Labor Market Integration, Growth and Inequality: Evidence from China
Hai River and high-rise buildings around, Tianjin, China. Photo: Yang Aijun / World Bank
Policy Context
Successive reforms to China’s local registration system, the Hukou, provide detail on where people move over time. The project aims to understand how changes in internal migration costs affected migration levels of different groups of workers, and how their migration affected economic outcomes such as wages, productivity, and amenities at the destination and origin.
Study Design
The researchers reviewed a novel dataset of roughly 8,000 group-specific migration policy changes in China between 1995 and 2015. The researchers will employ a triple-difference approach to estimate the effect of those reforms on migration by groups, estimating group-specific migration elasticities and quantifying the reforms’ contribution to the overall change in internal migration in China.
Results and Policy Lessons
Project delayed due to COVID-19 pandemic. Researchers were unable to gain access to the restricted-access server in Beijing where the novel dataset identified in the study design is located. Work on the project renewed in 2023.
