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| Digital Finance Development and Labor Migration: Micro Evidence from China Family Panel Studies |
| TAN Ying, WANG Pan, ZHANG Xun
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Big Data Laboratory on Financial Security and Behavior, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics Laboratory of Philosophy and Social Sciences, Ministry of Education;
School of Statistics, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics;
School of Statistics, Beijing Normal University; Institute of Digital Finance, Peking University |
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Abstract Guiding the reasonable, orderly and smooth labour migration and promoting the optimal allocation of labour resources between regions are important driving forces for high-quality economic development. The inclusive nature of low-cost, low-threshold digital finance enables individuals and small and micro-enterprises, that were previously excluded from traditional financial services and traditional credit, to conveniently carry out financial services through digital finance platforms such as online banking and mobile payment, thus promoting investment, business, innovation, and entrepreneurial activities. This aspect of digital finance helps to attract labour migration, which can play a role in optimizing the allocation of labour resources between regions. Therefore, in the context of high-quality economic development, it is particularly important to explore in depth the influencing factors of labour migration, especially the financial factors in the decision-making process of labour migration, so as to obtain the policy paths to promote labour migration, which is particularly important for the rational and orderly guidance of the optimal allocation of labour resources. However, existing studies mainly discuss the impact of digital technology or digital economy on labour migration, and lack attention to the financial attributes in digital finance development. This paper is devoted to researching whether digital finance development can have an impact on labour migration decision-making by exerting inclusive characteristics. This is crucial for regions to enhance the attractiveness of talents, promote economic structural transformation and industry structural upgrade, and promote coordinated regional development.
This paper analyses the labour migration effect of digital finance from both theoretical and empirical perspectives, and further explores the potential mechanisms and economic impacts of its effect. First, from a theoretical perspective, this paper analyses the impact of digital finance on labour migration and focuses on its financial attributes to put forward a research hypothesis on how digital finance affects labour settlement decisions. Second, from an empirical perspective, this paper combines the China Digital Financial Inclusion Index with China Family Tracking Survey (CFPS) data to analyze the impact of digital finance on labour migration decisions. In order to enhance the robustness of the findings, this paper conducts a series of robustness tests and employs the instrumental variable method for endogeneity analysis. In addition, focusing on the financial attributes in the development of digital finance, this paper adopts a split-sample regression method and an interaction model to explore how digital finance can drive labour migration by alleviating individual liquidity constraints and improving the convenience of social security system. Finally, this paper further studies the direction of labour migration driven by the development of digital finance from the perspectives of employment structure transformation, industrial structure upgrading and regional coordinated development.
This paper finds that digital finance development can significantly attract labour migration. Further mechanism analysis shows that: On the one hand, digital finance development, by exerting inclusive features, can alleviate individual mobility constraints, attract labour inflow by promoting individual entrepreneurship, and further lead to an increase in employment opportunities; on the other hand, digital finance development, by exerting inclusive features, can help improve the social security system, and enhance residents' sense of security and well-being. The role of digital finance in these two aspects ultimately helps to promote labour migration. Further analysis shows that labour migration driven by digital finance promotes the transformation of the employment structure and the upgrade of the industry structure, enhances the optimal allocation of labour resources in the western regions, regions with a lower level of urbanization and a lower level of marketization, and promotes the economic development of these regions.
This paper has important policy implications: Firstly, digital finance development can promote labour migration by exerting inclusive characteristics, which provides a feasible solution to guide the rational and orderly allocation of labour resources, and therefore digital finance development should be vigorously promoted; Secondly, the important role of digital finance in alleviating individual mobility constraints should be strengthened, which is an digital finance promotion of entrepreneurship and employment, and an important mechanism for promoting labour migration; Finally, the important role of digital finance in improving the social security system should be strengthened, which is an important mechanism for digital finance to enhance residents' sense of security and well-being and promote labour migration.
The innovations of this paper are as follows: First, in terms of theoretical contribution, this paper exhaustively analyzes the mechanism behind the labour migration effect generated by digital finance, which exhibits through promoting financial inclusion from the perspectives of liquidity constraint alleviation and social security system improvement. This complements the theoretical discussions in related fields; Second, in terms of empirical innovation, this paper uses the CFPS data to measure labour migration for the first time from the perspectives of the change in permanent residence, and explores whether and how digital finance development can influence the labour migration decision by comparing different labour migration decisions. This helps to assess the role of digital finance in sustainably promoting economic structure transformation and industry structure upgrade; Third, in terms of policy innovation, the research in this paper can better serve the formulation of relevant policies, providing new ideas and perspectives for regions to enhance the attractiveness of talents, guide the rational and orderly allocation of labour resources, promote the transformation of economic structure and upgrade of industrial structure, and thus promote the coordinated development among regions.
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Received: 14 July 2023
Published: 01 November 2024
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