IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fec/journl/v11y2016i4p548-580.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Aging and Migration: Micro and Macro Evidence from China

Author

Listed:
  • Orn B. Bodvarsson

    (College of Social Sciences & Interdisciplinary Studies, California State University, Sacramento, California 95819¨C6109, USA)

  • Jack W. Hou

    (Department of Economics, California State University-Long Beach, Long Beach, CA 90840, USA; Henan University)

  • Kailing Shen

    (Wang Yanan Institute for Studies in Economics (WISE), Xiamen University, Xiamen 361005, China; Research School of Economics, College of Business and Economics, Australian National University, Canberra 0200, Australia; IZA, Bonn, Germany)

Abstract

Post-reform China has been experiencing two major demographic changes: an increasingly aging population and an extraordinary surge of rural-urban migrants. The question we ask is: are these two demographic changes related? If yes, then, how? The standard view in the migration literature is that the older the migrant, the lower the likelihood of migration. This paper proposes a simple theory of temporary migration for unskilled labor to fit the context of China. Motivated by our model, we then use both cross-sectional micro data and panel macro data to examine the potential impacts of aging on migration. We find that shifts in China¡¯s age distribution have generated significant changes in the country¡¯s migration patterns: migration will shift to closer provinces (probably switching from interprovincial migration to intra-provincial migration) and will concentrate to a few destination provinces.

Suggested Citation

  • Orn B. Bodvarsson & Jack W. Hou & Kailing Shen, 2016. "Aging and Migration: Micro and Macro Evidence from China," Frontiers of Economics in China-Selected Publications from Chinese Universities, Higher Education Press, vol. 11(4), pages 548-580, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:fec:journl:v:11:y:2016:i:4:p:548-580
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://journal.hep.com.cn/fec/EN/10.3868/s060-005-016-0029-5
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Xing, Chunbing & Sun, Yan, 2019. "Economic Opportunities and Gender Equity: The Migration and Education Decisions of Young Women from Rural China," IZA Discussion Papers 12311, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Yuanyuan Chen & Zichen Deng, 2019. "Liquidity Constraint Shock, Job Search and Post Match Quality—Evidence from Rural-to-Urban Migrants in China," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 40(3), pages 332-355, September.
    3. Yufei Lin & Yingxia Pu & Xinyi Zhao & Guangqing Chi & Cui Ye, 2023. "The Spatiotemporal Elasticity of Age Structure in China’s Interprovincial Migration System," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(10), pages 1-18, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    internal migration; age distribution; reform;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J11 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Demographic Trends, Macroeconomic Effects, and Forecasts
    • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fec:journl:v:11:y:2016:i:4:p:548-580. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Frank H. Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.