The Effect Of Rural-urban Selectivity Migration On The Development Of Dual Economy In China

The assumption that rural surplus labors are homogeneous in the Lewis model and the Todaro model is far from the truth in China, and so are their conclusions. The homogeneity assumption on one hand simplifies the analysis and finds out some useful conclusions, but will fail to obtain the fact that the rural labors are different from each other,which is key in understanding the selectivity of rural-urban migration in china.There is a tendency for the labor market to pick up the excellent workers in the rural-urban migration. Those who works in the off-farm are usually young adults with higher education. This article finds out that China’s rural-urban migration selectivity which brings about four issues, that are the poor quality of agricultural labors, the informal employment, non-residents and the trap of rural-urban migration. The rural-urban migration selectivity has profound impacts on dual economy in China, or will have. The goal of industrialization will not be reached as long as the rural surplus labors disappear as the Lewis-Ranis-Fei model predicted.Overall, the rural-urban selectivity migration promotes the process of industrialization in china. But it also undermines the quality of dual economic unification in China. A number of higher-educated youth migrating out of the production of agriculture,will result in poor quality of the agricultural labors and falling into the trap of rural-urban migration, which hinders the further development of agriculture. The immigrants with poorer education and skills can merely get informal jobs relative to native workers in the labor market, which harms the industrial upgrading process and urbanization in China.How to solve the problems? First, the land circulating mechanism has to be deepened to achieve scale operation of the land and diversify primary production Second, we should train new group of farmers. Third, increase the investment in education and vocational training in rural areas. Finally, promote multilevel urbanization and the development of tertiary industry.