China Labor-force Dynamics Survey Research Articles

Does migrant workers' subjective social status affect their mental health? Job satisfaction as a longitudinal mediator.

Prior studies on migrant workers have explored the effect of their subjective social status and job satisfaction on their mental health, respectively or combined, as well as how their subjective social status affects their job satisfaction. Nonetheless, few have accounted straightforwardly and holistically for the mechanism of interaction between subjective social status, job satisfaction and mental health amongst migrant workers. Taking migrant workers in China as the object of study, we intended to probe the longitudinal links between their subjective social status, job satisfaction and mental health, in particular, their job satisfaction as a longitudinal mediator therein. Using the three-wave data from the 2014, 2016 and 2018 China Labour-force Dynamics Survey, we defined migrant workers as labourers aged 15 to 64 with agricultural hukou and engaged in non-agricultural work in urban areas. The final valid sample comprised 2,035 individuals. Latent growth models (LGMs) were applied to test the hypothesised relationships. The LGMs based on bootstrapping showed that amongst migrant workers the subjective social status, job satisfaction and mental health tended overall to grow linearly and that the job satisfaction longitudinally mediated between the subjective social status and mental health. The findings may enlighten policymaking to elevate migrant workers mentally and inform future studies on theoretical and practical fronts.

Regional intergenerational mobility and corporate innovation: Evidence from China.

By stimulating social vitality and improving innovation efficiency, intergenerational mobility plays an essential role in economic development. With the data from China Labor-force Dynamic Survey (CLDS) and A-share listed companies, this paper uses the methodology of intergenerational order correlation to measure regional intergenerational mobility, and examines the impact of regional intergenerational mobility on corporate innovation. The results are as follows: (1) Regional intergenerational mobility promotes corporate innovation both quantitatively and qualitatively, and a series of robustness tests confirm our findings; (2) Two channels identified are government-enterprise human capital allocation and fairness perception; (3) Heterogeneity analysis shows that the innovation effect of regional intergenerational mobility is more significant in the high-tech industry and private enterprises; (4) Multi-dimensional market-oriented policy can be used to get rid of the shackles of low intergenerational mobility on corporate innovation. Our findings provide implications for developing countries on how to address the relationship between inequality and economic development.

Generalized trust among rural-to-urban migrants in China: Role of relative deprivation and neighborhood context

China has experienced sizeable internal migration in the past several decades. This research examines the implications of internal migration on generalized trust in China. Using data from the 2014 China Labor-force Dynamics Survey (CLDS), a nationally representative survey, we compared the level of self-rated generalized trust in strangers among Chinese rural-to-urban migrants, rural nonmigrants, and urban nonmigrants. We further assessed the mediating effects of relative deprivation and neighborhood context in the relationship between migration status and generalized trust. The results show that migrants are less trusting than rural and urban nonmigrants after adjusting for relevant sociodemographic characteristics. The mediation analysis suggests that relative deprivation partially explains the difference in generalized trust between migrants and rural nonmigrants, and it greatly mediates the trust gap between migrants and urban nonmigrants. The neighborhood context largely explains the difference in generalized trust between migrants and rural nonmigrants. Moreover, urban nonmigrants are less trusting than migrants when taking neighborhood context into consideration, which indicates a suppression effect of neighborhood context on the relationship between migrant status and social trust in urban China. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of how social trust changes in the process of internal migration. Policy implications are discussed.

Accompanying your children: Living without parents at different stages of pre-adulthood and individual physical and mental health in adulthood.

This study examined how living without parents at different stages of childhood and adolescence affects physical and mental health in adulthood. The data came from 3,464 survey respondents aged 18-36 in the 2018 China Labor-Force Dynamics Survey. Physical health was self-rated. Mental health was measured by the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression scale. The ordered probit and ordinary least-squares regression analyses were employed to determine the associations between growing up without parents at different stages in pre-adulthood and individual physical and mental health in adulthood. Individuals who did not live with their parents during their minor years were more likely to report worse physical and mental health in adulthood, compared to those who lived with their parents. This difference was heterogeneous among different age stages and genders. Absence of parents in the household has long-term impacts on the physical and mental health of children in adulthood, especially for females. The government should make feasible institutional arrangements to avoid the separation of minor children from their parents.

