Does Governmental Policy Shape Migration Decisions? The Case of China’s Hukou System

Abstract

Does governmental policy shape potential migrants’ destination choices? Chinese cities use the household registration (hukou) system to adjust the barriers to gaining local status and access to public services and social welfare benefits. We draw on a nationally representative survey of migrants and an original survey experiment to test the effect of hukou-related barriers and benefits on the relative appeal of different destination cities. We find that strict limits on acquiring local hukou status do not deter migrants. However, local hukou status is important because it confers access to public services and social welfare benefits. Cities where migrants can gain access to such services and benefits without changing their hukou status are more appealing. These findings demonstrate that hukou policy has real impacts on migration patterns and on access to public services and social welfare benefits for millions of Chinese.

Keywords

migration policy hukou migration decision survey experiment China

One of the most dramatic changes in China in the past thirty years has been the rapid growth of labor migration and the coinciding expansion of cities. Migrants move to cities in search of jobs and better opportunities to improve their lives. In turn, the large labor pool—drawn from workers at least temporarily residing in urban areas—has been a major asset as the economy has grown. While we know that economic interests play an important role, what is the role of governmental policy in shaping migration choices? Local governments can try to alter the incentives to migration by providing rewards such as access to public services and social welfare benefits or deterring migration through added barriers to and costs associated with residence in their localities.

In China, the government has a unique household registration (hukou 户口) system that is designed to shape migration patterns. The effectiveness of these policies is not clear, however, as millions of Chinese still move to cities in which access to local hukou status is strictly controlled. In this article, we draw on a new online survey with 1,100 Chinese respondents and a nationally representative survey of over 2,000 migrants to understand the role of hukou policy in shaping destination choices. We find that restrictions on acquiring local hukou status do not deter migration, but migrants do prefer to move to cities where they can gain access to the public services and social welfare benefits that are usually restricted through the hukou system.

Migration in China

Cities across China have experienced rapid growth in terms of both permanent and temporary residents. The urban population of China grew from less than a fifth of the total population in the 1980s to more than half by 2010 (Zhang, 2012). Estimates of the number of internal economic migrants range from around 100 million to 230 million, or about a third of China’s peasants (Fan, 2008; Ye et al., 2013). Most of this movement is people leaving the countryside in search of better-paying jobs in the cities. Even as villages and rural areas have grown richer, wages remain higher in the cities. Thus the main driver of migration is economic inequality between sending communities and destinations (Ha, Yi, and Zhang, 2009; Zhang and Song, 2003).

Still, not all cities are equally appealing to would-be migrants. Why do migrants select some destinations over others? Economic opportunities are only part of the story. In order to understand migration choices, this article explores how hukou policy modifies the appeal of destinations for migrants and potential migrants.

The Hukou System

Political rules in China directly affect migration and the relative costs and benefits of long-term migration. The hukou system assigns all citizens a location and an agricultural or non-agricultural status. Ongoing reforms have unified agricultural and non-agricultural status under the “resident” category, but there is still a clear hierarchy of affiliation and rights distinguishing migrants, residence permit holders, and hukou holders in urban areas (Wang, 2020). The location of one’s registration identifies where one can receive social welfare benefits, while the classification identifies the level and type of benefits available; access to public services such as education is similarly controlled on the basis of hukou registration. Even though the movement of people and migrants’ residence in urban areas may be permitted, hukou policy restricts membership of the local polity to those with local status (Vortherms, 2019). Essentially, the system creates an official hierarchy of citizenship and identifies where individuals belong (Chan and Buckingham, 2008; Fan, 2008).

The hukou system was originally established in 1958. While it has roots in ancient China, it was more directly modeled after the “propiska” (official residence permit) system of the Soviet Union (Chan and Buckingham, 2008; Wang, 2004). Under this system, individuals could have only one permanent residence and were required to obtain official approval to change the location of their registration. The key function of the hukou system before the 1980s was to limit rural-to-urban migration. State planners wanted to limit migration out of rural areas in order to keep grain prices low enough to support industrialization (Xiang, 2007).

Economic reforms in the 1980s sparked mass migration as Chinese cities became factories for the world. Despite recent reforms and even reports that China is considering abolishing the entire system, most scholars still agree that the hukou system is “alive and well” (Wang, 2004: 129) and directly affects social stratification (Chan and Buckingham, 2008; Zhang and Treiman, 2013). Migrants still need official permission to change their hukou location, and only those with a local hukou are fully eligible for public services and social welfare benefits, including government housing and public education, and even some types of employment are restricted to local hukou holders (Fan, 2008). In other words, the hukou system does not prevent migration but does limit access to urban citizenship (Whyte, 2010). The difficulty of changing one’s official status may be a factor reinforcing the common cross-national trend toward circular and temporary labor migration (Du, Park, and Wang, 2005).

Reforms to the hukou system have been decentralized and therefore uneven (Chan and Buckingham, 2008; Zhang, 2012). In 1997, some 382 small cities initiated reforms that eased access to local, urban hukou status for anyone with a steady job, stable income, or a regular place to live (Zhan, 2011). These reforms were then extended to all small cities in 2001. Some places have even gone so far as to eliminate rural-urban distinctions altogether, but in most cities rural migrants remain excluded from municipal-level public services and social welfare benefits. As a result of uneven reforms, it is easier to obtain permanent resident status in some cities, particularly small and medium-sized cities, than it is in some of the largest and most desirable cities, and rates of hukou conversion vary (Fan, 2008; Ha, Yi, and Zhang, 2009; Zhan, 2011; Zhang, 2012; Zhou and Wang, 2016).

