Old-age insurance for rural–urban migrant workers in China

Abstract

The lack of social security coverage of rural–urban migrant workers poses a great social problem to the urbanization process in China. This study deals with social security issue of migrant workers based on a survey conducted in 10 cities in 2009 using valid questionnaires returned from 3848 migrant workers. The following conclusions are drawn: (1) 38.3% rural–urban migrant workers believe old-age insurance is the most needed social security; (2) transferability of old-age insurance is the feature that matters the most to rural–urban migrant workers; (3) 58.3% rural–urban migrant workers think the highest acceptable premium rate is 4%; (4) education level, age and income are the major factors that influence rural–urban migrant workers' willingness to get covered by old-age insurance; and (5) on the whole, only 4.2% migrant rural–urban workers already covered by old-age insurance surrendered their insurance because of 2008 global financial crisis.