The Impact of Household Migration on the Intergenerational Educational Mobility: Based on the Perspective of Adolescent Development.

Improving intergenerational mobility is crucial for enhancing the efficacy of human capital, ensuring social vitality, and supporting sustainable long-term economic growth. Based on the China Labor-force Dynamic Survey (CLDS) of 2014, this paper empirically examines the effect of adolescent household migration on intergenerational educational mobility by using a fixed-effect model. The study found that: (1) Household migration in the adolescent period significantly improves intergenerational educational mobility. (2) The quality and quantity of education of offspring are the channels through which household migration improves the intergenerational educational mobility of the household. (3) There are significant differences between urban and rural areas, gender, and household resource allocation in the effect of adolescent household migration on intergenerational educational mobility. As the majority of poor households are unable to improve intergenerational mobility through migration due to its costs and institutional barriers, this paper suggests that the government should concentrate on reducing regional disparities in educational resources, advancing rural education reform, and enhancing social security.

Research on the Contribution Mechanism of Vocational Human Capital Characteristics to Income

Vocational education is an important way to accumulate human capital. Human capital is the core element of economic growth and has huge positive externalities. Building a scientific and effective human capital development system is an important driving force to improve workers’ living standards and promote innovative development. Based on statistical techniques such as Lasso dimensionality reduction, stepwise regression, and partial least squares, as well as on the 2012–2016 China Labor Force Dynamics Survey (CLDS), this paper studies the impact of human capital on workers’ wage income and capital income, and establishes an income-determining equation that can be used for interpretation and forecasting. The empirical results show that education, professional skills, health, and communication ability are important components of human capital and are significantly positively correlated with income. China should build a good and effective human capital development system to increase workers’ income and narrow the income gap among residents.

Access to Piped Water and Off-Farm Work Participation: Evidence from Rural China

The lack of access to water services for a considerable share of the world population has been challenging the international community for decades. Billions of hours are spent each year on water collection in developing countries. Access to piped water can liberate individuals from the task of collecting water. Based on data from the China Labor-force Dynamic Survey (CLDS), this paper examines the impact of access to piped water on off-farm work participation. We find that access to piped water significantly improves off-farm work participation in rural China. This result remains robust when we use the PSM approach, Lewbel IV method, placebo test, and Dose-Response Model. Anyway, we find that the positive effect of access to piped water on off-farm work participation is greater in rugged areas and women, reflecting the role of access to piped water in promoting inclusive growth. Further research shows that access to piped water increases household income, and off-farm work participation mediates, in part, the link between access to piped water and household income.

Can agricultural mechanization services narrow the income gap in rural China?

This paper examines the impact of agricultural mechanization services (AMS) on rural household income and income gap, utilizing the recentered influence function regression method and publicly available data collected through the China Labor-force Dynamics Survey. The results of this study shed light on various impacts of AMS. First, agricultural mechanization services can significantly increase rural household income, but there is heterogeneity in the impact on rural household income in different quantiles. The effect of income growth on medium-income and low-income groups is greater. Second, agricultural mechanization services help to narrow the income gap between rural households and alleviate income inequality in rural areas. Third, the effect of agricultural mechanization services on reducing the income gap between rural households in the eastern and western regions is significantly stronger than that in the central region. Finally, further analysis based on income source structure reveals that agricultural mechanization services can significantly reduce the non-agricultural income gap of rural households, but the impact on the agricultural income gap is negligible. Our findings highlight the importance of government's efforts in promoting the development of agricultural mechanization service market in order to improve the income inequality in rural areas.

