People go Low: The Paradox of Choice in the Mobility of “the Low-Income” in China

The literature on internal migration in China has paid little attention to rapidly changing migration circumstances and has failed to capture the heterogeneity of population mobility patterns in less economically developed regions. Utilizing data from the 2017 China Migrants Dynamic Survey and the China Statistical Yearbook (County-Level), we investigate the destination choices of migrants registered in impoverished counties and underdeveloped areas. Our findings reveal that these migrants are more inclined to move to counties than to municipal districts and to move to economically underdeveloped counties than to developed counties. We uncover a paradoxical phenomenon of a choice consisting of “abandoning the high for the low” in low-income migrants of less economically developed regions, which can be explained by social relations, proximity migration, and health status. These findings contribute to a better understanding of population mobility in less developed regions.