文化因素对人口流动的长期影响:基于中国历史经验的实证分析

Longstanding Cultural Impact on Population Migration in Chinese History

文化差异作为解释移民活动的决定因素已不是一个新的视角,然而截至目前,学界尚未对两者之间的量化因果关系进行过讨论。本文利用中国历史上的移民数据,采用新的文化差异度量指标(姓氏基因距离)来揭示地区间文化差异对移民活动的因果影响。研究发现:采用姓氏基因距离度量的地区间文化差异对移民行为具有较强的负向影响,即移民数量随着文化差异的缩小而增加,并且即使控制其他经济、地理等因素以及采用工具变量法进行两阶段回归,该结果依然稳健。本文不仅为理解文化差异与移民行为之间的关系提供了扎实的实证证据,同时也对理解中国自10世纪以来的移民特征及其决定因素有所贡献。

Although social scientists and practitioners have long agreed that culture is an important determinant in the migration of populations, so far there has been no study, which provides empirical evidence of a causal relationship between culture and migration. Two things may have contributed to the lacking of empirical research on the subject. Culture is both a tangle and intangible concept, for which testable measures are difficult to design. Also, cultural change are incremental and subtle, and occur over a huge time. This makes it almost impossible to collect consistent historical data. In an attempt to overcome these shortcomings, this paper examines the impact of long term cultural change on inter-regional population migration by using generic distance from surnames as a measurable variable for cultural variation. The author compiled a database of the historical migration data in the last 1000 years. The finding indicates that the higher the cultural variation, the lower the migration activities. In other words, homogeneity of culture encourages migration while differences of cultures discourage migration. This finding stands the test of controlling variables such as socio-economic and geographic elements. This study has established solid empirical evidence on the casual relation between culture and migration, Furthermore it contributes to the understanding of the characteristics and determinants of Chinese internal migration since the tenth century.