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| When can I Go Home？School Provisioning and the Decision to Immigrate |
| LI Ming, ZHENG Liming
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| School of International Trade and Economics, University of International Business and Economics |
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Abstract In recent years, the existing population of China has begun to relocate among different cities.This is exemplified by a new trend among China's massive migrant population of returning to their hometowns.With the relaxation of the Hukou system, it is worth considering how to promote the reasonable and orderly flow of labor and improve the efficiency of human resource allocation.Many factors influence migration.Tiebout proposed that residents flow into the region that best matches their preferences, after considering the public goods and tax levels of each location.Studies of developed countries suggest that this mechanism exists (Bayoh et al., 2006;Kleven et al., 2013;Dustmann and Okatenko, 2014;Akcigit et al., 2016;Moretti and Wilson, 2017).However, due to the uniform tax system and Hukou system in China, the effectiveness of the Tiebout model is debated, especially in the context of populations returning to their hometowns.
We empirically investigate the causal effect of public goods supply on a migrants' decisions to return to their hometowns.We obtain data on residential address and “usual place of residence five years ago” from the 2005 National Sample Survey to construct a dynamic variable denoting whether migrants return to their hometowns.We also construct a proxy variable for change in the number of schools at the city level according to the extended implementation of the “School Consolidation” policy in China.This is a public policy promoted in China since 2001 that aims to improve the quality of education by eliminating many smaller schools and merging them into larger institutions.Using a quasi-natural experimental approach, we divide the sample into treat and control groups based on the presence of children aged 6-10 years in the family (a child was 10 years old in 2005 when the data was collected, given that he/she started primary school at 6 years of age in 2001) and build a difference-in-differences model.
Our findings are as follows.First, a decrease in the number of schools significantly hinders the return of the migrant population.Furthermore, the greater the decrease in the number of schools, the greater the negative impact on the return of the migrant population.This result still holds when considering endogeneity and other factors.Second, the results of our heterogeneity analysis show that the impact above is valid for both rural and urban areas and is more obvious among smaller families and families with boys.Third, the impact is not only on parents but also on their school-age children, meaning that the availability of educational public goods affects the migration decisions of two generations.
Beyond confirming the Tiebout model, this paper contributes to the literature in at least in two additional ways.First, we demonstrate the impact of public goods on migrants returning home and enrich the literature in this field.Most existing studies exploring the impact of public services on migration are based on an outflow perspective, and little attention has been paid to returning inflows.Further, due to limited data, the available studies are more theoretical in nature.Second, our identification setup is new.We attempt to explore the dynamics of migration based on cross-sectional census data at the household level, which may inform future studies.
The conclusions of this paper are informative in the context of policy decisions.In developing countries, improving the efficiency of public resource distribution and optimizing the provision of public goods such as education could help break down barriers to labor mobility and thus further promote economic growth and quality of life.For cities trying to attract talent, enhancing the provisioning of public goods could help to stimulate further population inflows.In this paper, we focus on the impact of changes in the number of schools.Future studies could assess the impacts of public education quality or other public goods (e.g., health care) to explore the effect of public goods supply on population mobility to a broader and deeper extent.
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Received: 29 April 2020
Published: 02 May 2021
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