Labor Mobility Without Pension Portability: Migrant Workers’ Endangered Pension Entitlement in China

Abstract

This paper investigates migrant workers’ endangered pension entitlement in China from a perspective of political economy. The decentralized pension governance structure in China led to limited portability of the urban pension program. The movement of migrant workers challenges this decentralized governance structure, and have also produced clear winner and loser provinces in the pension program. This study argues that the interests of migrant‐receiving provinces, the winners, became a major obstacle in reforms that sought to address the pension portability problem. The migrant workers’ pension issue has in fact contributed to inter‐regional welfare inequality. This resulting inter‐regional inequality makes any central government's plan on centralizing the pension program a challenging task.