Presenter: Dandan
Zhang
Topic: Labor
Market Impact of Large Scale Internal Migration on Chinese Urban 'Native'
Workers
Time: 16:00-17:30,
Mar 26, 2013
Location: At
608 Acedamic Hall
Abstract Hundreds
of millions of rural migrants have moved into Chinese cities since the early
1990s contributing greatly to economic growth, yet, they are often blamed for
reducing urban 'native' workers' employment opportunities, suppressing their
wages and increasing pressure on infrastructure and other public facilities.
This paper examines the causal relationship between rural-urban migration and
urban native workers' labour market outcomes in Chinese cities. After
controlling for the endogeneity problem our results show that rural migrants in
urban China have modest positive or zero effects on the average employment and
insignificant impact on earnings of urban workers. When examine the impact on
unskilled labours we once again find it to be positive and insignificant. We
conjecture that the reason for the lack of adverse effects is due partially to
the labour market segregation between the migrants and urban natives, and
partially due to the complementarities between the two groups of workers.
Further investigation reveals that the increase in migrant inflow is related to
the demand expansion and that if the economic growth continues, elimination of
labour market segregation may not necessarily lead to an adverse impact of
migration on urban native labour market outcomes.
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