A Sustainable Livelihood Approach To Urbanization Of Rural Migrants In China

Rural migrants from countryside can be seen as the elite of farmer, at the same time, they are the rural surplus labor force and the main force of urban construction. With the gradual extension of rural migrants into the city, rural migrants become more familiar with city life. Along with the time prolonged and the increasing age of rural migrants, especially the first generation of rural migrants who come into the retirement stage, a number of rural migrants face the choice that they should go back to the countryside or stay in the city. Farmer is the key of three rural issues and the rural migrant issue is the main problem of farmers, and now the urbanization of rural migrants is the most urgent problem of rural migrants, therefore, it is more and more important to study the willingness and way of urbanization of rural migrants.This paper develops the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework with institutional economics and asset portfolio theory, analyzes the willingness and path of urbanization of rural migrants with utility maximization principle based on the developed framework, and empirically studies the impact of livelihoods assets on the willingness and path of urbanization of rural migrants with bi-logistic model and multi-logistic model based on the survey data.The theoretical analysis shows that:(1) the household registration system increases the transaction costs of labor and reduces the transaction efficiency; (2) the household registration system has hindered the accumulation rate of livelihoods assets of rural migrants; (3) land property right system reduces the efficiency of the land owned by rural migrants, and reduces the speed of natural assets transferred to other assets; (4) in the short term, for the family in which all labor forces have gone to cities, rural migrants should allocate more social assets and financial assets, for the family in which part of the labor forces have gone to city, rural migrants should allocate more social assets and the labor force in the countryside should transfer to the city; (5) in the long term, rural migrants can chose whether to urbanize not constrained by the system but only the endowment of assets for system can change to improve the efficiency of allocation of assets.The empirical analysis shows that:(1) generally speaking, natural assets have a negative impact on the willingness of urbanization of rural migrants; physical assets have a positive impact; financial assets have a positive impact while city financial assets and rural financial assets have different impact, human assets have a positive impact while city human assets and rural human assets have different impact, social asset's impact is not significant; (2) for the first generation of rural migrants and the new generation of rural migrants, assets'impact on their willingness is significantly different; generally speaking, the impact of financial assets on the willingness of first generation of rural migrants is far greater than other assets while financial assets, physical assets and social assets all have significant impacts on the willingness of the new generation; from the perspective of different types of assets, different type of social assets have different impacts on the first generation but both increase willingness of the new generation; from the perspective of different types of assets, different types of social assets have opposite impacts on the first generation of rural migrants while two types of social assets will promote the new generation of rural migrant to enter the city; (3) natural assets have positive influence on the special path of urbanization of rural migrants, physical assets have negative influence on the special path of urbanization; financial assets have negative influence on the special path of urbanization while city financial assets and rural financial assets have a different influence; human assets have a positive influence on the special path of urbanization; (4) natural assets have a positive influence on the time path of urbanization of rural migrants; physical assets have a negative influence on the time path of urbanization of rural migrants; financial assets have a negative influence on the time path of urbanization; human assets have a positive influence on the time path of urbanization, and social assets'impact on time path of urbanization is not significant; (5) assets'impacts on the spacial path of urbanization of the first generation and the new generation of rural migrants are significantly different, generally speaking, human assets'impact on the special path of the first generation of rural migrants relative to other assets is far greater than on the special path of the new generation; from the perspective of different types of assets, different types of physical assets both will promote the first generation of rural migrants to enter the bigger city while rural physical assets promote the new generation of rural migrants to enter the bigger city and the urban physical assets have the opposite impact; different types of social assets have opposite impacts on first generation of rural migrants while two types of social assets will promote the first generation of rural migrants to enter smaller city.Based on the analysis of the willingness and special path of urbanization of rural migrants, this paper argues that the government can promote the urbanization of rural migrants by taking the following measures:(1) reforming and improving the household registration system; (2) reforming and improving the land property rights system; (3) reforming and improving the social insurance system of rural migrants; (4) establishing a perfect social training system.