Rich dad, poor dad: the impact of family background on educated young people’s migration from peripheral China

ABSTRACT

Along with its rapid economic growth, economic inequality rises and intergenerational mobility declines in China. Meanwhile, significant growth in HEIs’ enrolment has contributed to major migration flows across the country. This research investigates the impact of family background on the migration location choice of educated young people from peripheral China, based on data from a life-course survey of recent graduates of tertiary education institutions originating from Chaohu, China. Logistic models are employed to analyse young people’s migration to receive higher education, whether inside or outside the home province, and the location trajectories afterwards. While the findings confirm the association between university and post-university location choice, substantial interaction effects are found between location choice and family background. Young people from different family backgrounds adopt different strategies of geographical mobility in their transition to adulthood. In particular, young people from privileged families are more likely to leave the home province for higher education and return after graduation, whereas those from underprivileged families are more likely to study within the home province and then move away.

KEYWORDS:

• Student migration
• graduate migration
• location choice
• family background
• geographical mobility

Acknowledgement

The author would like to thank Shenjing He, Russell King, Si-ming Li, Jianfa Shen, and three anonymous reviewers for their contributions to the improvement of this paper. Special thanks to Fenglong Wang for his help in data manipulation and preparing Figure 1.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The regular HEIs include full-time universities, colleges, institutions of higher professional education, institutions of higher vocational education, and others (non-university tertiary, branch schools and undergraduate classes). Universities and branch schools usually offer four-year undergraduate education and grant academic degrees to graduates (some degrees like medicine and architecture require five years). Institutions of higher professional education and institutions of higher vocational education offer three-year professional or vocational education and grant diplomas to graduates, which can be used as credits towards completion of a bachelor degree.

2 The Chinese economic reform began in 1978 has provided preferential policies to the eastern coastal areas, or the ‘early-developed’ regions, which become engines of growth for the national economy. The inland areas, or the so-called ‘late-developed’ regions, become peripheral in state development.

3 Despite the vast literature on rural-to-urban migration in China, studies from the native-place perspective are also limited and they have only looked at urban-to-rural return migration of migrant workers.

4 Intergenerational mobility refers to social mobility that takes place between generations.

5 Under the dual economy and dual society in socialist China, a differential treatment was applied to two populations, urban residents economically and socially privileged than rural counterparts. Rural residents continue to be disadvantaged by urban-biased policies in the reform era.

6 Key universities refer to universities in Project 211. Project 211, initiated in 1995 by the Ministry of Education of PRC, is aimed at cultivating high-level elites. Among the more than 1700 standard HEIs in China, universities listed in Project 211 constitute only 6%. However, they take on the responsibility of training 4/5 of doctoral students, 2/3 of master students, 1/2 of students abroad and 1/3 of undergraduates. Also, they offer 85% of the State's key subjects, hold 96% of the State's key laboratories, and utilise 70% of scientific research funding. http://english.people.com.cn/90001/6381319.html

7 Family background is often measured by the father's occupation, education, family income etc. ‘Privileged family background’ refers to the families where the father has a high-status occupation, or higher education level, or higher family income;‘underprivileged family background’ refers to the families where the father has a low-status occupation, or lower education level, or lower family income.

8 As one of the most populous provinces with a large volume of surplus rural labour, Anhui is well-known for a historically high out-migration rate in China. Chaohu is one of few cities with very high mobility in Anhui Province, the others being Fuyang, Anqing, Lu’an and Bozhou. The local government also encourages and promotes labour export as a way to resolve the problem of surplus agricultural labour force and to increase its finance with migrant workers’ remittance (Anhuinews 2005).

9 There are only two colleges in Chaohu, Chaohu College and Chaohu Vocational and Technical College, granting diplomas to graduates. Chaohu College became Chaohu University in 2002 and begun to offer bachelor degree programmes.

10 The information is solicited from Chaohu Education Bureau.

11 Compared to education and income, father's occupation status is believed to provide important information about the family's economic, social and cultural capital. Furthermore, as respondents of the survey were adult children rather than their parents, questions about family income may not get satisfactorily answered. Information about the father's occupation status rather than the mother's is solicited, because in a peripheral area like Chaohu the father is usually the main person in the household responsible for the socioeconomic wellbeing of the family.