The effects of robots on internal migration: Evidence from China

Xiaoyu Bian and Guangsu Zhou

Journal of Regional Science, 2024, vol. 64, issue 3, 840-865

Abstract: China has experienced a boom of industrial robots in the past decade. Under the shock of robotization on labor market, migration is a critical way to rebalance the economy. While many studies have investigated the influence of robotization on labor market in the automation‐advanced countries, few works shed light on the situation in the emerging market. We provide empirical evidence on the effect of industrial robots on intercity migration in China. We find that, industrial robot adoption has a significant negative effect on the net inflow migration by reducing population inflows, while has little effect on population outflows. The decline in population inflows is concentrated among low‐skilled migrants who are younger, less educated and in manufacturing sectors, because they are more likely to experience unemployment and wage declines in the face of industrial robots. The analysis of migration cost demonstrates that the negative impact of industrial robots on population inflows increases with the longer migration distances, higher living costs, and greater institutional entry barriers caused by Hukou Registration System in China.

Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/jors.12691

Related works:
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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:jregsc:v:64:y:2024:i:3:p:840-865

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0022-4146

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Regional Science is currently edited by Marlon G. Boarnet, Matthew Kahn and Mark D. Partridge

More articles in Journal of Regional Science from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().