Village Political Economy, Land Tenure Insecurity, and the Rural to Urban Migration Decision: Evidence from China

Abstract

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.

Job Prospects and Labour Mobility in China

“…Further, the popularity of the province-level research also stems from the remarkable increase in inter-provincial migrant populations since 1987 (Liang 2001), the predominant group until 2010, which was then outpaced by intra-provincial migration, as seen in Figure 2. Similar conclusions can be drawn from national statistics on the rural-to-urban subpopulation, the main focus of Chinese migration studies (e.g., Bairoliya and Miller 2021;Giles and Mu 2018;Liu 2008;Minale 2018;Zhao 1999). By combining the 1990, 2000Chinese Censuses with the 1995 1% population sample surveys, Su et al (2018) show that intra-provincial rural migration flows have outnumbered inter-provincial flows since 2011 and empirically identify that the likelihood of moving within the province of origin increases for rural migrants who are older, more educated, female, single, or from poorer areas.…”

A study of the impact of land transfer decisions on household income in rural China

“…The experience of many transition countries proves that circular economy can raise the cost-effectiveness in all economies and get larger economic benefits [ 31 ]. With the implementation of the strategies of poverty alleviation and rural revitalisation, the demand for rural development has given rise to new agents for agricultural management [ 32 ], which requires a mass of land for large-scale and specialised production [ 33 ], and can even directly drive scattered farmers towards new agents for agricultural management. Hence, this kind of moderate scale operation has a demonstration and driving effect on surrounding farmers, which accelerates the land transfer and increases the economies of scale.…”

Land Transfer and the Pursuit of Agricultural Modernization inChina

“…The HRS land redistribution started in 1978 and was completed by 1984; as such, the contract starting year can differ by several years between provinces (Giles and Mu ). The contracts were initially for 15 years in the First Round.…”