Permanent migrants to cities in China: hukou origin and earnings among men in an era of economic transformation

Abstract

The massive volume of internal migration in China since the late 1970s has attracted considerable research attention. However, the integration of permanent migrants in cities during a time of economic transformation is understudied. Using information on earnings from the 2003 general social survey of China, this research examines whether permanent migrants are economically advantaged or disadvantaged in comparison to non-migrants in cities. We find that permanent migrants in cities tend to be economically advantaged and that their advantage depends more on human capital than on political capital. Nevertheless, this does not mean that political capital can be ignored. A nuanced view requires attention to how political and human capitals jointly affect earnings in specific economic sectors.

Keywords:

• China
• hukou (household registration)
• permanent migrants
• command economy
• earnings
• inequality
• economic transition

Notes

This paper utilizes the China General Social Survey (CGSS). With sponsorship by the China Social Science Foundation, the CGSS was conducted by the Department of Sociology of Renmin University and the Social Science Division of the Hong Kong Science and Technology University, under the direction of Dr. Li Lulu and Dr. BianYanjie.

1. The terms “permanent” and “temporary” are consistent with the household registration system in China, but not English usage. In government usage, a change in household registration is necessary forqianyi (migration) and “other types of moves are considered renkouliudong (population movements or ‘floating’ population), implying a ‘temporary’ move” (Chan, 2012a, p. 82). Thus, the latter lacks the government’s permission to stay permanently (Chan, 2012a, p. 82) even though they may have been at their destination for years.

2. Although the size of the permanent migrant population is difficult to determine because of insufficient data, it is undoubtedly large. Permanent migration has been ongoing since the start of the registration system in the 1950s. Temporary migration is a more recent phenomenon. Temporary migrants are sometimes mistakenly portrayed as representing the whole internal migrant population. The widely cited figure of “140 million internal migrants in China” reflects such a misunderstanding (e.g. see DeWind & Holdaway, 2005).

3. This distinction originally reflected occupational classifications, but the connection between agricultural status and occupation has eroded. Also, prior to 1998, the household registration record (both status and the place) was inherited from one’s mother. Therefore, the child of a migrant mother with a rural hukou would be considered rural even if the child grew up in a city.

4. People from the countryside can become permanent urban residents through either the “regular” channel or the “special” channel. The regular channel includes recruitment by a state-owned enterprise, enrollment in an institution of higher education, joining or separating from the military, promotion to a senior administrative job and various personal reasons (Chan & Zhang, 1999; Wu & Treiman, 2004). The special channel is defined by temporary policies for certain groups of people under special circumstances, decided jointly by various government departments (Chan & Zhang, 1999). Because most permanent migrants move for non-family reasons (discussed below), state sponsorship is a major mechanism for selecting permanent migrants.

5. Permanent migration from urban to rural areas is uncommon and an investigation of this topic is not possible with our data. Also beyond our purview are village-to-village moves, along with the changing intricacies of defining “urban” in China (Chan, 2007; Shen, 2005).

6. Rural residents can obtain an urban hukou with a superior performance on nationwide examinations and by matriculating to institutions of higher education in urban areas.

7. This expectation is tenuous due to the difficulty of gleaning predictions from some studies. For example, Fan (2002) compares rural and urban migrants (combined) to urban non-migrants using a local survey. Deng and Gustafson (2006) compare rural migrants to urban migrants and urban non-migrants (combined). Such practises require one to remain open to any possibility.

8. About 90% of permanent migrant men reported that they migrated to their current place of residence for non-family reasons.

9. To reiterate, changes in the place and status of hukou registration are necessary for peasants to migrate permanently to cities. For people who change their place of registration, a change in status might come simultaneously, afterwards, or never. For people with non-agricultural status living in rural areas, no change in hukou status is necessary when the place of registration is switched to an urban area. Those who continue to hold an agricultural-status hukou after changing their place of registration to an urban area are not permanent migrants. It should also be noted that as a result of the survey design, we are not able to distinguish permanent migrants who eventually returned to their origin hukou place from those permanent migrants who were originally from another town or city. Those sent-down youth who returned to their home town or cities fall into this category.

10. The weighted sample size for men aged 18–59 with local urban residence and non-agricultural hukou status is 1,960. Once we add the condition of “not retired, not in school, and with positive income”, the sample size drops to 1,106. This reduction reflects high urban unemployment. The overall labour force participation rate for urbanites aged 16–60 was about 75% in 2001 and the unemployment rate was 13% in five large cities (Cai, Giles, & Park, 2004).

11. The results are not sensitive to the decision to include work hours in the denominator of the measure, as opposed to treating it as a covariate in the right-hand side of the equation.

12. Income may be under reported, especially by those with higher incomes. The implication of measurement error here is that income differences between the high and low income groups will be underestimated. Therefore, estimates are likely to be biased in a conservative direction.

13. The year of birth is taken as the starting point in the migration histories, except for those age 48–59 who were born before the household registration was instituted in 1955. This year serves as the starting point in permanent migration histories for these “older” individuals. If one migrated from a rural settlement to an urban area and did not return before the end of 1955, the origin of this person will be counted as urban.

14. To maintain parsimony, quadratic terms to identify curvilinear relationships between experience (or age) and earnings are excluded. The preliminary analysis revealed that these terms are not significant and the results are not sensitive to this decision.

15. Party membership and occupation are significantly associated (design-based χ ² = 17.8, p < 0.001). The correlation is not perfect. Over 80% of leading cadre, 36% of professionals, 36% of office workers, 11% of commercial workers and 15% of operators are party members. Conversely, 16% of party members are leading cadre, 10% are professionals and 13% are office workers. Among non-party members, just 1% are leading cadre, 9% are professionals and 11% are office workers.

16. This was determined by applying the 95% confidence intervals [0.36, 0.485] for our estimate of the proportion of the de jure urban adult male population age 15–59 who are permanent migrants (0.42) to an estimate of the de jure urban adult male population age 15–59. The latter was determined from a 2008 estimate of the permanent urban population (606.67 million; see chinadataonline.org) and an estimate of the share of the urban population that was male 15–59 (0.368) (United Nations, 2009). These rough estimates are subject to numerous assumptions.

17. While it might be counterintuitive to see leading cadres in the private sector, 3% of all males in our sample who were employed in the private sector reported their occupation as “leading cadre”. Similarly, about 3% of men working in the state-owned enterprises are leading cadre. The presence of leading cadre in the private sector is not impossible because there are work units under joint ownership by the state and the private owner. The CGSS identifies ownership of this type of work unit according to whether a majority of shares is held by the state or by private interests. So some units are classified as private although they do keep a state-owned component inside under the supervision of “leading cadres”.

18. Leading cadre who are likely to be politically connected also tend to enjoy earnings-related advantages in the private sector.