Village Political Economy, Land Tenure Insecurity, and the Rural to Urban Migration Decision : Evidence from China

This paper investigates the impact of
land tenure insecurity on the migration decisions of
China's rural residents. A simple model first frames
the relationship among these variables and the probability
that a reallocation of land will occur in the following
year. After first demonstrating that a village leader's
support for administrative land reallocation carries with it
the risk of losing a future election, the paper exploits
election-timing and village heterogeneity in lineage group
composition and demographic change to identify the effect of
land security. In response to an expected land reallocation
in the following year, the probability that a rural resident
migrates out of the county declines by 2.8 percentage
points, which accounts for 17.5 percent of the annual share
of village residents, aged 16 to 50, who worked as migrants
during the period. This finding underscores the potential
importance of secure property rights for facilitating labor
market integration and the movement of labor out of agriculture.