Family Migration in China: A Longitudinal Analysis of Couples’ Migration Decisions.

Min Zhu , Centre for Demographic Studies, Autonomous University of Barcelona
Sergi Vidal , CED-CERCA / Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

China has witnessed increased internal migration rates in recent decades, with important impacts on economic growth and the lives of those who move to opportunity. Despite most of these moves involving a couple or a family, research on internal migration in China has rarely addressed family migration as an outcome of couple’s decision-making. Our objective is to provide a thorough understanding of internal migration decisions in the context of couple and family households, addressing how gender inequalities permeate these decisions. To this end, we will perform a comprehensive and systematic examination of typical hypotheses from the family migration literature. In particular, we will address the role of male and female spousal resources –i.e. pre-migration educational levels and occupational characteristics– for migration decisions, and whether these associations are influenced by family status and attitudes to families and gender among partners. In addition, we will examine whether and how typical mechanisms of family migration apply under the household registration or Hukou system (which differentiates households into rural and urban residents), as well as across prominent onward moves to urban areas, and return moves to rural areas. Our empirical analysis deploys discrete-time event-history analysis on a representative sample of couple households from the Chinese Family Panel Studies. Results from this study will improve our understanding of migration decisions in a context that, despite undergoing profound structural changes, remains highly gendered.

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 Presented in Session 64. Flash Session: International and Internal Mobility