突发公共卫生事件、农民工流动与农业蓄水池——基于中国家庭追踪调查数据的微观证据

Public Health Emergency,Mobility of Migrant Workers and Agricultural Reservoirs:Micro-evidence Based on the China Family Panel Studies

就业是最基本的民生,农民工的高质量充分就业是城乡融合发展与全体人民共同富裕的重要内容,而农民工作为弱势群体,突发性冲击会对其就业产生巨大的影响。文章基于“突发性冲击-农民工流动-农业再就业”的逻辑框架,利用中国家庭追踪调查数据,采用广义双重差分模型论证了突发公共卫生事件对农民工的工资收入、就业地点以及农业就业的冲击效应。研究发现:在重大突发公共卫生事件冲击下,劳动力供需变化与市场配置效率下降加大了农民工工资下行压力,带来了不利的收入效应;加之不确定性风险较高,农民工外出务工的机会成本增大,县域内就业增加,农民工流动性下降;由于非农就业机会有限,农民工利用农业的劳动力蓄水池功能进行农业再就业,获得暂时的就业保障以抵御公共卫生风险。此外,城市的失业效应与劳动者的替代效应是突发性冲击影响农民工就业选择的潜在机制。据此,文章认为将更多农民工纳入就业保障体系,大力发展县域经济,推动农业现代化与农村产业融合,以及通过技能培训等加强对弱势农民工群体的救助和支持是保障农民工生计、提升农民工就业质量的重要途径。

High-quality and full employment of migrant workers is an important element of integrated urban-rural development and common prosperity.Migrant workers are a vulnerable group,and the sudden shock has a huge impact on their employment.Then,the impact and mechanism of public health emergency on the employment of migrant workers,and how to protect and promote their high-quality employment have already attracted wide attention from the society.This paper theoretically and empirically demonstrates the impact of public health emergency on migrant workers’wage income,employment location,and agricultural employment.The results show that under major public health emergency,the change of labor demand and the decrease in market allocation efficiency have enhanced the downward pressure on the wage of migrant workers and brought the adverse income effect.In addition,due to the higher uncertainty risk,the opportunity cost for migrant workers to work outside their counties is high,and the employment within their counties increases,resulting in migrant workers’mobility decreasing.Given the limited non-agricultural employment opportunities,migrant workers take advantage of the labor reservoir effect of agriculture to re-employ in agriculture and obtain temporary employment guarantees to counteract public health emergency.Moreover,the unemployment effect of cities and the substitution effect of labors are the potential channels that the sudden shock affects the employment choice of migrant workers.Therefore,incorporating more migrant workers into the employment security system,vigorously developing the county economy,promoting agricultural modernization and rural industrial integration,and strengthening assistance and support for vulnerable migrant workers through skill-training are important ways to ensure the livelihood of migrant workers and improve their employment quality.The marginal contributions of this paper are as follows:First,based on the analysis of supply and demand in the labor market and the driving and pulling forces of labor migration,it explores the cross-regional mobility and non-agricultural employment choices of migrant workers,and constructs the logical framework of“Sudden Shock–Migrant Workers’Mobility–Agricultural Re-employment”.Second,based on the nationwide China Family Panel Studies,it uses quasi-experimental analysis to study the impact of macro-shocks on the employment decisions and behaviors of migrant workers’micro subjects.Third,it fully considers the endogeneity issue to test the impact of public health emergency on the employment of migrant workers.