The effect of cultural distance on rural-to-urban migrants’ self-employment in China: evidence from eight industries

ABSTRACT

This study offers additional evidence on the self-employment of rural-to-urban migrants from the perspective of cultural barriers in China. By employing seven waves of the China Migrants Dynamic Survey data from 2010 to 2016, we find that cultural distance has a negative and significant effect on the self-employment of rural-to-urban migrants in eight subdivision industries. In particular, such negative effect is greater in the service sectors.

KEYWORDS:

• Rural-to-urban migrant
• self-employment
• cultural distance
• China

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• J21
• J61
• O15

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ According to the China Migrants Dynamic Survey, about 80% of self-employed people enter the service sectors.

² More details see: https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs.jsp.

³ Hukou is the household registration system in China, which divides people into urban and countryside.

Additional information

Funding

We acknowledge the support of the National Social Science Foundation [18ZDA064, 21AZD008]; National Natural Science Foundation Youth Fund of China [72003055]; Humanities and Social Science Youth Project of Ministry of Education, China [20YJC790195]; Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [JZ2022HGTB0357].