Life Satisfaction and Rural-Urban Migration in China: The Role of - PDF document

Life Satisfaction and Rural-Urban Migration in China: The Role of Income and Relative Standing Abstract Rural-urban migrants are supposed to be less satisfied with their life, but why they still moved from rural to urban area in China for several decades? Employing national data from eight cities in China, we focus on the specific role of income and relative standing on rural- urban migrants’ life satisfaction through comparing with urban-urban migrants. The results show that the influence of income on rural-urban migrants’ life satisfaction is far stronger than relative standing. Within the relative standing, the effects of dual reference groups on their life satisfaction are asymmetric, namely, the reference group in the destination city has a larger effect than the reference group in the hometown. However, only relative standing matters for urban-urban migrants, and the effects of dual reference groups are symmetric. We take these as evidence that income increase does play an essential role in improving rural-urban migrants’ life satisfaction, which possibly offset the negative influences of poor objective well-being, and thus enhances their stay in the city. Moreover, the favorable relative standing compared with destination residents could bring rural-urban migrants with better subjective wellbeing and positive signals of future living, inspiring them to keep working in city instead of returning to their original countryside. Keywords rural-urban migrants; life satisfaction; income; relative standing; urban- urban migrants 1.Introduction One of the most widely accepted arguments in migration literature is that economic migrants move because they are not satisfied with their current situation and inclined to seek better opportunities in wealthier destination. People view the migration decision as one of utility maximization, i.e., they migrate to become better off in some subjective sense (Ziegler & Britton, 1981). Migrants’ life satisfaction is derived largely from their economic standing. To reinforce this reasoning, the literature on return migration shows that migrants will try to correct their decision if they do not realize economic gains, i.e., if they are not satisfied with their situation after migration 1

(Constant & Massey, 2002; Cassarino, 2004). Later studies extended to other potential gains, including their children’s well - being, that can affect migrants’ satisfaction. However, the rural-urban migration in China in the last few decades, one of the biggest mass migrations in recent human history, presents a different picture. Because of their non-native and agricultural household registration (Hukou) status, most rural- urban migrants are excluded from local educational resources, citywide social welfare programs, and many jobs (Chan & Zhang, 1999). They are segregated from urban residents both economically and socially. The expected occupational mobility is virtually absent because of the strict Hukou system. In addition, their moving and adaptation costs are substantial. For rural migrants, working in the city suggests the huge cost of separation from their families and children. For those who brought their children with them, the difficulty of receiving education of high quality is unlikely to change in the near future. Although the government implements a series of public policies to improve rural- urban migrants’ integration, the rules preventing them from changing their rural Hukou to city registration will not be lifted in the foreseeable future. In small and medium cities, the authorities adopt more liberal policies for rural-urban migrants to register urban Hukou in the local city, whereas the big cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, etc., where gather the most part of rural-urban migrants still have serious restrictions of household registration. Therefore, the short-term and long- term expected gain of changing to urban Hukou status is virtually non-existent. Migrants cannot be satisfied living in such a situation. Yet, despite all these adverse factors and difficulties, migrants generally do not return to their rural villages, and new migrants continue to move to the city. In fact, official data indicate that the number of rural-urban migrants has increased over several decades, and the total number of rural- urban population reached 277.47 million in 2015, an increase of 3.52 million from 2014 1 . Why does such a paradox exist? To address the issue, we enter the debate with growing literature on the topic of life satisfaction among migrants. We highlight that most studies focus on the economic and structural situation at the destination. Yet, we argue the importance of migrants’ subjective evaluation of their economic standing through social comparisons. The study 1 The data come from Monitoring Report of Rural-urban Workers in China for 2015 which is published online by National Bureau of Statistics of the PRC in April 28 th , 2016 http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/zxfb/201604/t20160428_1349713.html. 2

focuses on migrant’s perceived economic ranking relative to their counterparts in home origin and in destination city, and investigate how absolute income and relative standing relate to internal migrants’ life satisf action in the developing countries. In addition, to identify the specific role of income and relative standing among rural-urban migrants, our study considers the contextualization of urban-rural inequality inside Chinese internal migrants, and adds the urban-urban migrants case to make a comparable analysis. 2.Rural- urban migrants’ life satisfaction Rural- urban migrants’ objective wellbeing in China has been received lot of research attention, while the studies on their subjective wellbeing, also referred to as “satisfaction with life” or “happiness” are emerging but limited. Using 2002 national data, Knight and Gunatilaka (2010, 2012) find rural-urban migrants has the lower level of happiness in comparison with both rural and urban residents. The explanation is that rural-urban migrants raise their earning aspirations in the cities, influenced by the new surroundings, and the false expectations in relations to realistic achievement lead to their unhappiness. Nielsen et al. (2010) employ the personal well-being index (PWI) to examine the domain-level representation of subjective life satisfaction among 525 rural-urban migrants in Fujian province. The results reveal a moderate level of subjective well-being within the normative range. It is likely because for the rural-urban migrants who find it too difficult to cope in the cities, the fallback of returning to their hometown in the countryside could buffer the negative influence of those hard challenges on life satisfaction. Gao and Smyth (2011) seek to answer what keeps China’s migrant workers going despite the poor living and working conditions through examining the determinants of their happiness. Based on the data collected from 12 cities in China, they discover that the optimistic expectations as to future income has a positive effect on rural- urban migrants’ happiness. Chu and Hail (2014) investigate 1225 rural-urban migrants in Shanghai, and use Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) and PWI to evaluate their life satisfaction situation. The findings show that the overall life satisfaction score among rural-urban migrants is below the normative range for Chinese populations in rural and urban areas. What’s more, there is an uncovered a U - shaped relationship between income and overall life satisfaction among rural-urban migrants. 3.Income, relative standing, and life satisfaction 3