Relative concerns of rural-to-urban migrants in China

Arbeitspapier

How the income of relevant others affects well-being has received renewed interest in the recent literature using subjective data. Migrants constitutes a particularly interesting group to study this question: as they changed environment, they are likely to be concerned by several potential reference groups including the people left behind, other migrants and natives. We focus here on the huge population of rural-to-urban migrants in China. We exploit a novel dataset that comprises samples of migrants and urban people living in the same cities, as well as rural households mostly surveyed in the provinces where migrants are coming from. After establishing these links, we find that the well-being of migrants is largely affected by relative concerns: results point to negative relative concerns toward other migrants and workers of home regions - this status effect is particularly strong for migrants who wish to settle permanently in cities. We find in contrast a positive relative income effect vis-à-vis the urban reference group, interpreted as a signal effect: larger urban incomes indicate higher income prospects for the migrants. A richer pattern is obtained when sorting migrants according to the duration of stay, expectations to return to home countries and characteristics related to family circumstances, work conditions and community ties.

Angaben zum Objekt

• Sprache: Englisch

Verweise und Beziehungen

• Erschienen in: Series: UCD Centre for Economic Research Working Paper Series ; No. WP11/04

Klassifikation und Themen

• Klassifikation: Wirtschaft ; Design of Experiments: General ; Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
• Thema: China ; relative concerns ; well-being

Beteiligte, Orts- und Zeitangaben

• Ereignis: Geistige Schöpfung
• (wer): Akay, Alpaslan ; Bargain, Olivier ; Zimmermann, Klaus F.
• Ereignis: Veröffentlichung
• (wer): University College Dublin, UCD School of Economics
• (wo): Dublin
• (wann): 2011

Weitere Informationen

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/72241
• Letzte Aktualisierung: 10.03.2025, 11:41 MEZ