The Siphon effects of transportation infrastructure on internal migration: evidence from China’s HSR network

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the impact of China’s High-Speed-Railway on internal migration. By exploiting the yearly variation in the city-pair connection, difference-in-differences estimation shows that HSR connection significantly promotes intercity migration. Furthermore, large cities have a huge siphon effect on small cities in terms of internal immigration after the HSR connection.

KEYWORDS:

• High-speed railway
• China
• migration
• transportation

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• L92
• O18
• R23
• R42

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ The only HSR in China during 2003–2008, Qinhuangdao-Shenyang line connects merely six cities, and China started to substantially expand the HSR network since 2008. Note that redefining 2008 as the first year of HSR network does not significantly change our main results.

² A transfer on average takes about 30 minutes. And it takes less than 10 minutes’ walk for in-station transfer. See http://news.cnr.cn/native/gd/20180923/t20180923_524367942.shtml.

³ http://www.chinaldrk.org.cn/wjw/#/home

⁴ We focus on cities at prefecture-level or above. Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen are at the first level; other vice-provincial cities and national central cities are at the second level, followed by other provincial capitals at the third level, and the rest at the fourth level.

⁵ Although the regression involving all immigration shows some lead effects (t-1 and t-2), the magnitudes are smaller and only marginally significant (p > 0.05). It may reflect the fact that some immigrants anticipated the HSR connection and decided to migrate in advance. The regression results are available upon request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [71703031].