Research On The Rural Migrant Worker's Behavior Of Choosing The Self-employment In Urban China

Self employment has become an important way for migrant workers to come into the city,and migrant workers engaged in self employment have become an important group of employment in the urban labor market in china.In recent years,a series of policies related to employment have provided the necessary action space and institutional guarantee for the workers to choose self employment.With the deepening of the reform,all kinds of market dynamism will be further released,and the action space of self-employment also will be further expanded,then the self-employment will become an important employment phenomenon in urban C hina.However,for a long time,the academia and the government have paid more attention to the research of the employed group,but ignored the systematic discussion on the special employment form of self employment.In the previous literature,the phenomenon of self employment is considered as a form of informal employment.Meanwhile,in the previous reform of urbanization in China,Self-employed migrant workers which accouting for two fifths of the total migrant workers have not been paid enough attention.They have been divorced from the current legal system of labor protection and urbanization in urban china.At present,our country is in the key period of advancing urbanization,how to better guide and promote the self-employment of migrant workers to get the city residence is most important.Therefore,the employment of migrant workers is not only a phenomenon of employment,but also related to the realization of the goal of urbanization.In this paper,we use the 2014 National Migrant Population Dynamic Monitoring Survey Data,and based on the logical chain of "entry mechanism-behavior consequence-function orientation" to answer the following 4 key questions :(1)how large is the scale of self-employed migrant workers in urban C hina? What are the trends and characteristics of self employment?(2)What are the factors that lead to migrant workers choose to abandon the traditional wage employment,instead of making self employment choice? Rural migrant workers choose to engage in self employment activities is a rational choice based on utility maximization,or a Passive selection due to the urban labor market segmentation,especially by the limitations of the household registration system?(3)How the market returns of migrant workers engaged in self-employment activities? In other words,what is the status of migrant workers engaged in self employment in terms of economic returns,welfare,and so on?(4)In the context of China's urbanization,is there any difference between the self employment and the employment of migrant workers in the willingness of urbanization and the actual behavior? If this is true,how to better guide the self-employed migrant workers to achieve the identity of the public change in the future of the new urbanization construction process? This paper tries to answer the questions above.The conclusions of this paper are as follows :(1)self-employment has indeed become an important form of migrant workers employment,more than 40% migrant workers engaged into self-employment activities.In 2014,the size of the self employed migrant workers was about 76 million 120 thousand,and most of them were self-employed.(2)Self-employment behavior has obvious self selectivity,migrant workers choose to enter self employment activities especially the opportunity of self employment activities is a kind of independent arrangements for their own or family utility maximization,rather than a helpless choice;(3)the income effect of self employment of migrant workers is significantly positive,self employment activities bring higher economic returns for migrant workers,but also face a relatively higher income uncertainty.At the same time,the income return of self employment activity has the "Matthew effect",the more successful self employed migrant workers get the higher the income return.(4)Self-employment of migrant workers pay more labor time,but their health at least not worse,and they have relatively higher life satisfaction.Self employed migrant workers have a higher demand for social security and other labor benefits,but their actual enjoyment of various types of socia l insurance significantly lower.(5)Compared to the paid-employed migrant workers,self-employed migrant workers has a stronger desire for urbanization,and they are also more likely to make the actual urbanization behavior.However,in the current household registration system,self employment of migrant workers are still maintained a cautious attitude to move into the household registration.Based on the above findings,we finally answers the functional position of the self-employment of migrant workers.Although self-employment is often regarded as an integral part of informal employment,however,the self employment behavior of migrant workers has its special behavioral logic and economic consequences.Therefore,for the special employment form of self employment,to make the normalization of the non-discrimination is not the optimal strategy,and even brings the double loss of efficiency and welfare.In the future,on one hand,the government should pay more attention to encourage and guide the conditional migrant workers toengage in self-employment,meanwhile construct the social protection system of self-employment;on the other hand,the government should incorporate the self employed migrant workers into the civic program.