Cities undertaking hukou reform must balance migrants’ contributions to the local economy with the burden that expanded migrant access to public services and other social welfare benefits would place on public finances (Zhan, 2011; Zhang, 2012; Zhang and Li, 2016). Total population is also a concern—megacities like Beijing and Shanghai are trying to limit population growth while smaller cities are still trying to attract new residents. The hukou system is one tool by which a city can shape its appeal and influence the permanence of migrants’ residence. Experiments with relaxing restrictions have been cut short or reversed when the number of migrants was too high (Wang, 2010).

Reforms have created a range of different local regimes that vary in terms of the difficulty of gaining local hukou status, the degree of institutionalization of differences between local hukou holders and those without local hukou, and the public services and social welfare benefits accessible to migrants (Wu, 2017). While reforms vary widely, two common strategies for incentivizing or disincentivizing migrants are to restrict access to local resident status and to change access to local services and benefits.

First, large cities and those with generous (and thus costly) social welfare benefits try to limit the growth of new hukou obligations. One common way to limit conversion opportunities is through a points system that allows cities to tailor migrant recruitment to their economic and social objectives. For example, potential permanent residents can gain points through higher education credentials, donating blood, or meeting similar social objectives. For those cities with strict hukou limits, the associated benefits of local status are likely to remain substantial. In cities like Beijing, there are real social and economic benefits to having a local hukou. In addition to the benefits frequently tied to the hukou system, such as access to public education, a Beijing hukou, for example, brings lower housing and property prices, a license to buy and drive a car in the city, better job opportunities (particularly in the public sector), and even creates and reinforces stratification in dating and marriage prospects (Qing, 2017; TigerWit, 2019; Wang and Nehring, 2014; Yun, 2017).

In the second type of reform, cities change the quality or quantity of social welfare benefits to balance expanded access. Some cities have severely reduced benefits, even for locals. Others have made public services available to nonlocals, although the services for nonlocals are typically of inferior quality (Zhang and Treiman, 2013). Generally, those cities where the benefits are the best (e.g., Beijing and Shanghai) also restrict access to local hukou most severely.

Migration and Public Services

Changes in public services are particularly important when migrants consider their families. Labor migration is typically considered a family decision rather than just an individual choice (Mendola, 2012). By 2000, more than half of all families had at least one migrant (Du, Park, and Wang, 2005). Family economic circumstances make a difference in financing the movement of migrants but also in how long migrants stay away (Zhu and Chen, 2010). Migrants are typically young adults that are relatively educated and able to work. While the first migrants were primarily unskilled young men, migrants are increasingly female and increasingly educated. In contrast, the family members left behind are typically the very old and the very young, those who cannot find work, or those who do not have the skills that would help them find work in cities.

Family members of labor migrants stay behind for a variety of reasons. In China, farmers do not own the land that they work, and if they leave the countryside and do not farm, they lose the right to their land. As a security net, most families want to retain rights to their village farmland and, therefore, leave at least one person in the village (Du, Park, and Wang, 2005; Fan, 2011; Yeh, O’Brien, and Ye, 2013). In more urbanized settings such as Guangzhou and the Pearl River Delta, people may prefer to keep their rural hukou status so that they can continue to enjoy various rural benefits such as extra birth allowance while living in urban settings (Chan and Buckingham, 2008).

One reason children are often left behind in rural areas is the challenge of getting access to public schools for children without a local hukou (Zhang and Treiman, 2013). As of 2007, there were between 10 and 26 million children left behind in villages as their parents moved in search of job opportunities (Xiang, 2007). Starting in 2001, local governments have been required to provide schooling for the children of migrants, but in reality the provision has been uneven. In many cases, schools are provided but school fees are significantly higher for nonlocals, while the quality of education is worse (Chan and Buckingham, 2008; Zhou and Wang, 2016). The children of migrant mothers are also less likely to be registered at all, further hindering access to government services and protections (Vortherms, 2019). Local status thus still confers differential benefits that can change the calculations for families.

Hukou and Migration Decisions: Theoretical Expectations

Despite the political importance of hukou for cities, the role of hukou status for potential migrants is not completely clear. First, even though it is harder to get a local hukou in metropolises than in lower-tier cities, they are still the major destinations for migrants (Chan and Buckingham, 2008; Li, Li and Chen, 2010). Even if they earn slightly lower wages, migrants tend to prefer larger cities (Xing and Zhang, 2017). In major cities like Shenzhen and Shanghai, the share of residents with local status is declining. In part, the differences in opportunities and benefits are between cities, not just based on hukou status.

Second, even where local hukou status is available, not all migrants want a change. When some small and medium-sized cities in China changed their registration system to encourage more permanent migration and increase urban hukou access, the response of would-be migrants was surprisingly “nonchalant” (Zhan, 2011: 245). There was not a dramatic change in the number of individuals who applied for urban status or in the number of people who planned to stay permanently. Whether the demand for hukou changes in megacities would also remain flat in response to equivalent policy changes is unclear.

