Rural unemployment pushes migrants to urban areas in Jiangsu Province, China

Abstract

Migration is often seen as an adaptive human response to adverse socioenvironmental conditions, such as water scarcity. A rigorous assessment of the causes of migration, however, requires reliable information on the migration in question and related variables, such as, unemployment, which is often missing. This study explores the causes of one such type of migration, from rural to urban areas, in the Jiangsu province of China. A migration model is developed to fill a gap in the understanding of how rural to urban migration responds to variations in inputs to agricultural production including water availability and labor and how rural population forms expectations of better livelihood in urban areas. Rural to urban migration is estimated at provincial scale for period 1985-2013 and is found to be significantly linked with rural unemployment. Further, migration reacts to a change in rural unemployment after 2-4 years with 1% increase in rural unemployment, on average, leading to migration of 16,000 additional people. This implies that rural population takes a couple of years to internalize a shock in employment opportunities before migrating to cities. The analysis finds neither any evidence of migrants being pulled by better income prospects to urban areas nor being pushed out of rural areas by water scarcity. Corroborated by rural-urban migration in China migration survey data for 2008 and 2009, this means that local governments have 2-4 years of lead time after an unemployment shock, not necessarily linked to water scarcity, in rural areas to prepare for the migration wave in urban areas. This original analysis of migration over a 30-year period and finding its clear link with unemployment, and not with better income in urban areas or poor rainfall, thus provides conclusive evidence in support of policy interventions that focus on generating employment opportunities in rural areas to reduce migration flow to urban areas.

Self-poisoning with pesticides in Jiangsu Province, China: a cross-sectional study on 24,602 subjects

“…In addition, there is a weak correlation between the unemployment rate and self-poisoning with pesticides, which coincides with the fact that the main population of pesticide suicides in China is still concentrated in rural area. The unemployed in China are mainly concentrated in urban areas [29]. This phenomenon is also consistent with many other agricultural countries [30,31], where the suicide rate with pesticide of rural areas is higher.…”

Analysis of income determinants among rural households in Kosovo

“…Different authors suggest that off-farm income can reduce rural to urban migration rates, which are believed to be caused by rural unemployment (and underemployment) (Cho et al 2019). Lyu et al (2019) support the policy interventions that focus on generating employment opportunities in rural areas to reduce migration to urban areas.…”

“…Farm household income can be categorized as an earned off-farm income (wages and salaries), unearned off-farm income (remittances, social security, pensions, and investments), and farm net cash income (M€ ollers ÀBuchenrieder 2011; Mat et al 2012). According to Lyu et al (2019), rural-urban migration comes 2-4 years following an increase in rural unemployment. The rural population takes a couple of years to internalize a shock in employment opportunities before migrating to cities.…”

“…According to Bytyçi and Gjergjizi 2015, to increase farmers' incomes, rural families are often forced to engage in work outside of their farms. Different authors discussed how to avoid poverty in rural areas (Kabir et al 2019;Cho et al 2019;Lyu et al 2019). As agricultural employment is generally associated with an elevated poverty risk, rural nonfarm income may offer a new opportunity in this situation (Kabir et al 2019).…”

Prospects of interventions to alleviate rural–urban migration in Jiangsu Province, China based on sensitivity and scenario analysis

“…Most of the migrants originated from rural northern Jiangsu and relocated to the more urbanized southern parts of the province (Huang 2006, Chen 2007, Zhang and Huang 2009, Wang 2017). According to a rural-urban migration model recently developed by Lyu et al (2019), migration in Jiangsu province appears to occur two to four years after changes of rural employment and is being driven by underemployment in rural areas, possibly due to structural transformation of Chinese economy away from the agricultural sector (FAO 2018). The motivation of this study is to inspire possible policy interventions based on such insights to relieve the stress of regional rural-urban migration of the province such that it is transferrable to other regions with similar drivers of rural-urban migration.…”