Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Relative Concerns of Rural-to-Urban Migrants in China

Contents:

Author Info

  • Alpaslan Akay

    (IZA and Gothenburg University)

  • Olivier Bargain

    (School of Economics and UCD Geary Institute, University College Dublin and IZA)

  • Klaus F. Zimmermann

    (IZA, Bonn University and DIW Berlin)

Abstract

How the income of "relevant others" affects well-being has received renewed interest in the recent literature using subjective data. Migrants constitutes a par- ticularly interesting group to study this question: as they changed environment, they are likely to be concerned by several potential reference groups including the people "left behind", other migrants and "natives". We focus here on the huge population of rural-to-urban migrants in China. We exploit a novel dataset that comprises samples of migrants and urban people living in the same cities, as well as rural households mostly surveyed in the provinces where migrants are coming from. After establishing these links, we fi nd that the well-being of migrants is largely af- fected by relative concerns: results point to negative relative concerns toward other migrants and workers of home regions - –this status effect is particularly strong for migrants who wish to settle permanently in cities. We fi nd in contrast a positive relative income effect vis-à-vis the urban reference group, interpreted as a signal effect: larger urban incomes indicate higher income prospects for the migrants. A richer pattern is obtained when sorting migrants according to the duration of stay, expectations to return to home countries and characteristics related to family cir- cumstances, work conditions and community ties.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://www.ucd.ie/geary/static/publications/workingpapers/gearywp201102.pdf
File Function: First version, 2011
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Geary Institute, University College Dublin in its series Working Papers with number 201102.

as in new window
Length: 35 pages
Date of creation: 27 Jan 2011
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:ucd:wpaper:201102

Contact details of provider:
Postal: Arts Annexe, Belfield, Dublin 4
Phone: +353 1 7164615
Fax: +353 1 7161108
Email:
Web page: http://www.ucd.ie/geary/
More information through EDIRC

Related research

Keywords: China; relative concerns; well-being.;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
as in new window
  1. Ada Ferrer-i-Carbonell & Paul Frijters, 2004. "How Important is Methodology for the estimates of the determinants of Happiness?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 114(497), pages 641-659, 07.
  2. van Praag, B. M. S. & Frijters, P. & Ferrer-i-Carbonell, A., 2003. "The anatomy of subjective well-being," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 51(1), pages 29-49, May.
  3. Olof Johansson-Stenman & Fredrik Carlsson & Dinky Daruvala, 2002. "Measuring Future Grandparents" Preferences for Equality and Relative Standing," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(479), pages 362-383, April.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
  1. Lehmann, Hartmut & Muravyev, Alexander & Zimmermann, Klaus F., 2012. "The Ukrainian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey: Towards a Better Understanding of Labor Markets in Transition," IZA Discussion Papers 7090, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  2. Akay, Alpaslan & Martinsson, Peter, 2012. "Positional Concerns through the Life Cycle: Evidence from Subjective Well-Being Data and Survey Experiments," IZA Discussion Papers 6342, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  3. Xavier Fontaine & Katsunori Yamada, 2012. "Economic Comparison and Group Identity: Lessons from India," PSE Working Papers hal-00711212, HAL.
  4. Xavier Fontaine & Katsunori Yamada, 2012. "Economic Comparison and Group Identity: Lessons from India," Working Papers hal-00711212, HAL.
  5. Steven Stillman & John Gibson & David McKenzie & Halahingano Rohorua, 2012. "Miserable Migrants? Natural Experiment Evidence on International Migration and Objective and Subjective Well-Being," CReAM Discussion Paper Series 1228, Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM), Department of Economics, University College London.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ucd:wpaper:201102

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Geary Tech).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.