BACKGROUND Hukou is the household registration system in China that determines eligibility for various welfare benefits, such as health care, education, housing, and employment. The hukou system may lead to nutritional and health disparities in China. We aim at examining the role of the hukou system in affecting urban-rural disparities in child nutrition, and disentangling the institutional eff...

In this paper, I study the impact of the Hukou labor mobility restrictions on human capital investment in China. Rural people have stronger incentive to pursue higher education, treating it as means to obtain urban identity and escape from underdeveloped areas. The 1998 Hukou policy reform granted urban Hukou to a specific group automaticly. Using a Regression Discontinuity strategy to fully ex...

The Chinese household registration system (hukou) may be the most important determinant of differential privilege in state socialist China. Urban registrants are entitled to the best jobs, education, housing, and health care -all of which are unavailable to those with rural registration. Thus, transforming one’s hukou status from rural to urban is a central aspect of upward mobility. But given ...

A number of economic studies have shown a strong positive correlation between urban household registration status (hukou) and better health outcomes in China. The question at the center is whether the correlation implies causation. This paper uses change in hukou system in 1964 to test the causality between hukou and health. The regression-discontinuity (RD) design estimates suggest that urban ...

BACKGROUND China had 236 million internal migrants in 2012 and the majority of them migrated from rural to urban areas. The research based on medical and epidemical records found that the migrants had worse health than the urban residents, but the household and working place investigations reported better health status. The sick or unhealthy migrants are likely to return to their hometowns, whi...

BACKGROUND China has the world's largest floating (migrant) population, which has characteristics largely different from the rest of the population. Our goal is to study health insurance coverage and its impact on medical cost for this population. METHODS A telephone survey was conducted in 2012. 644 subjects were surveyed. Univariate and multivariate analysis were conducted on insurance cove...

The household registration (hukou) system in China, classifying each person as a rural or an urban resident, is a major means of controlling population mobility and determining eligibility for state-provided services and welfare. Established in the late 1950s, it was initially used to bar rural-to-urban migration. After the late 1970s reforms, an inflow of rural migrant workers was allowed into...

Using the 2013 China Education Panel Survey (CEPS), we study impact of accessing better schools – a 2008 inclusive education policy through which central government mandated urban public to exempt migrant children from tuition and temporary schooling fees. Whereas non-disclosure rule regarding geographical location CEPS sampling units precludes control locational characteristics, identify causa...

This paper examines the effect of the household registration (hukou) system, based on which Chinese citizens were designated as either rural or urban status and entitled to different life chances, on educational inequality in contemporary China. Analyses of data from a national representative survey in 2005 consistently reveal a significant educational gap between people of different hukou stat...