Impact Of Minimum Wage On Access To Urban Workers’ Health Insurance For Migrant Workers

As new urbanisation progresses,employment opportunities in cities and towns increase.Migrant workers who go out to work and contribute to the urban economy are treated unfairly in terms of their employment benefits and lack of appropriate social security in their jobs.When the employment benefits of migrant workers are curtailed,they are less inclined to choose to work in towns and cities as well as settle there,which is not conducive to the promotion of urbanisation.It is a typical fact that the participation rate of migrant workers in urban employees’ health insurance is lower than that of urban workers,and the gap between the two has led to widespread social concern about the employment benefits of migrant workers’work.As a low-income disadvantaged group in society,the remuneration package of migrant workers is affected by the minimum wage policy.The buyer’s monopoly market created by the minimum wage constraint further exacerbates the disadvantaged position of migrant workers when they are employed.Enterprises have greater autonomy to adjust non-wage benefits to cope with the rising costs brought about by the minimum wage increase.Enterprises adjust the pay structure of migrant workers after taking into account the degree of constraint of the minimum wage policy,labour costs and other factors,thus affecting their access to urban workers’ health insurance.In order to improve the quality of urbanisation and the social security system,this paper looks at the impact of the minimum wage on migrant workers’ access to urban workers’ health insurance from the perspective of individual migrant workers,providing a new direction of thinking for policy optimisation and improvement.Using a quasi-natural experiment in which the minimum wage is adjusted in some provinces across the country within a year,this paper examines the impact of the minimum wage on migrant workers’ access to urban employee health insurance using a double difference method and data from the 2015 to 2016 Mobility Monitoring Survey,and further explores the heterogeneity of the impact and the mechanism of action.The paper analyses the heterogeneity between generations,between skill levels and between genders through the year of birth,education level and gender of the migrant workers’ cohort respectively.The paper analyses the impact of the minimum wage on migrant workers’ access to urban employees’ health insurance through the channels of whether they are employed in self-employment,whether they have signed a labour contract and whether they choose to work online.The robustness of the results in this paper will be tested by replacing the explanatory variable with whether or not they acquire health knowledge,replacing the core explanatory variable with a random binary variable,changing the point in time when the policy occurs,spatially replacing the control group,PSM-DID,correcting for sample selection bias and selecting neighbouring years for regression validation.The study found that:firstly,an increase in the minimum wage reduces access to urban workers’ health insurance for migrant workers.Second,the minimum wage policy has a more significant negative impact on access to urban employee health insurance for female and low-skilled,older generation migrant workers.Thirdly,the employment effect of the minimum wage increase on migrant workers is reflected in their access to the market,raising the barriers to employment for migrant workers.With the rise of the "sharing economy",online employment has become a new employment option for migrant workers due to the low barrier to entry.Due to the increased supply of labour and the lack of clarity in regulation,internet platforms have become the norm to squeeze the employment benefits of migrant workers.The increase in the minimum wage undermines the employment benefits of migrant workers and reduces the participation rate of urban workers’ health insurance.Fourthly,the minimum wage has reduced the labour contract signing rate of migrant workers.Labour contracts protect workers’ rights and interests,and labour contract signing has a positive effect on migrant workers’ access to urban workers’ health insurance.Fifth,the increase in the minimum wage restricts some migrant workers from working in enterprises,thus promoting the choice of flexible employment for migrant workers.Individual businesses will then absorb this part of the workforce,but the low formality of individual businesses not only results in a high degree of evasion in signing labour contracts,but also in a low rate of payment of urban workers’ health insurance for migrant workers.The policy implications of the findings of the study are:i.The government should not only improve the social security system for migrant workers but also increase its efforts to publicise the importance of social security,which can be used to raise awareness of migrant workers’ participation in insurance.Secondly,in the employment market,the government needs to increase its efforts to support skills upgrading programmes for migrant workers,thereby promoting their bargaining power in the labour market.Third,the government needs to take measures to moderately reduce taxes and fees in order to reduce the cost burden on enterprises.While ensuring that enterprises can afford to pay for their employees’ social insurance,the government should also ensure that enterprises must pay for their employees on time and in the right amount.Fourth,relevant labour laws need to clearly define the definition of online employment status and clarify the respective responsibilities of the platform,the business and the employee in relation to the employment contract.Fifth,the government should also ensure the effective implementation of policies.In this way,it can effectively safeguard the rights and interests of migrant workers,increase the level of participation in urban employees’medical insurance,improve the disadvantaged position of migrant workers,enhance the capital of migrant workers to survive in urban areas,promote the well-being of people’s livelihood and facilitate the equalisation of public services.