A study on the impact of household head’s employment modes on the living standards of rural migrant workers’ families

China has placed "mass entrepreneurship, mass innovation" as an important strategic deployment, and in 2020, China proposed further promoting the high-quality development of migrant workers returning to their hometowns for entrepreneurship. For migrant workers, the employment modes advocated by the above-mentioned policies correspond to starting a business in their own household registration location and returning to their hometowns for entrepreneurship. Therefore, this study aims to explore the impact of different employment modes of migrant workers on their family living standards. How much do they earn? How much do they spend on consumption? How much is left after deducting expenses? What is their subjective perception of living standards? And so on. By comparing and studying these aspects, it can provide a basis for future policy making and family decisions. Based on the China Household Income Project (CHIP) data, this paper compared the different impacts of employment modes of migrant worker household heads on subjective and objective family living standards through descriptive analysis, baseline regression analysis, heterogeneity analysis, and robustness tests. The following conclusions are drawn: the employment mode of the household head has significantly different impacts on the family living standards of migrant workers. Specifically, entrepreneurship increases household income by 25.71%, raises per capita consumption expenditure by 19.05%, and enhances the subjective perception of household living standards by 41.27% compared to being employed. Compared with working away from hometown, the income effect and consumption expenditure per capita effect of starting a business out of hometown are the highest, subjective perception effect is highest for local entrepreneurship. The gender, age, and whether they are household heads of the household head have different impacts on family living standards. At last, this paper discusses the choice of employment mode, household living standards, and the research value of household heads among rural migrant workers.