Has environmental policy improved the job quality of migrant workers? A quasi-natural experiment on China's Clean Air Action

Abstract

Whether China's Clean Air Action can be imperative to job quality improvement of labour force while improving environmental quality is still an ongoing research topic. It is a critical area to understand the economic and social effect of environmental policy under the strategic goal of high-quality economic development. We use China's “Clean Air Action” policy as a quasi-natural experiment to identify the causal effect and potential long-run impact of the environmental policy on internal migrant workers' job quality. Based on the difference-in-difference estimation and a series of robustness tests, such as PSM-DID, counterfactual framework, placebo test, and event study, we find that China's Clean Air Action does have a positive effect on the job quality of migrant workers, and the job quality of the migrants in the Clean Air Action sampling cities increased by 0.31 on an average compared with cities that did not implement Clean Air Action. This positive effect will increase over time, and with the level of regional economic development and urban scale rise. Moreover, the job quality improvement could be driven by the productivity effect and the positive adjustment of labor force employment structure from action. This study provides an important empirical evidence for directions of this new action. Our results suggest that further policy measures with a clear goal together with strong-oriented and sub-regional joint governance mechanisms over different levels of government are called for.