Rising housing prices and marriage delays in China: Evidence from the urban land transaction policy

In recent years, the phenomenon of delayed age at first marriage and declining fertility in China has become increasingly prominent, and high housing prices may be one of the triggers. By exploiting the quasi-natural experiment of the urban land transaction policy (ULTP) since 2002 and using the nationally representative data from the China Labor-force Dynamic Survey (CLDS), we employed a difference-in-differences (DID) method to identify the causal effects of rising housing prices on marriage delays. The results show that rising housing prices from the ULTP significantly delayed the age of first marriage by 0.2280 years old, with males delaying by 0.4372 years old. In addition, we found that rising housing prices raised the cost of first marriage; instead, young people with houses have a younger age at first marriage. Furthermore, the marriage delay effect of rising housing prices is more pronounced for more educated females, males with more siblings, and individuals from large cities. Worse, the effect of delayed marriage caused by rising housing prices further depressed fertility intentions and reduced the actual fertility rate. These findings complemented to the research field on the impact of rising housing prices and provided some insights for refining real estate public policies.

Work trajectories and status attainment process: a study using sequence analysis

Applying sequence analysis methods to work trajectories recorded in the 2012 China Labor Force Dynamics Survey, this study examines the types of work trajectories in China’s urban labor market in three dimensions: employment status, organizational type, and work position. The findings suggest that along with the market transition, China’s urban labor market is experiencing diverse and complex job mobility patterns. This study identifies four types of work trajectories: the merit-based work trajectory, the blue-collar’s work trajectory in the private sector, the blue-collar’s work trajectory in state-owned enterprises, and the self-employed trajectory. These four typical work trajectories have significantly different influences on individuals’ attainment of socioeconomic status and elite status. This study sheds light on the microprocesses in status attainment by examining the role of work trajectories from a longitudinal perspective.

The Impact of Social Insurance on Employment Quality

This paper empirically studies the impact of social insurance on employment quality based on China labor force dynamic survey in 2016. The results indicate that (1) social insurance significantly increases the annual salary of laborers and improves employment quality on the whole; (2) the impact of social insurance on the employment quality of laborers with different levels of education vary significantly, of which companies pass on their social insurance contributions to laborers with junior high school education and below, so social insurance remarkably reduces these people’s annual salary and job satisfaction; (3) social insurance significantly enhances employment quality by greatly improving the health of laborers.

Military Experience and Individual Entrepreneurship—Imprinting Theory Perspective: Empirical Evidence From China

Military experience, as a special early experience exerts a very profound impact on individual decision making. This paper investigates the impact of military experience on male labor force entrepreneurial choices and its underlying mechanisms, using the 2014 to 2016 China Labor-force Dynamics Survey data. It is found that military experience significantly reduces the probability of individual entrepreneurship. The analysis of the influence mechanism shows that military experience inhibits survival entrepreneurship mainly by increasing employment opportunities in state-owned units, increasing the probability of becoming a member of the Communist Party of China(CPC), and accumulating human capital. This paper also finds that the inhibitory effect of military experience on individual entrepreneurship varies across household registration groups and is more significant for laborers with non-agricultural household. This paper not only reveals the impact of the military experience on individual entrepreneurship choices, but also provides empirical evidence for the development of innovation and entrepreneurship policies in emerging economies.

Does Urban Agglomeration Discourage Entrepreneurship in China? Micro-Empirical Evidence from China

As the net effect of agglomeration on entrepreneurship depends on the trade-off between positive and negative effects, urban agglomeration can either promote or discourage entrepreneurial activity in theory. However, there is an unexpected shortage of empirical confirmations on this potential cause-and-effect relationship. Our study strives to fill this empirical gap by providing credible evidence whether agglomeration, measured by the urban density or population, increases the probability of individuals being self-employed. Based on the China Labor-Force Dynamic Survey of 2012, 2014, and 2016, we find that big cities fail to facilitate individuals to start or run their own businesses. Further analyses illustrate that the entrepreneurs in large cities can be easily tempted by a wider range of salaried opportunities and are generally exposed to high fixed costs and intense competition. In contrast, entrepreneurship in large cities is of high reward. These results serve as direct evidence of the co-existence of agglomeration diseconomies and economies. This also suggests the direction of government policy in large cities, which is to alleviate, as much as possible, the negative impact on entrepreneurs.

