Essays on the effects of rural-urban migration on migrants' behaviour in china : marriage, fertility, and cigarette smoking

Abstract

The thesis examines the effects of rural-urban migration on migrants' marriage, fertility and smoking behaviour. This research attempts to fill these gaps. The data used are from the Chinese Rural Household sample of Rural-Urban Migration in China and Indonesia (RUMiCI) project. Chapter 2 analyses the effect of rural-urban migration on fertility behaviour of rural females in China. The results show that the rural-urban migration decreases the number of births and delays the timing of the first birth. On average, the first birth is delayed about seven months. Furthermore, it is suggested that female migrants postpone their marriages, and subsequently the timing of the first birth. Chapter 3 examines the correlation between the timing of the first marriage and the first rural-urban migration. It is found that male migrants marry four months earlier and female migrants four months later than their rural counterparts. In details, the accelerating effect of migration for males significantly depends on the duration of migration; for females, the postponement effect of migration varies across birth cohorts. Chapters 4 and 5 explore the effect of rural-urban migration on cigarette smoking from two perspectives - smoking prevalence and age of smoking onset. The results show that the rural-urban migration has a significant and positive effect on current smoking prevalence. In terms of the timing of smoking onset, rural-urban migration can increase the hazard rate of smoking substantially, and counterfactual experiments show that the lifetime prevalence of smoking can also be increased significantly. More alarmingly, the effect of migration is extremely substantial for younger birth cohorts.