In this article, we assess the importance of hukou restrictions for migration decisions. We examine hukou policy in terms of the strictness of requirements for changing status and the value of local status in terms of access to local public services. We assume that migrants are trying to improve their opportunities and quality of life. Migration and the choice of destination play a key role in determining how best to do this. We want to know what role hukou policy plays in these choices.

Cities have created strict hukou policies in order to deter long-term migrants or at least control the characteristics of individuals who migrate. Do migrants take hukou policy into consideration when they consider migration? Given the complexity of the policies, different aspects of hukou could affect migration choices. We first assess whether the strictness of policies with regard to access to local hukou status is a factor deterring migrants. Strict limits on the number of new local hukou being issued and stringent requirements for changing to local status could make some cities less appealing. If this is the case, strict hukou policy is a barrier to migration. Thus our first hypothesis is as follows:

H₁ (Barriers): People tend to rule out destination options based on concern over the strictness of policies controlling migrants’ acquisition of local hukou status.

Despite hukou restrictions, migration has boomed in China. Therefore, migration choices may not be about hukou per se but instead be about the benefits associated with hukou status. We argue that hukou matters for migrants’ choice of destination because local hukou status guarantees access to public services. Cities where hukou access is stricter typically limit social welfare benefits and public services for those who do not have local hukou status, but also tend to have better benefits and services. More specifically, we expect to observe clear preferences for destinations where migrants can change to a local hukou to access benefits and services or can access benefits and services without a local hukou. As such, we arrive at our second hypothesis:

H₂ (Benefits): People prefer migration destinations where they can get access to local social welfare benefits and public services.

There are two ways that hukou policies can affect migrants’ and potential migrants’ access to benefits and services. First, cities can change the quality of hukou-related public services and benefits. Cities with lower-quality public services or more limited benefits can set looser restrictions on acquiring local hukou status to make the services/benefits easier to access as a way to appeal to potential migrants. In contrast, cities with highly coveted benefits (e.g., Beijing or Shanghai) are typically the most restrictive about access to local hukou. If the benefits are generous enough, migrants may be willing to give up some other economic benefits associated with retaining their original hukou status in order to access the benefits and services tied to local hukou status in their migration destination. If access to hukou-restricted benefits and services is the key factor for migration, we should observe more demand for long-term migration when benefits and services are accessible to local hukou holders and benefits and public services for those with local hukou status are relatively generous. We should see migrant destination choices reflect a preference for more accessible and generous hukou-related public services and benefits. As such, we arrive at the following secondary hypothesis:

H_2.1: People prefer to migrate to places where they can access better-quality local hukou-related public services and benefits.

Second, cities can provide access to public services and social welfare benefits to all residents, regardless of hukou status. We argue that the main appeal of hukou status is the associated benefits, such as access to local public education or the ability to buy property at cheaper prices. At the same time, there may be costs to migrants for giving up the hukou from their place of origin, so access to public services and benefits without changing hukou is appealing. Therefore, we expect that migrants prefer destinations where they can gain access to public services/benefits without a local hukou. We expect that cities where migrants can gain access to education, specifically, without a local hukou will be more appealing than even those that allow for accessing local hukou status. As such, we arrive at the following secondary hypothesis:

H_2.2: People prefer to migrate to places where they can access public services and social welfare benefits regardless of local hukou status.

We specifically focus on access to public education because it is one of the most common and most important public services tied to local hukou status. If cities allow access to public education to everyone regardless of hukou status, migrant children can access education while their families do not have to give up land rights or other benefits in their home villages. While working parents often leave their children behind, this is not always their preference. In rural communities with high rates of out-migration, the quality of education may be particularly low. In addition, local governments are less inclined to invest in public education when they know locals will eventually leave (Guo, 2014). Access to schools in the communities where parents are working is therefore a particular concern for potential migrants.

Our hypotheses suggest that different aspects of governmental policy influence migration choices, but do not suggest that only hukou policy or only one aspect of hukou policy matters for migration decisions. Similarly, we are not suggesting that wages and job opportunities do not matter—they clearly do. Certainly, millions of migrants have moved to cities with little regard for hukou restrictions because they prioritize economic opportunities unrelated to hukou status. We are not arguing that economic considerations do not matter. Instead, we examine whether hukou policy is salient for migrants and potential migrants even after accounting for economic considerations. More specifically, our hypotheses test whether, all else being equal, each aspect of governmental policy influences migration decisions with an eye to understanding why policy matters. If these hypotheses are correct, hukou policy in China remains important for shaping migration patterns because of the link between hukou status and public services and social welfare benefits. The added implication is that, in making decisions on their place of destination, migrants are not only looking for economic benefits in the form of direct compensation. Instead, migrants seek public benefits and improved opportunities for their children.

Why Hukou Matters: An Empirical Examination

This section empirically tests our hypotheses using two data sources: an original online survey with an embedded experiment and a nationally representative survey. After explaining the data sources, we first demonstrate that people in China understand the premise that hukou policies vary in strictness between locations. We then test whether a strict hukou policy deters migrants and potential migrants, that is, whether a strict hukou policy is a migration barrier. We find that respondents understand the premise of hukou policy strictness, but do not regard strictness as a barrier to migration. Next, we explore whether, all else being equal, migrants and potential migrants perceive local hukou status as worth pursuing. We find that hukou status is regarded as beneficial but that the appeal is primarily driven by the public services and social welfare benefits associated with local status.

