Examines the working conditions of rural migrant workers in China. The paper first describes the increase in the number of migrants, from an estimated 30 million in 1989 to about 130 million in 2006. It then provides some descriptive statistics on the regions of origin of migrants, their...

This paper explores the rural labor market impact of migration in China using crosssectional data on rural households for the year 2007. A switching probit model is used to estimate the impact of belonging to a migrant-sending household on the individual occupational choice categorized in four...

This is a pioneering study of the determinants of the subjective well-being of ethnic minority people in rural China, using a specially designed sample survey relating to 2011. The underlying hypothesis is that the lifestyle and attitudes of ethnic minorities contribute to their happiness. Five...

This is an attempt to view the relationships involving education and income as forming a system, and one that can generate a poverty trap.  The setting is rural China, and the data are from a national household survey for 2002, designed with research hypotheses in mind.  Enrolment is high in...

Why is it that couples who have a son or whose last child is a son earn higher conditional income?  To solve this curious case we tell a detective story: evidence of a phenomenon to be explained, a parade of suspects, a process of elimination from the enquiry, and then the denouement.  Given...

In urban China, urban resident annual earnings are 1.3 times larger than long term rural migrant earnings as observed in a nationally representative sample in 2002. Using microsimulation, we decompose this difference into four sources, with particular attention to path dependence and statistical...

This study presents a comprehensive picture of poverty chnages in China in the period of 1978-95. Using two micro data sets from Household Income Surverys of 1988 and 1995, the author examines poverty distribution among various localities and population sub-groups. [Discussion Paper No. 2001/21].

Radical economic reform and rapid marketization in the late 1990s could be expected to create new poverty and insecurity in Chinese cities. Accordingly, the extent and nature of poverty in urban China is examined by means of a 1999 cross-section household survey. Three types of poverty-"income...

Why is it that couples who have a son or whose last child is a son earn higher conditional income? To solve this curious case we tell a detective story: evidence of a phenomenon to be explained, a parade of suspects, a process of elimination from the enquiry, and then the denouement. Given the...