Migration, Remittances and Rural Employment Patterns: Evidence from China

Sylvie Démurger (1) , Shi Li (2)

1 GATE Lyon Saint-Étienne - Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon - Saint-Etienne
2 School of Economics and Business Administration

This paper explores the rural labor market impact of migration in China using crosssectional 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 binary decisions : farm work, wage work, self-employment and housework. The paper then goes on to estimate how the impact of migration differs across different types of migrant households identified along two additional lines : remittances and migration history. Results show that individual occupational choice in rural China is responsive to migration, at both the individual and the family levels, but the impacts differ : individual migration experience favors subsequent local off-farm work, whereas at the family level, migration drives the left-behinds to farming rather than to off-farm activities. Our results also point to the interplay of various channels through which migration influences rural employment patterns.

Mots clés: labor migration; labor supply; remittances; temporary migration; left-behind; China

Domaines: Economies et finances

Sylvie Démurger, Shi Li. Migration, Remittances and Rural Employment Patterns: Evidence from China. Labor Market Issues in China, 2012, pp. 31-63. ⟨halshs-00744438v2⟩