The bittersweet fruits of industrialization in rural China: The cost of environment and the benefit from off-farm employment
基于2008和2012年全国面板数据，研究中国农村工业化中环境污染对居民的影响是否被离农就业收益所抵消，发现受污染农户未必获得就业好处，且迁移劳动力收入更高。
While it is widely accepted that industrialization has brought both environmental pollution and economic growth in rural areas of China, very little is known about whether the negative effects of industrial pollution on rural residents have been proportionally offset by positive effects due to improvements in off-farm income. This paper improves our understanding of these tradeoffs by conducting an empirical analysis based on a set of nationwide panel data collected in 2008 and 2012 and covering five provinces, 101 villages, and 2020 households. Evidence is found to suggest that it is not always the case that rural households that are affected by pollution reap the off-farm employment benefits associated with industrialization. Specifically, although industrial pollution incidence is found to be positively related with the level of local off-farm employment, this relationship is statistically insignificant when migrant labor is included. It can be explained as areas that less economically benefited from industrialization tent to have more labors migrated out and the average annual wage income of one migrant labor is much higher than that of local off-farm labor.