Relative Concerns of Rural-to-Urban Migrants in China

Alpaslan Akay (), Olivier Bargain and Klaus Zimmermann ()

No 201102, Working Papers from Geary Institute, University College Dublin

Abstract: How the income of "relevant others" affects well-being has received renewed interest in the recent literature using subjective data. Migrants constitutes a par- ticularly interesting group to study this question: as they changed environment, they are likely to be concerned by several potential reference groups including the people "left behind", other migrants and "natives". We focus here on the huge population of rural-to-urban migrants in China. We exploit a novel dataset that comprises samples of migrants and urban people living in the same cities, as well as rural households mostly surveyed in the provinces where migrants are coming from. After establishing these links, we find that the well-being of migrants is largely af- fected by relative concerns: results point to negative relative concerns toward other migrants and workers of home regions - this status effect is particularly strong for migrants who wish to settle permanently in cities. We find in contrast a positive relative income effect vis-à-vis the urban reference group, interpreted as a signal effect: larger urban incomes indicate higher income prospects for the migrants. A richer pattern is obtained when sorting migrants according to the duration of stay, expectations to return to home countries and characteristics related to family cir- cumstances, work conditions and community ties.

Keywords: China; relative concerns; well-being. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C90 D63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2011-01-27
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna, nep-dev, nep-mig, nep-tra and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (42)

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http://www.ucd.ie/geary/static/publications/workingpapers/gearywp201102.pdf First version, 2011 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Relative concerns of rural-to-urban migrants in China (2012)
Working Paper: Relative Concerns of Rural-to-Urban Migrants in China (2011)
Working Paper: Relative Concerns of Rural-to-Urban Migrants in China (2011)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucd:wpaper:201102

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