Seminar: Access to Migration for Rural Households

Speaker: Shing-Yi Wang

Shing-Yi Wang is an Assistant Professor of the Department of Business Economics and Public Policy at Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

Abstract: This paper exploits a unique feature of China’s history, the “sent-down youth” (SDY) program, to study the effects of access to internal migration. We show that temporary migration due to the SDY program created lasting inter-province links. We interact these links with two time-varying pull measures in potential destinations. Decades after the SDY program ended, increased access to migration in cities which sent SDY leads to higher rates of migration from provinces where those SDY resided. We find that improved access to migration leads to lower consumption volatility and lower asset-holding. Furthermore, household production shifts into high-risk, high-return activities.

Paper: http://assets.wharton.upenn.edu/~was/migrationchina.pdf

Location: 115 Ives Hall

Sponsors: 

• Labor Economics
• Development
• Cornell Institute for China Economic Research (CICER)