From Temporary Migration to Urban Settlement: Children’s Co-Migration and Long-Term Residence in China
利用中国流动人口动态监测数据，研究发现儿童随迁显著提高了农村流动人口在城市的长期定居意愿，主要机制是改善了流动儿童对优质教育资源的获取，但户籍制度部分削弱了这一效应。
Using large-scale micro survey data from the China Migrants Dynamic Survey, this paper examines the causal effect of children’s co-migration on rural migrants’ long-term urban settlement intentions. Exploiting exogenous variation induced by China’s compulsory school-entry policy within a two-stage least squares framework, we find that migrating with children significantly increases migrants’ long-term settlement intentions in destination cities. Mechanism analyses show that improved access to high-quality educational resources for migrant children is the primary channel through which co-migration enhances settlement intentions, while institutional barriers embedded in the household registration (hukou) system partially weaken this effect. By contrast, household income, subjective well-being, and identity-related factors play a limited role. Further heterogeneity analyses reveal that the settlement-enhancing effect of children’s co-migration is stronger for households migrating with sons, for migrants in formal employment, and for those relocating to economically more developed eastern regions. These findings underscore the central role of intergenerational considerations in internal migration decisions and highlight how education institutions and registration policies jointly shape migrants’ urban integration in developing economies.