Impact of off-farm employment on cooking fuel choices: Implications for rural-urban transformation in advancing sustainable energy transformation

Off-farm employment is a prominent manifestation of rural-urban transformation in developing countries, and it theoretically plays a critical role in rural sustainable energy transformation. Exploiting the nationally representative household-level panel data from the China Labor-force Dynamics Survey (CLDS), this study employs a multi-dimensional fixed-effects (MDFE) model, an inverse probability weighted regression adjustment (IPWRA) technique and a propensity score matching (PSM) approach to investigate the impact of off-farm employment on cooking fuel choices. The results show that off-farm employment exerts a positive and significant impact on the probability of adopting clean fuels for cooking, with specific reductions in biomass and coal and increases in electricity and gas. Furthermore, this effect is mainly realized by reducing the amount of available labor, the number of family meals, and increasing kitchen equipment purchases. However, the relationship between off-farm employment and cooking fuel choices varies considerably across the region, village and household groups. Off-farm employment mainly benefits the eastern, central and western regions of China, villages in plain areas, with brick-concrete houses and ethnic Han Chinese, households with children or the elderly, with poor health and more females, while it is less beneficial for others. The study highlights the important policy implications of rural-urban transition for sustainable energy transition through the creation of off-farm jobs.

The Impacts of Urban Environments on Community Trust of the Low-Income Group: A Case Study for the Pearl River Delta Region

Under the burgeoning development of urbanization in China, the low-income groups have received attention recently. By applying a linear regression model and utilizing the date from the 2016 China Labor-force Dynamics Survey, this study has explored the effects of urban environments on the community trust in low-income groups, paying particular attention to the difference between local residents and migrants in the Pearl River Delta (PRD). The empirical findings suggest the following: (1) community trust in low-income groups is influenced by social environment dimension, urban space dimension, and sociodemographic characteristics. Specifically, urbanization rate, population density, POl density, land development intensity, social contact, self-rated health, and age have significant effects on the community trust of low-income groups. (2) For local residents, social environment dimension (social contact), urban space dimension (urbanization rate), and sociodemographic characteristics (political status, hukou status, age, and self-rated health) have significant effects on community trust. (3) In the case of migrants, only the sociodemographic characteristics (working in private enterprises or organizations and in agriculture) have a significant impact on community trust. According to the empirical results, the optimization of physical space and social space should consider low-income groups’ needs in livable community planning.

Autonomy or Working Conditions?-Research on Heterogeneity and Influencing Mechanism of Self-Employment on Job Satisfaction in China.

The development of globalization and information technology has been promoting informal work rapidly. In this process, self-employment is gradually becoming an important employment approach. As two of the key variables, self-employment laborers' work autonomy and work conditions are largely discussed as the potential determinants of their work satisfaction. Which of these two factors is actually influencing labors' satisfaction level? So far, relevant studies are insufficient to respond to this question, especially in developing countries. This study investigates the influence of work autonomy and working conditions on self-employed workers' job satisfaction in China. China Labor-force Dynamics Survey data is used to examine the impact of self-employment on workers' job satisfaction and the influence mechanism of work autonomy and working conditions. Propensity score matching and instrumental variable methods were applied to avoid sample selection bias and endogeneity. We found that self-employment has a significant negative effect on job satisfaction; poor working conditions are responsible for self-employed workers' lower satisfaction level, and self-employment behavior impacts job satisfaction differently in terms of the type and gender of self-employed workers. Therefore, stronger social security and better working conditions for the self-employed should be provided.

Entrepreneurial effect of rural return migrants: Evidence from China.