First, we conducted an original online survey experiment, the Living Environment Satisfaction Survey of Chinese Residents 2018 (LESS 2018). Because of the relatively peripheral position of migrants in most destination cities and their transient nature, it is difficult to approach this group through face-to-face or telephone interviews for regular national surveys. Fortunately, the prevalence of the internet and smartphones provides an alternative way to survey them.¹ According to official statistics, there were over 800 million internet users in China by 2018 (China Internet Network Information Centre, 2019: 18). Among these internet users, about 66 percent were 20–49 years old, and over 70 percent had at least an elementary school education but were not college educated—the exact group that is most likely to be migrants in today’s China (China Internet Network Information Centre, 2019: 22).

Internet-based surveys have benefits and limitations. While LESS 2018 yields a nonrandom sampling of migrants, the wide coverage of internet access in modern China provides an opportunity to approach the population of migrants, a group that would otherwise present considerable challenges for the conducting of face-to-face interviews. Studies have demonstrated that online surveys conducted through crowdsourced online sampling can effectively draw valid attitudinal inferences about internet users in China and other more modernized countries.² The method also allows researchers to embed more delicate researching techniques, such as experiments, in the data collection process, in order to create more precise and reliable measurements of sensitive or unconscious aspects of respondents’ attitudes and preferences.

LESS 2018 was issued through Qualtrics, a well-known professional data collection company, during October and September 2018. Our sample included 1,100 respondents. We sampled the respondents with gender and education quotas according to the latest China national census and with an age range between eighteen and seventy years. Unlike most available national surveys in China, fewer than 15 percent of whose respondents are migrants, we customized the collection process to gain an equal share of migrant (49.91 percent) and nonmigrant respondents.³ Our focus is on movement across rather than within cities (i.e., not urbanization within the same district through administrative adjustment, e.g., chexian sheshi 撤县设市) because access to benefits more reliably varies by hukou location than by type (rural/urban).

Although technically the data were not collected randomly from the total population as would be ideal, our sample shows nationwide migration patterns that match the existing understanding of the national migration trends in China. The data covers thirty-one provinces of mainland China including border areas such as Yunnan, Xinjiang, and Tibet (except for Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan). According to the LESS 2018, the primary destinations of migrants are the three core developed zones of China: the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the Yangtze River Delta, and the Pearl River Delta. Provincial capitals also attract a fair number of migrants. Migration between cities in western China was the least prevalent pattern of migration. These observations are consistent with the migration patterns described in official reports, big data statistics, and academic findings, which further validate our data (Baidu Huiyan, 2016; Ba and Wu, 2017; Liu, Deng, and Hu, 2010).

We also incorporate data from the 2016 China Labor-Force Dynamics Survey (CLDS 2016; see Cai, 2017). We use this source to examine the findings from LESS 2018 on a broader scale. CLDS 2016 was conducted by the Center for Social Science Survey at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou. The multistage stratified probability proportional to size sample includes 21,086 respondents in 264 villages and neighborhood committees 居委会 in 145 cities and counties in 29 provincial units.⁴ The respondents were selected through random processes at both primary and secondary sampling units and constituted a representative sample of the national labor force that accounted for important factors such as geographic region, economic development, population size, urbanization, and migration.

A salient feature of CLDS 2016 is that the survey includes a specific battery of questions about migrants’ experiences and preferences. To our knowledge, CLDS 2016 has the most comprehensive publicly available data on these issues. The differences in samples, recruitment, and surveying techniques complement LESS 2018 and help compensate for its limitations. Taken together, these two data sets allow us to test our theory in a broader and more representative sense.

The CLDS 2016 sample is designed to represent the entire country’s labor force rather than the migrants only, and (as in many other national surveys) migrants were only about 13 percent of the sample. According to the “Report on China’s Migrant Population Development 2016” 中国流动人口发展报告2016版 by the National Health and Family Planning Commission of China, migrants constituted 18 percent of the population in 2016 (National Health and Family Planning Commission of China, 2016). CLDS 2016 thus undersampled the migrant population. Moreover, the questions about migration decisions in CLDS 2016 were only asked to migrants, not potential migrants or all survey respondents. It was possible that their answers were shaped more by migration experiences than their preferences or benefit calculations.

LESS 2018 was designed to complement these limitations. As previously described, the sample is balanced between migrants and nonmigrants and both groups answered the same questions. While the LESS 2018 sample is not a random sample of the Chinese migrant population either, analyses cross-checked with CLDS 2016 can still provide useful evidence of Chinese migrant attitudes and decisions. The next section explains how the two data sources were incorporated to test the hypotheses.

Hukou: A Barrier?

To test the effect of strict hukou policy as a deterrent for potential migrants (H₁), we start by investigating if people are aware of the strictness of hukou policies in general. The strategy is to examine to what extent subjective and objective measures of hukou strictness align. If the two are not closely associated, it is unlikely that strictness matters. To gauge the perceived strictness, we asked “How difficult is it to gain the hukou in your current living place?” in the LESS 2018 survey. The responses were recorded on a 1-5 scale (5 = very difficult).

