Floating Population Increase and Its Influence on the Urban Population Situation:A Case Study in Beijing

Floating population is a special population group in China resulting from the implementation of household registration system. This paper uses a set of floating population survey data, population censuses data and statistical data to analyze the increase and influence of floating population on the urban population situations in Beijing. It is found that Beijing has experienced a rapid increase of floating population since the 1990s and that the increase of this group has become the key factor of the current population expansion in the city. Its distribution in the urban regions intensified and extended the suburbanization process of the capital. In addition, the population structures of sex, age, education and employment in Beijing have changed to some extent due to the influx of floating population.

Hukou-Restricted Migration and Migrants'Health:Evidence and Policy Implication

Since the 1980s,rapid economic development in China has continued to attract great numbers of migrants from rural to urban labor markets.As a result,the constraints of the hukou registration system on migration flows have gradually declined.Nevertheless,institutional barriers associated with the hukou remain for migrants in their social integration in destination.And these have led to substantial negative impacts on migrants'physical,social and psychological wellbeing.Regional institutional variation and recent reforms in the hukou system at the provincial or lower level set up a semi experimental context in which to examine how institutional or structural differences can affect migrants'wellbeing.This study analyzes the health-related differences between migrants in two major migrant-receiving cities,Beijing and Shenzhen.To eliminate the effect of self-selection in destination choice,we use propensity score matching to remove the observable differences which are relevant in destination choice and to make the respondents in the two cities more comparable.With the matched samples,we examine the net effect of migration destination on health outcomes and health service use.We found that migrants in Shenzhen have relatively poorer physical and psychological health compared with those in Beijing,and that they have more unmet health needs in spite of their higher use of health services.We discuss the structural and institutional factors which may be relevant to the observed net health differences,including the differences III policy implementation and regulations between these two cities.

中国流动人口概念和数据的有效性与国际可比性

The two concepts of“liudong renkou(floating population or FP)”and“renkou liudong(mobility of the floating population or MOFP)”,along with relevant data based on these two concepts,have long been used extensively in China’s research and policy making,playing a central role in Chinese studies of migration.Unlike the concepts of“migrant”and“migration”in the international literature,which are focused on people’s spatial mobility,“liudong renkou”and“renkou liudong”are identified and measured by the separation of one’s place of residence from one’s place of household registration(hukou),an approach inconsistent with relevant international practices.By analyzing various census data and data from the China Migrant Dynamic Survey(CMDS),this article examines the validity and reliability of these two concepts and the data based on them in the international context,revealing that they have become increasingly invalid and unreliable for the purpose of measuring migration events since China’s reform and opening up in the late 1970s.The results further demonstrate that these two concepts and the data based on them have become increasingly detached from real migration events and processes.They may become invalid by overestimating the volume of the mobile population,ineffective due to systematic omission of certain mobile populations(such as urban-urban migrants),or misleading as to the changing direction of migration flows.In addition,data on the floating population cannot be used to calculate migration rates and are not comparable in the international context.The concepts of“liudong renkou”and“renkou liudong”and data based on these two concepts may still need to be used in China for a long period of time due to the continuing existence of the hukou system and its roles in the provision of public services,social welfare and social security.However,we argue that concepts,measurements,and methods of data collection in research on migration in China should be gradually shifted to and focused on migrations as spatial events;further,transition data,based on an individual’s residence five years ago and one year ago,should be gradually adopted as the main data source and included in the short form of future censuses;additionally,migration event data based on population registration and administrative records should be used more fully,so that China’s migration research can be conducted on the solid basis of valid and reliable data sources.