Three essays on Hukou and internal migration in China

Abstract

This thesis examines China’s Hukou (residential registration) system, which regulates public service access, shapes internal migration, and excludes millions of migrants from essential services via registration-residency mismatches. It focuses on city-level Hukou policies’ impacts on migration and labour markets, particularly around the 2014 national Hukou reform. Chapter 1 outlines the Hukou-migration historical context, research objectives, thesis structure, critical gaps in post-2014 policy implementation research, and the thesis’ contributions. Chapter 2 develops the first annual 2014-2019 city-level Hukou Index (with four sub-indices), finding inconsistent local adherence to national reform guidelines across regions and city sizes, challenging the assumption of uniform policy implementation. Chapter 3 challenges the conventional view that strict Hukou hinders migration. Fixed effects and instrumental variable analyses find no significant overall link between Hukou strictness and net migration since 2015, except a significant negative association between the House Purchase sub-index and net migration validated by Oster’s (2019) test, calling for nuanced, tailored reforms. Chapter 4 discusses An et al. (2024)’s claim that the 2014 reform widened the migrant wage gap between megacities and non-megacities via new migrant inflows. Honest Difference-in-Differences reveals possible pre-existing wage divergence, and the reform did not affect net migration overall, questioning their mechanism, with alternative wage drivers proposed. Chapter 5 summarises contributions, policy implications, limitations, and future research directions.

Thesis is embargoed until 31 July 2029.

Date of Award	Jul 2026
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Queen's University Belfast
Supervisor	Duncan McVicar (Supervisor), Heather Dickey (Supervisor) & Luis Guimaraes (Supervisor)