Population Migration And Rural Poverty

"The Migration and Rural Poverty" is based on the theories of modern western economics, such as general equilibrium, human capital, and external diseconomies in analyzing the correlations between migration and rural poverty.First of all, the dissertation reviews the past migration theories. It particularly elaborates the views of classical economics and neo-classical school. The economists on migration such as Kuznets, Lewis and Todaro made a tremendous contribution to migration theories on rural poverty. However, because the two theories have different theoretical hypothesis, their theoretical conclusions on migration are divergent.The dissertation establishes a two-equation general equilibrium model based on classical economics and neo-classical school. One equation is about the product market equilibrium and another is about the labor market equilibrium. The model explains how migration affects the rural people by proposing two hypotheses. It concludes that under the different hypothesis migration can either improve or reduce the living level of the people remaining in the rural area. In the end the dissertation uses the data from the United States and China to testify the hypotheses by OLS.The findings of the dissertation are as follows:1. The migration may yield different results. Under different hypothesis migration can either improve or reduce the living levels of the rural people.2. The dissertation reveals the major motive of migration is to pursue greater return of human capital.3. The dissertation points out that the non-equilibrium migration results in the rise of production cost of agro products. The real reason of the non-equilibrium migration results is not the rise of labor price but the external diseconomies caused by the migration.