Business Commons^™

The Impact Of Rural Pensions In China On Labor Migration, Karen Eggleson, Ang Sun, Zhaoguo Zhan

Faculty and Research Publications

We study the impact of China’s new rural pension program on promoting migration of labor by applying a regression discontinuity analysis to this new pension program. The results reveal a perceptible difference in labor migration among adult children whose parents are just above and below the age of pension eligibility: The adult children with a parent just attaining the pension-eligible age are more likely to be labor migrants compared with those with a parent just below the pension-eligible age. We also find that with a pension-eligible parent, the adult children are more likely to have off-farm jobs. These abrupt changes …