Measuring objective strictness is a little more complex. While hukou is a critical policy system in China, we know of no published nationwide measurement of the strictness of access to local hukou status or of the strictness with which hukou-associated public services and social welfare benefits are controlled for the non-hukou-holder migrant population. Hukou policy concerns a variety of areas, such as education, medical care, pensions, and social welfare. Without systematic analyses of all these areas, it would not be possible to determine overall strictness accurately. In addition, there are hundreds of cities in China, and their hukou policies could be different in one or several of these areas.

To address this, we chose Zhang and Tao (2012) as the seed data and utilized the random forest technique to estimate the hukou strictness of all cities in China. Zhang and Tao sampled forty-five cities according to their representativeness of Chinese cities and city attractiveness to migrants and calculated their hukou strictness (“city’s entry barrier” in their words) based on local policy documents and data as well as a well-established index.⁵

We used their findings as the seed data to estimate the hukou strictness of the other cities. Established studies have demonstrated that hukou strictness is closely related to the socioeconomic conditions and local revenues of cities (Liu, 2016; Zhang and Tao, 2012). We then apply the random forest technique to capture the connections among these variables for the cities in Zhang and Tao’s study and estimate other cities accordingly. (See the concrete indicators and data sources in the Online Supplementary Material.) Random forest is a machine-learning technique that can predict mixed-type data based on learning the training pool through a nonparametric method that allows for interactive and nonlinear effects (Stekhoven and Bühlmann, 2012). In this study, its use allows the computer to learn the quantitative relationship between hukou strictness in a given city and socioeconomic/revenue variables with minimized assumptions of data distribution and properties. The outcome is a continuous measure of the hukou strictness of 297 cities with a range of 0-4.

The left panel of Figure 1 presents the national distribution of the strictness scores. Dark regions have stricter hukou policies, and the light areas are more relaxed. The outcome score ranks Shanghai, Shenzhen, Beijing, and Guangzhou as the four strictest cities in terms of hukou policy and is thus consistent with the common expectation of hukou strictness.

Figure 1.

Hukou strictness and strictness awareness.

We used this hukou strictness score together with respondents’ individual characteristics (age, gender, education, social stratum, and migrant status) to assess respondents’ awareness or perceived assessment of hukou strictness. We standardized these variables before the estimation to make their effects comparable (Gelman, 2008). As shown in the right-hand panel of Figure 1, while there are no differences related to age and gender, people with higher levels of education and those in higher social strata are more likely to underestimate strictness. (See the numeric results of this and following analyses in the Online Supplementary Material.) These groups have more capacity to overcome the obstacles created by hukou policies (they are the most sought-after migrants for most cities) and thus are less likely to accurately assess the real challenges of changing a hukou for an average citizen. In addition, people who are current migrants are more likely to recognize strictness, perhaps because they have direct experience with various hukou policies. Most importantly, after adjusting for these personal characteristics including their migration experience, the objective strictness score is the strongest predictor of perceived hukou strictness. This result indicates that people are well informed of the strictness of local hukou policy.

The next question is whether individuals take hukou policy into account when making migration decisions. In LESS 2018, we asked people if they were migrating out of the current city and how they would rank the factors that may affect their choice of destination. The given factors were income, job security, education sources, distance from family, natural environment, and hukou strictness. As shown in the left-hand panel of Figure 2, most people ranked income and job security as the top issues they are concerned about when considering moving to a different place. This echoes the existing finding that contemporary migration in China is primarily motivated by economic factors. Most people regarded hukou as the least important for their migration decisions—even less important than the local environmental conditions.

Figure 2.

Hukou as a factor in migration decisions.

We further accounted for the potential multivariate effect that different types of people may have different levels of concern about hukou policy. We regressed people’s age, gender, education, social stratum, and migrant status on their ranking of hukou strictness in a 1-6 range (1 = most important) in terms of importance for their migration decisions. The right-hand panel of Figure 2 shows that people’s hukou decisions do not vary across any of the dimensions. In other words, no observable variable (even migration experience) significantly alters the weight of hukou when deciding on migration destinations.⁶ Thus the empirical evidence does not confirm the “barriers” hypothesis (H₁).

Hukou: A Benefit?

While strict hukou policy does not deter migration, the question of why migrants choose some destinations over others remains. Instead of deterring migrants, our “benefits” hypothesis (H₂) suggests an alternative source of hukou influence. The proposition contends that hukou policy alters people’s migration decisions by shaping the accessibility of public services and social welfare benefits. While migrants may prioritize income considerations, public services and benefits also play a role in migration decisions.

We use two steps to test this proposition and its predictions. We first show evidence that access to a local hukou does change a city’s appeal for potential migrants (H_2.1). Following this, we demonstrate the underlying mechanism that the key driver of the above pattern is the benefits that accompany a local hukou (H_2.2).

This investigation is partially based on a two-step experiment conducted in LESS 2018. The experiment was designed based on interviews with migrants and migrant NGO operators in Beijing, Guangdong, and Guizhou. The interviews confirmed our findings above that hukou is usually not a critical concern for most migrants in contemporary China, especially when they migrate on a temporary basis for a job or income advantages. Economic factors are the primary driver for people’s migration decisions and behaviors. What we are interested in is, given this economic motivation, what does hukou alter? Using the experimental method, we isolate the causal effect of hukou in people’s migration decisions and take the economic motivation of migration into account.

