TY  - JOUR
AU  - Chen,Yuyu
AU  - Jin,Ginger Zhe
AU  - Yue,Yang
TI  - Peer Migration in China
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 15671
PY  - 2010
Y2  - January 2010
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15671
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15671.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Yuyu Chen
Applied Economics Department
Guanghua School of Management
Peking University
Beijing, 100871 
E-Mail: Chenyuyu@gsm.pku.edu.cn

Ginger Z. Jin
University of Maryland
Department of Economics
3105 Tydings Hall
College Park, MD  20742-7211
Tel: 301/405-3484
Fax: 301/405-3542
E-Mail: jin@econ.umd.edu

Yang Yue
Guanghua School of Management
Peking University
Beijing, China 100871
E-Mail: shananyueyang@gmail.com
AB  - We aim to quantify the role of social networks in job-related migration. With over 130 million rural labors migrating to the city each year, China is experiencing the largest internal migration in the human history. Using instrumental variables in the 2006 China Agricultural Census, we find that a 10-percentage-point increase in the migration rate of co-villagers raises one's migration probability by 7.27 percent points, an effect comparable to an increase of education by 7-8 years. Evidence suggests that most of this effect is driven by co-villagers helping each other in moving cost and job search at the destination.
ER  -