School of Economics, East China Normal University, 200062 Shanghai, China.
School of Economics, Sichuan University, 610065 Chengdu, China.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020 Feb 13;17(4):1218. doi: 10.3390/ijerph17041218.
The relationship between health and migration has always been an important theme in immigration research. This research develops a new approach to test the healthy migrant hypothesis and the salmon bias hypothesis in China by examining an interaction term combining agricultural hukou and migrant status, non-agricultural employment history, and subsequent area of residence. Based on two Chinese micro-databases, CGSS 2015 and Harmonized CHARLS, we conducted an empirical test on the relationship between migration and health. Our empirical evidence suggests that the initial health advantage among Chinese rural migrant workers was largely due to self-selection rather than migration effects. After controlling for demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, this advantage disappeared. After their health deteriorated, migrant workers returned to their original location. This could exacerbate the contradiction between the allocation of medical resources and the demand in rural and urban China, further intensifying the already widening health status gap between rural and urban residents.
健康与移民之间的关系一直是移民研究中的一个重要主题。本研究通过检验农业户口和移民身份、非农就业经历以及随后居住地区的组合这一交互项，为检验中国的健康移民假说和鲑鱼偏误假说提供了一种新方法。基于中国两个微观数据库——CGSS2015 和 HarmonizedCHARLS，我们对移民与健康之间的关系进行了实证检验。我们的实证证据表明，中国农村外出务工人员最初的健康优势在很大程度上是由于自我选择而非移民效应所致。在控制了人口统计学和社会经济特征后，这种优势消失了。在他们的健康状况恶化后，农民工返回了原籍地。这可能会加剧中国农村和城市之间医疗资源配置与需求之间的矛盾，进一步加剧农村和城市居民之间已经扩大的健康状况差距。
