Three essays on migration, education, and household development in rural China.

摘要

The overall objective of this dissertation is to explore the role of labor in China's development from the perspective of the household and the individuals in rural households. To better understand the effects of rising labor markets on households in rural China, I proceed by writing three papers.;In the first paper, I measure the rate of return to schooling among individuals in rural China, both among local laborers and migrants. Using hourly wages rather than daily or monthly wages, as recommended by Schultz (1988), and controlling for selectivity, I find that the return to an additional year of schooling is 5.8 percent for all individuals and 9.2 percent among individuals under 35. The results are robust to controls for omitted variable bias, and are higher than previous estimates in the literature. When I use the specification of others but change their dependent variable to the hourly wage, I show in all cases that the returns rise substantially. In fact, I show that the returns to education in rural China among individuals under 35 is close to the returns to education in the rest of developing Asia. If my results are to be believed, then China's leaders should realize that the private returns to education are higher than was previously thought, and they should invest more in rural education.;In the second paper, I attempt to understand the effects of China's migration on source households. I use New Economics of Labor Migration (NELM) theory and simultaneous-equation econometric techniques to estimate net, sector-specific effects of migration on rural household income, focusing on farm production and self-employment. I find that crop income decreases when migrants leave, but remittances sent home migrants compensate, partially or fully, for this lost-labor effect. Overall, I show that migration has positive effects on the per-capita income in households that participate in migration.;In the third paper, I look beyond the short term effects of migration on sources of household income, and investigate the effects of migration on the household over time. The paper develops a theoretical model consistent with NELM that links migration, short-term income, and investment. Remittances are found to have a multiplier effect on household income for richer households, but not for households at the median income or below. This finding is consistent with an interpretation that richer households participate in migration to relieve constraints on short-term liquidity, whereas poorer households do not benefit in the short term. However, I find strong evidence that migration and return migration lead to higher consumptive investment levels for households in poorer areas, but not in richer areas. As the benefits associated with migration are typically in consumptive rather than productive investments, poorer households are able to use migration as a way to accumulate more consumer durables or to improve their housing.