Land Rights and Rural-Urban Migration in China

Collective ownership of agricultural land and the remains of the administrative management of rural economy have imposed considerable insecurity on the land use rights of Chinese farmers. This insecurity constrains the movement of rural people, who fear that migration will jeopardise what land use rights they do enjoy. In this paper we describe the idiosyncratic uncertainty of land use rights, and verify its influence on migration decisions, with a special focus on the duration of migration.