Migrant Labor Markets and the Welfare of Rural Households in the Developing World: Evidence from China

Alan de Brauw () and John Giles ()

No 6085, 2008 Annual Meeting, July 27-29, 2008, Orlando, Florida from American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association)

Abstract: In this paper, we examine the impact of reductions in barriers to migration on the consumption of rural households in China. We find that increased migration from rural villages leads to significant increases in consumption per capita, and that this effect is stronger for poorer households within villages. Household income per capita and non-durable consumption per capita both increase with out-migration, and increase more for poorer households. We also establish a causal relationship between increased out-migration and investment in housing and durable goods assets, and these effects are also stronger for poorer households. We do not find robust evidence, however, to support a connection between increased migration and investment in productive activity. Instead, increased migration is associated with two significant changes for poorer households: increases both in the total labor supplied to productive activities and in the land per capita managed by the household. In examining the effect of migration, we pay considerable attention to developing and examining our identification strategy.

Keywords: Migration; Migrant Networks; Consumption; Poverty; Wealth; Rural China; Community/Rural/Urban Development; Consumer/Household Economics; Labor and Human Capital; O12; O15; J22; J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna, nep-lab, nep-mig, nep-soc and nep-tra
Date: 2008
View list of references View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://purl.umn.edu/6085 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Migrant labor markets and the welfare of rural households in the developing world: evidence from China (2008)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aaea08:6085

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2008 Annual Meeting, July 27-29, 2008, Orlando, Florida from American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association)
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by AgEcon Search ().