Arnaud Dupuy (CEPS, INSTEAD)

“Migration in China: to Work or to Wed?”

Abstract

Why do people migrate? In this paper we study the trade-offs between migrating to work and migrating to wed. To this aim, we develop a marriage matching model in which men and women, are initially distributed over various locations, i.e. were born and raised in various locations. To each location corresponds a marriage market and a labor market. Men and women can choose to stay at their current location and enter the local marriage market and labor market or migrate to a different location and enter the marriage market and labor market at that location. Migration induces additional costs but may also generate benefits in the form of better labor market perspectives in the destination.s labor market. These costs and benefits are specific to each man and each woman. Our model encompasses the classical matching model a la Becker (1973) and Shapley and Shubik (1972) with the hedonic model a la Rosen (1974). We bring the model to the data and use data from China. Preliminary results indicate that improving mobility may lead to large welfare gains.