School of Public Finance and Taxation, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, Nanhu Road 182, Wuhan, Hubei Province 430073, China.
School of Economics and Management, Southeast University, China.
Econ Hum Biol. 2023 Dec;51:101285. doi: 10.1016/j.ehb.2023.101285. Epub 2023 Aug 2.
We comprehensively explore the question of "Leave for where?" by utilizing city-pair level data of China spanning from 2011 to 2017. Our investigation focuses on the impact of disparities in air quality between city pairs on migration. we find that a 1% increase in the difference air quality between inflow and outflow locations raises the number of people migrating from the outflow to the inflow location by approximately 0.07%. This finding is robust after overcoming possible endogeneity problems with average wind speed as an instrumental variable. In addition, we conducted a heterogeneity analysis in terms of intention to migrate and individual characteristics, finding that individuals who migrated for work and family are more sensitive to differences in air quality between city pairs, whereas those who moved for business are not sensitive to differences in air quality. Regarding individual characteristics, differences in air quality between city pairs have a greater impact on the migration decisions of low-educated, female, and younger migrants. Further, a mechanistic analysis by constructing cohort dummy variables reveals that poor air quality is more motivational than the desire for good air quality and the crowding-out effect of air pollution on migration is more pronounced.
我们综合利用了 2011 年至 2017 年中国城市对层面的数据，全面探讨了“迁往何处”的问题。我们的研究重点是城市对之间空气质量差异对移民的影响。我们发现，流入地和流出地之间空气质量差异每增加 1%，大约会使从流出地迁往流入地的人数增加 0.07%。这一发现是稳健的，因为我们使用平均风速作为工具变量克服了可能存在的内生性问题。此外，我们还进行了异质性分析，包括迁移意愿和个体特征，发现为工作和家庭而迁移的人对城市对之间空气质量差异更为敏感，而那些为了生意而迁移的人对空气质量差异不敏感。就个体特征而言，城市对之间的空气质量差异对受教育程度较低、女性和年轻移民的迁移决策有更大的影响。进一步通过构建队列虚拟变量进行的机制分析表明，较差的空气质量比良好的空气质量更能激发人们迁移，并且空气污染对迁移的挤出效应更为明显。
