HEALTH SELECTION EFFECTS IN CHINA'S INTERNAL MIGRATION

Abstract

Drawing data from the 2008 survey of Internal Migration and Health in China, we compare various health indicators among current rural-to-urban migrants, rural residents who never migrated, return migrants, and urban citizens. Two health-selective mechanisms, the healthy migrant hypothesis and the salmon bias hypothesis, are empirically tested. Results provide empirical support to both these hypotheses. After controlling for individual's age, sex, socioeconomic status and major health-related behaviours, current rural-to-urban migrants are still better off than rural residents who never migrated regarding their self-rated general health, chronic diseases, self-perceived physical discomfort and lung capacity. Current rural-to-urban migrants are also less likely to have chronic diseases or to report physical discomfort than return migrants. Except for self-reported chronic diseases and abnormally high heart rate, there is no significant difference between rural-to-urban migrants and urban residents regarding the health measures used in this study.

Keywords:

• internal migration
• health selection
• healthy migrant hypothesis
• salmon bias hypothesis

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The data used in this study come from a survey project funded by the National Science Foundation (SES0551279, Primary Investigators: Donald J. Treiman and William M. Mason). An earlier version of this paper was presented at the seminar organised by the IUSSP Scientific Panel on the Impact of Internal Migration and Urbanization in Developing Countries and Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou, China, December 2011. The authors thank the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions.

Notes

1. Available online at http://www.stats.gov.cn/zgrkpc/dlc/yw/t20110428_402722384.htm.

2. For more details about the sampling strategy or general information about the IMHC project, please refer to the project webpage at http://www.ccpr.ucla.edu/IM-China.

3. We use the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale in this study. For more information about this scale, please refer to Radloff (1977).

4. For the reasons including family division of labour by gender, women, especially middle-aged women, are more likely to be available and willing to participate in a face-to-face, household interview.