In the experiment, the survey respondents were randomly assigned to a control or one of two treatment groups. All the groups were asked to make a decision about migration between two hypothetical cities that represented an economic trade-off:

First, all of the groups were presented with the same hypothetical scenario:

Assuming you have a plan to leave from the region in which your hukou is registered, there are two available options: City A and City B. The two cities are very similar. Both are in economically developed areas and are a similar distance from your place of hukou registration. You don’t have any social relationships in either of them. The difference is that you expect to earn twice as much in City A as in City B, while the average living cost in City A is also about 1.5 times of the cost in City B. Given these conditions, where do you prefer to move, City A or City B?

The choice between City A and City B highlights relative economic costs and benefits, and we expect most people in the control group will prefer City A, absent any further information. For the control group, since no information was given relating to hukou policy, the respondents’ choice is expected to be purely economic in nature.

The first treatment group was given an additional piece of information before asking about their migration preference: it is easier to obtain a local hukou in City B than in City A. The second treatment group was given an alternative stimulus disentangling hukou and the public services (using public education as a proxy) that migrants can access: children do not need a local hukou to enter local schools in City B but do need a local hukou to do so in City A.

The subjects were then asked to record their preferences on a 1-5 scale where higher values reflect a stronger preference for City B over City A: 1 = Definitely moving to City A; 2 = More likely to move to City A; 3 = Indifferent; either is ok; 4 = More likely to move to City B; 5 = Definitely moving to City B. It is noteworthy that the economic conditions of the two cities remained consistent in the scenarios presented to the treatment groups. Respondents in the treatment groups were therefore expected to make decisions based both on economic and hukou-related factors. If economic considerations outweighed other considerations, the average preference between the first treatment group and the control group should be no different. The result implies the opposite. (See the balance of the experimental data in the Online Supplementary Material.)

Figure 3 presents the results of the experiment. The left panel shows the distributions of the responses on a Likert scale for the control and treatment groups. There is a clear preference shift: when one can easily gain local hukou in City B, the proportions “definitely favoring City A” and preferring “City A over City B” shrink, while the proportion of subjects preferring City B over City A doubles from 13.4 percent (11.8 + 1.6 percent) to 28.1 percent (26.2 + 1.9 percent). Moreover, an additional 4 percent (rising from 14.1 to 18.1 percent) of people regard the two cities as equivalent when the condition of being able to easily obtain hukou in City B is added. In a nutshell, people prefer a destination where they can access a local hukou.

Figure 3.

Hukou influences and mechanisms on migration preferences (experiment).

We compared the distributions between the control and treatment groups through Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests, and the result confirms that the distributive differences are statistically significant (see the right panel of Figure 3) (Conover, 1971: 309–14). In the Online Supplementary Material, we show that this treatment effect is robust regardless of subjects’ migration experiences, education, gender, or whether they have children. The experiment outcomes therefore support H_2.1—access to local hukou is appealing to potential migrants.

To verify the generalizability of the findings, we tested them with the nationally representative data from CLDS 2016. The national survey asked the migrant respondents (those who did not have local hukou in their place of residence when being surveyed) how likely it was that they would stay where they were in the long term. The answers were recorded on a 1-5 scale (5 = very likely). We use this as a measure of migration preferences and test the effect of objective hukou strictness. Apart from the strictness score as the primary explanatory variable, we also control for satisfaction with income to indicate respondents’ economic circumstances and a battery of demographic and socioeconomic controls (age, gender, education, urban/rural, marital status, job type, and number of dependents).

Because of the ordinal nature of the dependent variable, we use an ordered logit regression to estimate the model. The results are shown in Figure 4. The dots are coefficients and the whiskers are 95 percent confidence intervals. To better control for the effect of economic circumstances, we used three ways to measure migrants’ socioeconomic condition in their destination cities: satisfaction with their income, job, and life in general. The empirics of the models including these measures are presented as circle, triangle, and square nodes, respectively.

Figure 4.

Hukou influences on migration preference (observed).

Regardless of the measurement of economic circumstances, hukou strictness shows a significant and negative effect (at the 0.05 significance level) on the likelihood of people choosing to stay in their current place. This finding supports H₂ from the other end, in that the less possible it is for migrants to gain local hukou, the less likely it is that they will stay. It is worth noting that this strictness per se does not deter them from moving to the place where they are current residents, as we showed in the test of the “barriers” hypothesis. Still, the hukou factor is salient enough to change their preferences to stay or leave once they know the local conditions, even when economic circumstances are taken into account.

Hukou strictness may not be a barrier to initial migration but may reinforce trends that make migration temporary and circular. Many migrants move to cities in search of work opportunities but do not intend to stay over the long term. At least in cities where hukou policy is strict, migrants do not report intentions for permanent residence.

Is this only true for migrants in extremely strict hukou cities? We checked the variance of this hukou effect across respondents at different tiers of cities. We categorized Chinese cities into “Tier 1,” “Tier 2,” and “Tier 3 or lower” according to their economic status and attractiveness to migrants and examined the hukou effect across the three categories with a conditional effect model (CBN Weekly, 2016). All the controls were maintained as in the original experiment. The lower panel of Figure 4 presents the average marginal effect of hukou strictness on migration decisions across different tiers of cities. It shows that hukou’s influence is generally consistent across the three tiers outlined above.