Entrepreneurship is an important means of economic development. Rural migrant workers returning home to start their own businesses can promote employment, alleviate poverty, and achieve rural development structural transformation of rural development. The entrepreneurial effect of rural return migrants is important for rural economic development. Using the data of the China Labor Force Dynamics Survey (CLDS thereafter) 2018 and China Household Finance Survey (CHFS thereafter) 2019, we analyze the entrepreneurial effects of return migrants upon their return to their hometowns. We construct a career choice model and build a mathematical model based on it to formulate the hypothesis. Then, we use the Probit regression model to test the hypothesis empirically. Results find that the rural return migrants can promote entrepreneurship among residents. Land circulation, human capital, and physical capital are stimulating factors in promoting the rural entrepreneurial activities of return migrants. We recommend that the government actively guide the rural return migrants to start businesses and provide security for entrepreneurial activities by upgrading various entrepreneurial elements.

Differences in Subjective Well-Being between Formal and Informal Workers in Urban China.

This paper examines the relationship between different types of employment and subjective well-being with a focus on informal employment. The China Labor-force Dynamics Survey (CLDS) for three selected years (2012, 2014 and 2016) shows an upward trend in the subjective well-being of urban workers in the 2010s. However, although the gap in subjective well-being between formal and informal workers narrowed, informal workers' subjective well-being was still lower than their formal counterparts. Factors affecting the subjective well-being of formal and informal workers and their different effects were revealed to explain this difference. The subjective well-being of informal workers is significantly related to their informal status of employment, economic conditions (such as income and working hours), human capital, social capital (such as perceived social justice and perceived community connectedness) and urban environment. The paper enhances the understanding of people's subjective well-being by differentiating informal/formal segments of working populations.

Does female off-farm employment affect fertility desire? Evidence from rural China

PurposeOff-farm employment is an important factor associated with fertility transition in many developing countries. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of female off-farm employment on their fertility desire in rural China.Design/methodology/approachBased on the data from the China Labor-force Dynamics Survey, the authors adopt an instrumental variable approach to address the endogeneity issue. Desired number of children and desire for a second child are used to measure fertility desire.FindingsThe results show that off-farm employment participation significantly reduces women's desired number of children and the likelihood of their desire for a second child. Moreover, off-farm employment reduces women's fertility desire mainly through pathways including the weakening of son preference and a decrease in job autonomy, rather than the changes in leisure hours. Further evidence suggests that social health insurance plays an important role in moderating the adverse relationship between off-farm employment and the desire for a second child. The fertility-reducing effects are more pronounced among younger women, among those participating in off-farm wage employment and among families with only wives' participation in the off-farm labor market.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to the existing research by investigating the causal impact of off-farm employment on fertility desire in a rural developing context and the possible underlying mechanisms responsible for this relationship. This study provides important insights on this topic in developing countries and may have important implications for theory and practice.

Short- and Long-Term Effects of Underemployment on Workers' Health: Empirical Analysis from the China Labor Force Dynamics Survey.

Underemployment is a global problem. This study aimed to assess the short- and long-term effects of underemployment (hidden unemployment) on workers' health, using data from the China Labor-force Dynamic Survey (CLDS) 2016 and 2014. Indicators reflecting workers' self-rated health, mental health, prevalence of illness over time, and employment status were analyzed using logit regression models, propensity score matching methods, and instrumental variable methods. Empirical analyses showed that: (1) In the short-term, the impact on health is multidimensional, with underemployment significantly associated with a decline in workers' self-rated health, an increase in the propensity for depression, and an increase in the prevalence of illness over a certain period of time. (2) In the long-term, the experience of underemployment two years in the past is associated with a current decline in workers' mental health. That is, the negative effects of underemployment on workers' mental health persist and do not disappear rapidly over time. The results demonstrated that underemployment is detrimental to workers' health in the short- and long-term. In the context of epidemic prevention and control, the government and society should focus on this expanding group, establish labor protection mechanisms, and reduce the multiple effects of underemployment on workers' health.