Last updated on: 4/18/2005

Name (Last, First): Chen, Yiu Por
Title: Assistant Professor
Co-authors:
Department: Public Services Graduate Program
Organization: DePaul University
Mailing Address: Public Services Graduate Program DePaul University 25 E. Jackson Blvd, Suite 1250 Chicago, IL 60604
Work Phone: 312-3628441
FAX:
E-mail: ychen16@depaul.edu
Web Site:

Paper Title: Does brain drain intensify rural development disparity? Evidence from China (1982-1987)

Abstract:
Will the emigration of highly educated people from rural (town & village) areas create a so-called ?ural brain drain?that induces rural development disparity? This question is related to the self-selection role of rural labor migration and migrants?job attainment, as well as to the impact of labor migration on the economies of their places of origin. I extended the concept of ?rain drain?to include the destination effects ??estination Substitution?and ?estination Complementary.? The former is defined when labor demand is similar to the origin, while the latter is the labor demand not similar to the origin. I use the 1987 Chinese population census and other related data to examine the above argument during a critical time of the rural economy transition in China ?1982 to 1987. I show that a large proportion of migrants with high education levels obtain better professions than their local counterparts, upon comparing the educational distribution of migrants originally from village and town areas to the educational distribution of local residents inhabiting those areas. To further investigate the impact of village labor migration, using the aggregated census data and other provincial data, I developed a Township and Village Enterprise (TVE) output function regression model that tackles the question ?ow emigrant? hukou status and destination choice affect the origin? economy??This study shows, only of those village-village (V-V) migrants, when compare with other inter-provincial non-hukou village emigrants, may have ?estination Substitution?that reduce the output. This supports a very interesting argument that the ?elf-sorting?of a different type of labor migration follows the role of geographical sorting.