Barriers To China Rural Labor Migration

This study explains the changes of Chinese labor market from 2003 to 2007. By establishing the market supply and demand model of migrant workers, this study consider that the wage levels of migrant workers increased and the number of migrant workers slowdown in growth are due to the supply of migrant workers slowdown in growth from 2003 to 2007. In this study, the migration cost increased is considered the main reason for the supply of migrant workers slowdown in growth. The migration cost increased is due to the rapid increase in peasants’income, which increases peasants’ mental evaluation and the mental cost of family separation.Different from other developing countries, China rural labors usually migrate singly from rural family due to the difficulty of family relocation. Through theoretical analysis, this study consider the rural family relocation decision depends on the changes in family utility which is caused by the changes in endowments, the price of endowments and the prices of consumer goods as the family relocate. There are three obstacles in China rural family’s relocation:1) the migrant workers can not enjoy the city’s social welfare and security and other public products; 2) due to Chinese land system, family relocation means giving up land for free or at low price; 3) due to stringent control over urban land use, urban housing prices are too high for rural family.Because of the obstacles in family’s relocation, rural migrating labors have to leave their family, which will cause the loss of mental utility to the individual migrants along with their families. Consequently, China rural labors need quite a huge level of urban-rural wage gap to migrate. And peasants’mental evaluation is increasing as their income increases. If the urban-rural wage gap is as the same as before, their willingness of migration will decrease. Because of the obstacles in family’s relocation, the family has to leave a few labors for housework and agriculture work. So whether the individual labor is to immigrate depends not only on his own migrating advantages but also depends on his comparative advantages in the inner family.Using the rural survey data, this study empirically analyses the behavior of China rural labor migration on the condition that their family is difficult to relocate. Empirical research results confirm the theoretical analysis. Empirical research found that:the rural labors tend to outgoing employment less when their family can get a higher level income under the circumstances of maintaining the labor’ urban-rural wage gap unchanged. In addition, whether a labor outgoing employment not only depend on its own urban-rural wage gap, also depends on the comparative urban-rural wage gap within the family. Existing empirical studies found that gender, age, marital status, educational level, the number of family labor, arable land, rural non-agricultural capital, etc. are important factors that impact a rural labor whether outgoing employment or not. This study renews the explanation why these variables may have impact. At a certain extent, these variables could be interpreted impacting rural labor outgoing employment decision-making through impacting the urban-rural wage gap, the comparative urban-rural wage gap within the family as well as the household income levels.In short, this this research studies the behavior of China rural labor migration on the condition that their family is difficult to relocate and tries to illustrate how the obstacles of family relocation affect individual labor migration. On this basis, this study put forward relevant policy recommendations.