In sum, the empirical evidence supports the first secondary hypothesis of the “benefits” hypothesis, specifically H_2.1. Migrants want to go to places where they can gain access to a local hukou. Stricter cities (e.g., Beijing and Shanghai) may have better economic opportunities, but analysis of the LESS 2018 data shows that cities with open hukou policies are attractive even when migrants must give up wages, as long as migrants can gain access to a local hukou. The analysis of the CLDS 2016 data shows that hukou strictness matters even when controlling for satisfaction with income. Thus hukou policy does alter the appeal of migration destinations. In the next section, we show which characteristics make hukou policy so influential.

How Benefits Influence Choices: Tangible Benefits

The previous section showed that hukou access influences people’s migration decisions, but how is this influence achieved? The “benefits” hypothesis argues that people are affected less by hukou per se than the public services, social welfare benefits, and other rights reserved for those with local hukou status (H_2.2). We examine this mechanism with a second treatment group in the LESS 2018 experiment. The testing strategy is straightforward: if people value the benefits/services typically accompanying hukou status, they will prefer a place where they can access benefits regardless of hukou status. Alternatively, if hukou status is important in and of itself, there should be no difference in preference for locations with hukou access or benefits access. The second treatment is similar to the first (easier to obtain a local hukou in City B) but a different piece of information relates to the accessibility of benefits: your children do not need a local hukou to enter the public schools in City B but do need a local hukou in City A.⁷

The result of the experiment is shown at the bottom of Figure 3. After incorporating the benefit of non-hukou-holder access to education, the distribution shifted tremendously towards “more likely” and “definitely” moving to City B over City A: 41.7 percent of people given this condition preferred B over A compared with only 11.8 percent in the control group and 26.2 percent in the hukou group. The group “definitely choosing B” also increased to 6.5 percent, up from 1.6 percent in the control and 1.9 percent in the hukou group. Clearly, access to benefits alters the appeal of cities much more than just hukou access, even in cities with the same economic conditions. The experiment outcomes therefore support both H_2.1 and H_2.2.

The representative observed data also support this finding. CLDS 2016 did not directly ask the respondents how hukou influenced them. Instead, the survey asked them how likely they were to pursue a local hukou. We are interested in whether pursuit of a local hukou is more appealing when the hukou has better benefits (and thus is stricter). Recall that strict policies do not deter (temporary) migrants or make them more likely to stay over the long term. Many migrants (including those surveyed in CLDS 2016) are living in cities without a hukou. Which policies make them more likely to want to convert their status? If individuals are more likely to pursue a local hukou where that policy is stricter, we interpret this as a pursuit of the benefits associated with local status, as they already have economic access to the benefits of that city. Alternatively, if intentions related to changing to local status remain the same regardless of the strictness or benefits, we can rule out the idea that benefits matter for hukou demand.

Given that stricter hukou restrictions indicate more selective and valuable benefits, we use the hukou strictness scores to measure the value of a given locality’s hukou (“Absolute Hukou Value” in Figure 5). Furthermore, we calculate the value difference between the migrants’ original hukou and the hukou of the place they lived and worked when responding to the survey (“Relative Hukou Value” in Figure 5). The measurement helps us understand how people value a given hukou: do they value a hukou more for its absolute value or how much more they can gain based relative to the hukou they already have. Apart from the value measurements, we apply the same battery of controls as in the above section.⁸

Figure 5.

Benefit-based influence of hukou value.

The results are presented in Figure 5. We test the effect of the absolute and relative measures of hukou value respectively (models marked with circular and triangle nodes in the upper panel). Both measures show positive effects and are statistically significant at the 0.05 significance level. That is, no matter whether the calculation is from the perspective of absolute or relative value, people are more likely to pursue a change of hukou when the benefits are more valuable, supporting H_2.2. In the lower panels, we show that the absolute and relative values do not vary across migrants in cities from different tiers with conditional effect model estimates.

When including both measures in the same model, the absolute value is no longer different from zero, while the relative value remains significant. This finding indicates that, in terms of the bonus calculation, people are more concerned with relative hukou gains than absolute hukou value. Thus we find that migrants mainly pursue a local hukou when it is associated with better benefits. This further supports the “benefits” hypothesis: what influences Chinese people’s migration decision is not the hukou per se but the benefits they can gain from it.

Summary and Discussion

In this study, we have explored the role of government household registration or hukou policy in decisions about migration destination. We use an online survey of 1,100 respondents, including 50 percent migrants, and a nationally representative survey of migrants to test which factors change the appeal of cities. The main findings from our analyses confirm our expectations regarding the role of hukou-associated public benefits in determining the importance of acquiring local hukou status in migrant destinations.

The empirical evidence does not confirm the “barriers” hypothesis: that the strictness of hukou policy deters initial migration. While our respondents could reliably assess the relative strictness of each city’s policy, they reported that hukou strictness was among the least important factors to consider in their migration decision. Potential economic benefits were far more important. After controlling for economic considerations, we found that the accessibility of local hukou alters individuals’ choice of migration destination. Moreover, our study uncovers the prevailing influence of “benefits” over “barriers.” Cities with low hukou strictness are attractive, yet access to hukou-related social benefits and public services (aka the “gold content” 含金量 of the hukou) is the most influential factor in migration decisions. Strict hukou policies are not a barrier to migration, but the extra benefits available for hukou holders in those stricter cities are appealing. In the nationally representative survey of migrants, those who were living in cities with generous benefits were more likely to want the hukou that would give them access to such services and benefits. Together, we interpret these findings as strong support for the hypothesis that hukou is mainly important because of the access to benefits and services that a local hukou confers.

