Department of Gerontology, University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston, MA, USA.
RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, CA, USA.
Demography. 2021 Feb 1;58(1):165-189. doi: 10.1215/00703370-8913024.
Given that Chinese migrants with rural hukou status are not considered full citizens in their urban destinations, rural-urban hukou conversion signifies full citizenship attainment in urban China. We assess causal effects of three major types of urban hukou attainment-merit-, policy-, and family-based hukou conversion-on migrants' psychological well-being in middle- and later-life. We further examine how hukou matters-how periods and hukou destinations alter the values of specific urban hukou and their psychological health implications for individuals. We use the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (2015 data) and life history data (for 2014) for analysis. To assess the extent to which the salmon effect contributes to estimation bias for migrants, we compare results from a sample with current migrants and one with current and returned migrants. To address for selection into hukou conversion, we adopt inverse probability-weighted regression adjustment methods. We show that the salmon bias significantly dampened causal estimates. Merit- and policy-based hukou conversion has protective effects on psychological well-being. Policy-based converters have better psychological health than other types of converters. Hukou conversion in the pre-1978 period conveys greater psychological benefits than that in the post-1998 period, when economic and social values of urban hukou have decreased. Hukou converters in the cities with the most resources enjoy better psychological well-being than their counterparts in other cities. Our study joins the emerging literature in investigating how citizenship conveys advantage in health and well-being. We discuss these results in the global context as well as the context of China's decades of evolution of hukou policy and the urbanization process.
鉴于拥有农村户籍的中国移民在城市目的地并不被视为完全公民，农村-城市户籍转换标志着他们在中国城市中获得完全公民身份。我们评估了三种主要类型的城市户籍获得——基于功绩、政策和家庭的户籍转换——对中年和晚年移民心理健康的因果效应。我们进一步研究了户籍的重要性——户籍转换的时期和户籍目的地如何改变特定城市户籍的价值及其对个人的心理健康影响。我们使用了中国健康与退休纵向研究（2015 年数据）和生活史数据（2014 年）进行分析。为了评估鲑鱼效应在多大程度上导致对移民的估计偏差，我们比较了有当前移民的样本和有当前和返回移民的样本的结果。为了解决户籍转换的选择问题，我们采用了逆概率加权回归调整方法。我们表明，鲑鱼偏差显著削弱了因果估计。基于功绩和政策的户籍转换对心理健康有保护作用。政策型户籍转换者的心理健康状况优于其他类型的户籍转换者。与 1998 年后的时期相比，1978 年前的户籍转换带来了更大的心理收益，因为那时城市户籍的经济和社会价值已经下降。在资源最丰富的城市进行户籍转换的人比在其他城市的同类人享有更好的心理健康。我们的研究加入了研究公民身份如何在健康和幸福感方面带来优势的新兴文献。我们在全球背景以及中国几十年的户籍政策演变和城市化进程背景下讨论了这些结果。
