Migrations in the Urban—Rural Hierarchy of China: Insights from the Microdata of the 1987 National Survey

After presenting a brief account of the societal context of China, the authors use the microdata of the 1987 National Population Survey to study the migration behaviors of Chinese people in the mid-1980s. The authors' main concern is with the effects of the government migration policy, and the focus is on the migrations in the city/town/rural hierarchy. There are two main findings. First, although the migration policy resulted in a very low migration level and systematic distortions in migration schedules, its encouragement of downward migrations was very ineffective, whereas its control on rural-to-urban migrations was partially weakened by the strong upward aspiration of rural families awakened by recent economic reform. Consequently, net in-migration contributed substantially to the growth both of city and of town populations. Second, although the level of education had a strong positive effect on the migration propensities both of males and of females in general, it had a strong negative effect on the migration propensities of females at the time of marriage, a finding which suggests that the families at subsistence income level tended to marry their daughters to grooms in other communities in order to reduce the risk of familial income shortfalls.