Our findings have clear implications for the importance of hukou policy and for future research on migration. First, while we do not dispute that economic interest is a main driver of migration choices, our research suggests that wages and income alone do not explain migration. Certainly, migrants and potential migrants overwhelmingly prefer to move to locations where they can make more money. However, benefits and services also matter. Migrants without local hukou status can always pay for medical care or education on their own, but when they can gain access to state-provided public services, the migration calculation shifts. Migrants are moving to try to improve their lives, and only looking at income misses a key factor to improved opportunities. Future research should consider the role of both private and public goods in migration patterns.

Second, government policy clearly matters for migration. While we do not find that hukou is a barrier to initial migration or a particularly salient factor in migration decisions relative to employment considerations, changing the strictness of local hukou policies and associated benefits/services does influence long-term decisions. Most labor migration worldwide is temporary and circular, and strict hukou policies seem to reinforce that trend in China. Migrants living where they are unlikely to get a local hukou are more likely to say they will not stay. At the same time, if they can get a local hukou, they would like one if it comes with benefits. Taken together, our findings indicate that the crucial power behind the hukou is less the “barrier” than the “benefit.” In this sense, eliminating hukou policy restrictions would not necessarily increase attractiveness of cities to migrants.

Third, our findings imply that increasing the effective benefits for nonresidents might be the key to substantively attract migrants. Taking the benefit of education as an example, our findings suggest that access to education is a major factor in migration decisions. The uneven quality and cost of education in cities prevent some migrants from bringing their children with them (Chan and Buckingham, 2008; Zhang and Treiman, 2013). If migrants can gain access to education without giving up their home hukou, the city is more appealing. In the area of education, this finding also suggests that perhaps potential migrants care about hukou policies not only based on calculations of immediate economic costs and benefits but also on long-term gains. In this sense, our findings shed light on a benefit-oriented logic for the reform of hukou policy in China and domestic migration governance in general.

What can city managers do to shape migration patterns, then? While our empirical evidence highlights benefits/services as the key mechanism of the hukou’s influence, setting the rules of access to benefits/services is not the only function of hukou policy. Hukou strictness can also serve as a general sign of the desirability of benefits/services. Our findings suggest that satisfying economic needs is still of primary importance, but that cities can increase their appeal by offering more public services, particularly to those who do not have a local hukou. Of course, these changes will primarily affect long-term migrants, not temporary migrants or the “floating population.” Still, hukou policy is complex, and it is hard to predict the effect the elimination of hukou restrictions entirely or the decoupling of location and benefits would have on short- and long-term migration. Our research provides a first step in conducting such studies.

While in this study we mainly focused on hukou, it is definitely not the only factor influencing migration decisions. As we showed in Figure 4, for example, with the same reference group (“unemployed”), migrants working in private-sector companies and freelancers significantly leaned toward not staying in a fixed destination, due to the nature of their occupations, while those who worked in agriculture, relying on local connections or focusing on certain local products, were much more likely to stay in their migration destination cities. These interesting patterns encourage future studies of and increasing attention to migrant decision making and migrant sociopsychology.

Our study echoes Solinger’s (1999) observation from twenty years ago—the future nature of citizenship and patterns of migration are still not clear. While reform is ongoing, the changes have not been so dramatic as to either dissuade migration or allow truly free movement. Instead, the hukou system still shapes the benefits of urban citizenship and through those benefits, migration preferences. Taken together, these findings suggest that migration decisions are complex. While migrants may leave their homes to improve their economic status, the location where they choose to pursue work is not driven by income needs alone. Access to social benefits and public services also matters.

Supplemental Material

sj-pdf-1-mcx-10.1177_00977004221087426 – Supplemental material for Does Governmental Policy Shape Migration Decisions? The Case of China’s Hukou System

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-mcx-10.1177_00977004221087426 for Does Governmental Policy Shape Migration Decisions? The Case of China’s Hukou System by Elise Pizzi and Yue Hu in Modern China

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We are thankful for financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the University of Iowa’s Center for Asian and Pacific Studies, and the Tsinghua University Initiative Scientific Research Program. We also thank the editors and anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. All errors remain our own.

Author Contribution

The two authors contributed equally to this work.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Yue Hu acknowledges funding support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 72004109) and the Tsinghua University Initiative Scientific Research Program (Grant No. 2019THZWJC47). Elise Pizzi acknowledges funding support from the Center for Asian and Pacific Studies, University of Iowa.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online at .

Notes

Author Biographies

Elise Pizzi is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Iowa. Her research interests include rural development, migration, environmental politics, and ethnic politics.

Yue Hu 胡悦 is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Tsinghua University. His research interest lies in political psychology, political linguistics, and socioeconomic inequality. Some of his studies have been published in Amerian Political Science Review, the Journal of Politics, Political Psychology, and Chinese Sociological Review, among others. He is also one of the primary creators and maintainers of R packages dotwhisker, interplot, regioncode, and others.

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