IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/yor/yorken/12-16.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Should I Stay or Should I Go? Intra-province Migration in Guangdong

Author

Listed:
  • Peter Simmons
  • Yuan Yuan Xie

Abstract

Guangdong is one of the fastest growing Chinese provinces and has a high level of gross migration flows. Its intra-province migration is 2.7 times higher than its inter-province migration. We study migration between the 18 prefecture-level divisions of Guangdong during 1990-1999 using annual data. In our framework, migration decisions are based on differences in five characteristics between origin and destination: expected urban wage, marriage opportunities, urbanisation and (to reflect profitability of self employed migrants) population and capital stock. We formulate a panel regression equation allowing for both panel heteroscedasticity and inter-cities heterogeneity in the migration process. Remarkably we find that there is a high degree of homogeneity between cities, the only differences being in the impacts of capital stock and degree of urbanisation. Even here, nearly 70% of cities have identical effects. Despite the high level of net migration demonstrated to be largely caused by the above characteristics, intercity inequalities as measured by some of these forces has been growing over our time period. This suggests that a locational equilibrium has not yet been achieved.

Suggested Citation

  • Peter Simmons & Yuan Yuan Xie, 2012. "Should I Stay or Should I Go? Intra-province Migration in Guangdong," Discussion Papers 12/16, Department of Economics, University of York.
    • Handle: RePEc:yor:yorken:12/16
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.york.ac.uk/media/economics/documents/discussionpapers/2012/1216.pdf
    File Function: Main text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Todaro, Michael P, 1969. "A Model for Labor Migration and Urban Unemployment in Less Developed Countries," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 59(1), pages 138-148, March.
    2. Zelai XU & Mary-Françoise RENARD & Nong ZHU, 2007. "Migration, urban population growth and regional disparity in China," Working Papers 200730, CERDI.
    3. Poncet, Sandra, 2006. "Provincial migration dynamics in China: Borders, costs and economic motivations," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(3), pages 385-398, May.
    4. Zhu, Nong, 2002. "The impacts of income gaps on migration decisions in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 13(2-3), pages 213-230.
    5. Italianer, Alexander, 1985. "A small-sample correction for the likelihood ratio test," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 315-317.
    6. Paul Krugman, 1992. "A Dynamic Spatial Model," NBER Working Papers 4219, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Peter Simmons & Yuanyuan Xie, 2013. "Where is the grass greener? A micro-founded model of migration with application to Guangdong," IZA Journal of Migration and Development, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 2(1), pages 1-23, December.
    2. Xubei Luo & Nong Zhu, 2022. "Migration, Agglomeration and Attractiveness of Cities in China," Working Papers hal-03606056, HAL.
    3. Mohamed Amara & Hatem Jemmali, 2018. "Deciphering the Relationship Between Internal Migration and Regional Disparities in Tunisia," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 135(1), pages 313-331, January.
    4. Konseiga, Adama, 2006. "Household Migration Decisions as Survival Strategy: The Case of Burkina Faso," Discussion Papers 276269, University of Bonn, Center for Development Research (ZEF).
    5. De Weerdt,Joachim & Christiaensen,Luc & Kanbur,Ravi, 2021. "When Distance Drives Destination, Towns Can Stimulate Development," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9622, The World Bank.
    6. Ge, Suqin & Yang, Dennis Tao, 2011. "Labor market developments in China: A neoclassical view," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 611-625.
    7. SHI, Xiaoping & Heerink, Nico & Qu, Futian, 2007. "Choices between different off-farm employment sub-categories: An empirical analysis for Jiangxi Province, China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 18(4), pages 438-455.
    8. Sylvie Démurger, 2012. "Mapping Modes of Rural Labour Migration in China," Working Papers halshs-00695632, HAL.
    9. Adama Konseiga, 2007. "Household Migration Decisions as Survival Strategy: The Case of Burkina Faso," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 16(2), pages 198-233, March.
    10. Jianwen Li & Jinyan Hu, 2022. "Migrants and default: Evidence from China," International Review of Finance, International Review of Finance Ltd., vol. 22(3), pages 472-505, September.
    11. Yuling Cui & Daehoon Nahm & Massimiliano Tani, 2017. "Employment Choice And Ownership Structure In Transitional China," The Singapore Economic Review (SER), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 62(02), pages 325-344, June.
    12. Anna Klabunde & Frans Willekens, 2016. "Decision-Making in Agent-Based Models of Migration: State of the Art and Challenges," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 32(1), pages 73-97, February.
    13. Su, Yaqin & Tesfazion, Petros & Zhao, Zhong, 2018. "Where are the migrants from? Inter- vs. intra-provincial rural-urban migration in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 142-155.
    14. Mohamed Amara & Mohamed Ayadi & Hatem Jemmali, 2019. "Rural–urban migration and income disparity in Tunisia: A decomposition analysis," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 98(2), pages 1053-1083, April.
    15. Bodvarsson, Örn B. & Hou, Jack W. & Shen, Kailing, 2014. "Aging and Migration in a Transition Economy: The Case of China," IZA Discussion Papers 8351, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    16. Guangzhong Cao & Ming Li & Yan Ma & Ran Tao, 2015. "Self-employment and intention of permanent urban settlement: Evidence from a survey of migrants in China’s four major urbanising areas," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 52(4), pages 639-664, March.
    17. Magnani, Elisabetta & Zhu, Rong, 2012. "Gender wage differentials among rural–urban migrants in China," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(5), pages 779-793.
    18. Cui, Yuling & Nahm, Daehoon & Tani, Massimiliano, 2012. "The Determinants of Rural Migrants' Employment Choice in China: Results from a Joint Estimation," IZA Discussion Papers 6968, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    19. Dong, Qi & Murakami, Tomoaki & Nakashima, Yasuhiro, 2018. "Modeling the Labor Transfers from the Agricultural Sector to the Non-agricultural Sector under Food Supply Constraint in China," 2018 Annual Meeting, August 5-7, Washington, D.C. 274161, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    20. Thomas Gries & Manfred Kraft & Manuel Simon, 2016. "Explaining inter-provincial migration in China," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 95(4), pages 709-731, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Intra-provincial migration; intercity inequalities; multivariate choices; equilibrium.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration
    • R23 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:yor:yorken:12/16. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Paul Hodgson (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deyoruk.html .

    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.