The Research Of Rural Labor Migration Pattern

This paper analyzes the reasons why labor migration between cities and countries under the circumstances of Chinese economic transformation is characterized by forms of migratory bird like mobility and researches the important effects of such factors as government institution arrangement, the human capital of migrant workers, socio-cultural environment constraints on different patterns of migrant workers' mobility in the framework of development economics. Different patterns of migrant workers'mobility include two ways which are migratory bird like mobility and permanent relocation. The aim that this paper chooses to research the pattern choice of labor migration between cities and countries is to demonstrate the following phenomena and issues:1. The unique time and space characteristics of Chinese urban and rural labor mobility. Compared with other nations, Chinese urban and rural labor mobility has unique characteristics:only a little migration happened with great mobility, if there is any, migrated workers are still considered peasants and can not enjoy the welfare and securities, their jobs and statuses are separated which leads to the trans-regional flow of employment. These characteristics are the consequences of labor market partition under urban-rural dual economic structure during Chinese transformation. This paper introduces the unban-rural living utility function on the basis of Lewis-Celanese-Fee model and creates the wage decision model of labor migration under urban-rural dual economic structure. That migratory bird like mobility is the rational choice of migrant workers is demonstrated theoretically. Under the two sector economies, when the rural labors migrate to urban industry sectors, because of the social and institutional differences, the minimum industrial pay compensation increasingly rises, the so-called full range of flexible of labor supply does not exist. Also, because of the dual social structure, utility of migrant workers living in city is different from utility of living in country with the same income, which means even in equilibrium, wage rates of the two production sectors are still different. Therefore, under circumstances of urban-rural dual economic structure differences, migrant workers will choose migratory bird like mobility pattern. And even in some cases, large-scale backflow will happen2. The profound reasons and effects of the formation of Chinese rural-urban migratory bird like mobility pattern. The formation of migratory bird like mobility pattern is the result of the rational choices of migrant workers which also can be concluded as the lack of institution arrangement, low level of rural human capital and socio-culture environment differences. However, through the surface, that the government fails to create the facilities system that can meet with Chinese rural-urban labor mobility has led to the result. The study of migrant workers in this paper shows that during courses of creating uniform rural-urban labor market and promoting transformation of migrant workers to citizens, optimal allocation of public resources by government can be the basis of equal rights of employment, training and securities. At present, the process of transformation of migrant workers to citizens lagged far behind the process of industrialization. It causes such consequences as the lagging of industry upgrade, skill lack of industrial workers, infringement of rights and interests of migrant workers and labor shortages and so on, which has seriously affect China's economic long-term healthy and stable development.3. The key factors that affect migration will and capacity of migrant workers. The hidden cost of urban life affect migration will and capacity, which consists of Macro-institutional factors, personal qualities and abilities as well as the socio-cultural practices and so on. This paper uses t Sen's capacity theory and studies the effect of the five kinds of freedom including political freedom, economic conditions, social opportunities, transparency guarantees, as well as protective security on permanent will and capacity of labors. Survey data of National Bureau of Statistics in 2006 and migrant worker of Hangzhou in 2008 are used to study the factors that affect decisions of labor migration mobility empirically. The research shows that labor skill, health care, labor contracts, protective security and so on are more important factor that in terms of marital status or accommodation, especially labor skill. We also find that education level, marital status, age, average monthly living cost, expenditure of traveling to work, labor protection, certificates of professional skills and skills training are all significant factors that affect migration capacity of migrant workers.Based on the above research ideas, the core contents of this paper has important theoretical value for understanding rural-urban labor market partition during the Chinese economic transformation, the migratory bird like characteristics and effects of labor migration. In the meantime, the research on factors and effects of rural-urban labor migration demonstrates that in condition of lack of dominant support system such as resident account and health care, human capital accumulation and socio-culture environment improvement promote capacity of migrant workers, which facilitates migrant workers get rid of migratory bird like pattern of mobile employment and begin to settle down in city. It provides suggestions and references for the important issue of how,to create a stock of stable and high skilled industrial workers.In all, this paper provides evidence for our fundamental view that the macro institutional arrangements of government determine the room for permanent migration of migrant workers. The accumulation of human resources and socio-culture environment improvement has important effects on an individual migrant worker to seize the permanent migration opportunities.