Land Titling: Promoting Internal Migration in China?

By Xingshu MA and Fung KWAN
Published in Journal of Asian Economics

Abstract:

Land tenure security is widely recognized as a critical factor in facilitating labor reallocation across many developing economies. This study examines the impact of China’s latest land titling programme (LTP), which aimed to increase land tenure security by issuing certificates after measuring and registering agricultural land across rural households. Using nationally representative household-level data, we employ a triple difference approach (comparing households with land endowment to those without) and find that, in general, the LTP exerts a significantly positive effect on rural households’ migration for non-farm work. We further observe that such influences on migration are largely affected by regional differences and the sectoral composition. Additionally, transportation construction and rising housing prices do not significantly affect the policy effectiveness, while government expenditure for people’s livelihood is critical to the LTP’s effectiveness, though the effects vary across distinct categories of livelihood expenditure: social security and employment, education, and healthcare. Finally, the regional variations in policy effect can be attributed to the relative strength of two countervailing mechanisms: the “labour absorption effect” and the “migration promotion effect”—differences driven by sectoral disparities across regions.