The Impact of Rural Pensions in China on Labor Migration

We study the impact of China’s new rural pension program on promoting migration of labor by applying a regression discontinuity analysis to this new pension program. The results reveal a perceptible difference in labor migration among adult children whose parents are just above and below the age of...

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Main Authors:	Eggleston, Karen, Sun, Ang, Zhan, Zhaoguo
Format:	Journal Article
Published:	Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank 2019
Subjects:	PENSIONS LABOR MARKET MIGRATION ELDER CARE PENSION REFORM LABOR MIGRATION
Online Access:	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/32165

id	okr-10986-32165
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-321652021-05-25T10:54:42Z The Impact of Rural Pensions in China on Labor Migration Eggleston, Karen Sun, Ang Zhan, Zhaoguo PENSIONS LABOR MARKET MIGRATION ELDER CARE PENSION REFORM LABOR MIGRATION We study the impact of China’s new rural pension program on promoting migration of labor by applying a regression discontinuity analysis to this new pension program. The results reveal a perceptible difference in labor migration among adult children whose parents are just above and below the age of pension eligibility: The adult children with a parent just attaining the pension-eligible age are more likely to be labor migrants compared with those with a parent just below the pension-eligible age. We also find that with a pension-eligible parent, the adult children are more likely to have off-farm jobs. These abrupt changes in household behavior at the cutoff suggest that these households are credit constrained. In addition, we find that the pension’s effect on migration is greater among adult children with a parent in poor health; pension-eligible elderly report that they are more likely to use inpatient services when needed and less likely to rely on adult children for care when they are ill. These results suggest that (expectations regarding) providing care for elderly parents has constrained labor migration from China's rural areas to some extent, and that the new rural pension program has helped to relax this constraint. 2019-08-05T17:09:15Z 2019-08-05T17:09:15Z 2018-02-01 Journal Article World Bank Economic Review 1564-698X http://hdl.handle.net/10986/32165 CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo World Bank Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank Publications & Research :: Journal Article Publications & Research East Asia and Pacific China
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
topic	PENSIONS LABOR MARKET MIGRATION ELDER CARE PENSION REFORM LABOR MIGRATION
spellingShingle	PENSIONS LABOR MARKET MIGRATION ELDER CARE PENSION REFORM LABOR MIGRATION Eggleston, Karen Sun, Ang Zhan, Zhaoguo The Impact of Rural Pensions in China on Labor Migration
geographic_facet	East Asia and Pacific China
description	We study the impact of China’s new rural pension program on promoting migration of labor by applying a regression discontinuity analysis to this new pension program. The results reveal a perceptible difference in labor migration among adult children whose parents are just above and below the age of pension eligibility: The adult children with a parent just attaining the pension-eligible age are more likely to be labor migrants compared with those with a parent just below the pension-eligible age. We also find that with a pension-eligible parent, the adult children are more likely to have off-farm jobs. These abrupt changes in household behavior at the cutoff suggest that these households are credit constrained. In addition, we find that the pension’s effect on migration is greater among adult children with a parent in poor health; pension-eligible elderly report that they are more likely to use inpatient services when needed and less likely to rely on adult children for care when they are ill. These results suggest that (expectations regarding) providing care for elderly parents has constrained labor migration from China's rural areas to some extent, and that the new rural pension program has helped to relax this constraint.
format	Journal Article
author	Eggleston, Karen Sun, Ang Zhan, Zhaoguo
author_facet	Eggleston, Karen Sun, Ang Zhan, Zhaoguo
author_sort	Eggleston, Karen
title	The Impact of Rural Pensions in China on Labor Migration
title_short	The Impact of Rural Pensions in China on Labor Migration
title_full	The Impact of Rural Pensions in China on Labor Migration
title_fullStr	The Impact of Rural Pensions in China on Labor Migration
title_full_unstemmed	The Impact of Rural Pensions in China on Labor Migration
title_sort	impact of rural pensions in china on labor migration
publisher	Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank
publishDate	2019
url	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/32165
_version_	1764475937371455488

The Impact of Rural Pensions in China on Labor Migration

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