The impacts of household splitting on migrants' subjective well-being: Evidence from China

Massive rural-urban migration in China has led to millions of split households and has the potential to impact the subjective well-being (SWB) of migrants. We examine the effects of various family arrangements—including parent-child separation, spousal separation, and separation from either a spouse or a child—on migrants' happiness. Separation from children leads to a decrease in happiness, whereas the effect of spousal separation is not statistically significant. When spouses migrate together, parent-child separation harms migrant happiness. However, when individuals migrate with their children, even when their spouse stays behind, their SWB remains unaffected. Our results regarding the domains of SWB show that household splitting reduces marital satisfaction and satisfaction with spousal contributions, which further worsens migrants' happiness. In the context of large-scale internal rural-urban migration in China, household splitting results in massive welfare losses, signaling to policymakers the need to adopt effective measures to ensure family co-migration. We examine how current welfare policies help reduce the incidence of household splitting among rural-urban migrants. For migrants in split households, effective welfare policies also contribute to improvements in their well-being. Moreover, mechanism analysis reveals that loneliness, reduced recreational activities, and unhealthy lifestyle habits are mediators between household splitting and SWB. Lastly, we conduct heterogeneity analyses based on gender and family economic status. Our findings reveal the negative effects of household splitting among rural-urban migrants in China, providing empirical evidence to inform welfare measures and social security system reforms for this vulnerable group.