Impact of the Guest Worker System on Poverty and Wellbeing of Migrant workers in Urban China

    Abstract :China is, perhaps, the only country in the world which adopts the "guest worker" system for its own rural citizens. There are currently more than 120 million rural-to-urban migrants working in Chinese cities. Like all "guest workers" they have a temporary "visa" and no access to social benefits available to their urban counterparts. This paper examines three specific issues related to poverty and well-being of these workers. First, what proportion of "guest workers" is currently living in poverty? Second, what is the relationship between poverty and the long hours typically worked by migrants? Third, how do long work hours affect the future health of migrants? We find that more migrants live in poverty than urban residents. However, the difference in poverty incidence between the two groups is relatively small. Migrants work 50 per cent more hours per week than their urban counterparts and our estimates suggest that this reduces migrant poverty from 35 per cent to 15 percent.We also investigate the relationship between working hours and long term health and find that extremely long work hours may adversely affect the migrant workers’ long term health condition, and hence, hinder their future income earning ability. Our results raise many questions as to the relationships between poverty measures, hourly income and total work hours that have not received attention in the poverty literature.
    Key word: poverty, rural-urban migration, China
    View Online
    ( in China Update,Asia Pacific Press )