The Impact of Population Migration on Changes in Rural Households in China

With the acceleration of industrialization and urbanization, hundreds of millions of Chinese farmers, driven by a strong urge to escape poverty and achieve prosperity, have undertaken large-scale rural-to-urban migration and cross-regional mobility. Since the early 1980s, the inter-sectoral and inter-regional transfer of rural labor in China has maintained a consistently high scale and speed. According to statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics, the total number of migrant workers reached 277.47 million in 2015. Such large-scale population movement is bound to have a tremendous impact on rural households. As the family is the cell of society, whether rural households can develop harmoniously during the massive migration process is of great significance to China's urbanization process and socioeconomic transformation.

In order to explore the changes in rural households in China under the influence of population migration and their impact on socioeconomic development, a research group established in 2007 conducted systematic investigation and analysis on this issue and arrived at a series of relevant conclusions.

The issue of migrant workers and their families has become a major issue concerning China's modernization process

Migrant workers have made major contributions to China's socioeconomic development and smooth transformation. It can be said that it is precisely their emergence that greatly accelerated the historical process of marketization, industrialization, and urbanization in China, this ancient agricultural country, and historically achieved the transformation from a large agricultural country to a large industrial country and even a world economic power. However, they themselves have not received the treatment and social status they deserve. Instead, they are becoming a symbol of a socially disadvantaged group, the focus of social attention, and the key to building a harmonious society. If the issue of migrant workers and their families cannot be resolved as soon as possible, it will not only further widen the urban-rural gap, regional gap, and wealth gap, hinder the further improvement of China's industrialization level and the healthy advancement of urbanization, and delay the process of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects, but will also seriously harm social fairness and justice, damage the relationship between the Party and the government and the workers and peasants, affect the government's image and prestige among the people, and weaken the Party's governing foundation.

At present, many cities in China have conditionally provided migrant workers with rights such as residence, employment, schooling, and social insurance. However, many city governments often tend to control the degree of openness out of the need to avoid fiscal burdens and ensure urban competitiveness. Therefore, it is necessary to promptly clarify in law that migrant workers have completely equal citizenship rights with urban residents, and to grasp the correct orientation of public opinion from a political height, change the attitudes of local governments and urban residents toward migrant workers, and build a truly fair and harmonious urban society.

The positive effect of wage income from employment outweighs the various negative effects of population out-migration on rural households

For most rural households, at the current stage, the positive effect of wage income from employment outweighs the various negative effects of population out-migration. A family's life satisfaction is jointly determined by family members' satisfaction in various life domains, such as job satisfaction, family relationship satisfaction, community satisfaction, and personal health satisfaction. Research shows that the impact of migrant workers' job satisfaction on life satisfaction is greater than that of family relationship satisfaction on life satisfaction, indicating that for migrant workers whose main source of income is wages from employment, job satisfaction is more important than family relationship satisfaction. The survey also found that although the out-migration of migrant workers brings certain adverse effects on elder care, children's growth, and marital life, most family members left behind still expressed support for the out-migration of family members. This is mainly because for these families, the importance of income far exceeds the importance of enjoying "family bliss."

The policy implications of this finding are as follows: on the one hand, it illustrates the extreme importance of increasing farmers' income for family stability, and the government should increase farmers' income through various channels; on the other hand, under the current situation of very low farmers' income, farmers have placed the improvement of family relationships in a relatively secondary position, which puts migrant workers in an unfavorable position in market negotiations. Destination governments and enterprises often treat migrant workers only as production factors and rarely pay attention to safeguarding the interests of migrant workers and their families. Therefore, relevant departments need to pay more attention to protecting the family interests of migrant workers and establish a more standardized and effective system for protecting the rights and interests of migrant workers.

Migrant workers' marital relationships are harmonious overall, but many unfavorable factors also exist

Overall, farmers going out to work has not caused widespread marital disharmony, and more than 85% of migrant workers rated their marital satisfaction and spousal affection relatively highly. However, the research also shows that job instability reduces marital life satisfaction and makes spousal affection unstable; the marital satisfaction and spousal affection of short-distance migrant workers are higher than those of long-distance migrant workers; migrant workers with higher income levels have relatively better marital relationships; migrant workers who work long hours every day or do overtime rate their marital relationships lower. In addition, whether local residents discriminate against migrant workers also affects migrant workers' marital relationships to a certain extent.

Marriage is the core of family relationships, and the harmony of migrant workers' marital relationships is the foundation of social harmony. Therefore, the research group recommends: first, increase skills training for migrant workers and raise their income levels to enhance their ability to maintain urban life and "support their families"; second, accelerate the improvement of the labor contract management system and strictly enforce the working hours and work intensity stipulated by labor law so that migrant workers can enjoy more "family bliss"; third, improve the social security system so that migrant workers can enjoy the same treatment as urban residents and reduce their sense of inferiority of being "inferior to others."

Rural left-behind elderly people have serious problems in life care and spiritual life

Research shows that the out-migration of children has raised the material living standards of left-behind elderly people, but has brought serious problems to their medical care, life care, and spiritual life. Children going out to work creates long-term spatial separation between generations, which not only affects the availability of life care resources for left-behind elderly people but also brings many difficulties to their spiritual life.

As a socially disadvantaged group, rural left-behind elderly people should receive social attention, achieve the goal of "providing for the elderly," let elderly people feel society's care, and enable them to enjoy their later years in peace. To this end, efforts should be made to improve the rural medical system, develop rural elderly care institutions, broaden funding channels for rural elderly care, establish coordination mechanisms between urban and rural areas and between developed and less developed regions, build warm rural "extended families," establish and improve rural elderly organizations, and improve the safety and security system.

Having migrant workers' children study in the same schools as urban residents' children is a fundamental measure for achieving the citizenization of migrant workers

The premise for achieving the citizenization of migrant workers is that they can truly integrate into urban society, and in this process, the psychological barrier between migrant workers and original urban residents is a problem more difficult to eliminate than institutional obstacles. In a sense, it is relatively difficult for the first generation of migrant workers to fully integrate into urban society. The hope may lie in their children truly integrating into mainstream urban society, and the issue of children's education is of particularly important significance in this regard. Unfortunately, the survey shows that migrant workers' children in China are currently mainly divided into two major groups: first, left-behind children, who are separated from their parents for long periods and attend school in rural areas; second, children who move to cities with their parents, most of whom attend migrant workers' children's schools in cities. Research shows that migrant workers' children who move to cities lack a sense of belonging to the city, while left-behind children have relatively serious psychological problems. Therefore, it is necessary to make great efforts to solve the schooling problem of migrant workers' children. Not only should they enjoy the same treatment as urban children, but strong measures should also be taken to make them classmates in the same schools, same classes, and same desks as urban children. The significance lies not only in letting them enjoy the same teaching conditions as urban children, but also in letting them grow up together with urban children from an early age, adapt to urban life through interaction with urban children, become accustomed to the urban lifestyle, and become true urban residents from habit to psychology.

Local and nearby migration of farmers is more conducive to harmonious family relationships