Abstract
The geographic labor mobility has been ignored in the studies related to the impacts of health status or education on floating migrant workers’ earnings in China. Based on a dataset collected by the World Bank collaborated with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 2010, we initiate the assessment of geographic mobility and explore the indirect impacts from health, education, and other factors on earnings through it. A relatively poor, single, educated migrant in good health with parent at home working in the manufacturing sector presents the strongest geographic mobility. The comparative results indicate that the total health impacts on earnings are generally underestimated for migrant workers at poor or fair health status and the education advancement has a greater impact on earnings for the majority of migrant workers who exhibit the “healthy migrant effect”. Our findings not only justify the ground of mixed results in the previous studies but also provide policy making implications. Given the concave relationship between health status and geographic labor mobility, the ongoing health care reform in China should provide local affordable services to attract returning migrants and enhance their earnings.
Highlights
The comparative results indicate that the total health impacts on earnings are generally underestimated for migrant workers at poor or fair health status and the education advancement has a greater impact on earnings for the majority of migrant workers who exhibit the “healthy migrant effect”
The income gap from a higher education declines gradually. When both health status and education are considered as the two main factors to determine a floating migrant worker’s earnings in all the previous studies, we will compare their total impacts on earnings directly and indirectly through the geographic mobility
The impact of geographic labor mobility on earnings for floating migrant workers in China has been ignored for decades
Summary
The present study explores the total impacts of health status and education on floating migrant workers’ earnings by considering geographic labor mobility as an intermediate factor in income determination. The geographic labor mobility, affected by health status, education, and the other demographic factors, is supposed to play an important role to determine a migrant worker’s earnings. The total impacts from better health status on earnings are constructed directly by higher productivity or longer working hours, and facilitated indirectly by the geographic mobility. Our analysis will clarify the ground for mixed results in previous studies and provide policy makers the more effective resource allocation between health status improvement and education advancement to enhance floating migrant workers’ earnings. The final section concludes and provides policy implications for the ongoing health reform in China
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