Unequal Living Conditions between Urban Migrants and Local Residents in China

Abstract

Although migrants are the majority of increased urban population in China, the most of migrants cannot access the equal local social welfare system as the urban local residents because of the hukou policy (household registration) The migrants are more likely to live in an adverse conditions due to inferior socioeconomic status, which results to the disparity in health status between migrants and local residents. This study compares the unequal living conditions among urban population with 4 different resident statuses based on hukou residence and attributes, I compare the living conditions in terms of traffic, cooking and housing conditions to identify the disparities in the living conditions. The hypothesis is that the migrants’ living conditions are worse than local residents.The data comes from China Labor-force Dynamics Survey in 2012. It is a nationwide, large-scale, random sampled survey. The survey adopted three-stage stratified sampling and can represent the national population very well. The migrant household is defined as the households whose hukou residences have not be registered in the local cities. The urban population can be divided into (1) local resident household with non-agriculture hukou, (2) local resident household with agriculture hukou, (3) migrant household with non-agriculture hukou, and (4) migrant household with agriculture hukou. The variables about living conditions are compared by means of normal regression for continuous variables, logistical for categorical variables, and order logistic regression for ordinal variables. The results show that migrants with agriculture hukou and local residents with agriculture hukou have inferior living conditions that are significantly different from local residents. This suggests the special policy to adopt to address unequal living conditions in urban areas for policymakers.