect is causal. The large...

The substantial shift in rural schooling levels and the contemporaneous changes in educational finance policy including tax and fees reform, two exempt and one compensation policy and school rearrangement policy, raise the need for a fresh look at the determinants of rural education. In this...

During the Cultural Revolution China embarked on a remarkable, albeit temporary, expansion of post-primary education in rural areas. This education expansion affected tens of millions of children who reached secondary school age in the late 1960s and 1970s. Exploiting the education expansion and...

This paper investigates how rural-urban income differentials interact with the risk coping motive to shape households' migration behavior. Using a model of migration behavior under agricultural income risk, our theoretical results suggest that while income differentials remain crucial in...

This paper examines how left-behind children influence return migration in China. We first present a simple illustrative model based on Dustmann (2003) that incorporates economic and non-economic motives for migration duration (or intentions to return), among which are parents' concerns about...

This paper analyzes the impact of the Sloping Land Conversion Program (SLCP) on rural labor migration in China. We use recent survey data from Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region and a difference-in-difference approach to assess the impact of the policy on labor migration decision. We find a...

About a billion people worldwide live and work outside their country of birth or outside their region of birth within their own country. Labor migration is conventionally viewed as economically benefiting the family members who are left behind through remittances. However, splitting up families...

This paper investigates how private transfers from internal migration in China affect the expenditure behaviour of families left behind in rural areas. Using data from the Rural-Urban Migration in China (RUMiC) survey, we assess the impact of remittances sent to rural households on...

This paper examines how left-behind children influence migration duration in China. We first present a simple illustrative model that incorporates economic and non-economic motives to migration duration. Using individual data from a survey carried out in Wuwei county (Anhui province) in 2008, we...