TY - JOUR AU - Ebenstein,Avraham AU - Zhang,Jian AU - McMillan,Margaret S. AU - Chen,Kevin TI - Chemical Fertilizer and Migration in China JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 17245 PY - 2011 Y2 - July 2011 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17245 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17245.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Avraham Ebenstein Department of Economics Hebrew University of Jerusalem Mount Scopus Campus, #4208 Jerusalem, Israel 91905 E-Mail: ebenstein@mscc.huji.ac.il Jian Zhang Central University of Finance and Economics 39 South College Road Beijing, China 100081 E-Mail: jian32@gmail.com Margaret S. McMillan Tufts University Department of Economics 114a Braker Hall Medford, MA 02155 Tel: 617/627-3137 Fax: 617/627-3197 E-Mail: margaret.mcmillan@tufts.edu Kevin Chen International Food Policy Research Institute Institute of Agricultural Economics Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) No. 176 mail box No. 12, Zhongguancun Nandajie Beijing, 10081, China E-Mail: k.chen@cgiar.org AB - This paper examines a possible connection between China’s massive rural to urban migration and high chemical fertilizer use rates during the late 1980s and 1990s. Using panel data on villages in rural China (1987-2002), we find that labor out-migration and fertilizer use per hectare are positively correlated. Using 2SLS, employing the opening of a Special Economic Zone in a nearby city as an instrument, we find that village fertilizer use is linked to contemporaneous short-term out-migration of farm workers. We also examine the long-term environmental consequences of chemical fertilizer use during this period. Using OLS, we find that fertilizer use intensity is correlated with future fertilizer use rates and diminished effectiveness of fertilizer, demonstrating persistency in use patterns, and suggesting that in areas with high use of fertilizer, the land is becoming less responsive. We also demonstrate that fertilizer use within a river basin is correlated with organic forms of water pollution, suggesting that industrialization has induced pollution in China both directly and through its impact on rural labor supply. ER -