Marketization And The Multi-dimensional Poverty Of Chinese Rural Migrant Workers

This paper, using the data of CHNS 2000-2009, explores the multidimensional poverty of laborers, which is income, health, education, medical care in 9 Chinese provinces. Furthermore, we comparatively analyze the situation of multi-dimensional poverty for rural migrant workers and urban local laborers. The authors highlight marketization and use the process of marketization to explain the decline of workers' multi-dimensional poverty. The authors evaluate the trends of returns to education for both rural migrant workers and urban local laborers using the Heckman two-step econometric method, and then compare the total returns to education for the above two cohorts during the latest one decade. This research indicates that the situation of rural migrant workers' multidimensional poverty is more serious than that of both the average laborers and urban local ones. The poverty of income and education contributes to migrant workers' multidimensional poverty; in particular, education contributes increasingly more to the poverty. Rural migrant workers' returns to education are lower than that of urban local laborers. In recent years, the gap of returns to education between the two cohorts is increasing. In terms of lower returns of education, rural migrant workers' rational choice is to reduce education inputs for themselves, and the lack of incentive to education inputs is disadvantaged to accumulation of their human capital. Facing transformation and upgrade of Chinese economy, rural migrant workers' multidimensional poverty are worsened, which are likely to impede migrants' agglomeration into cities.