科学研究

Rufei Guo is an Associate Professor at the Economics and Management School of Wuhan University. He studies the economics of human flourishing through the lens of price theory. He has published in the Economic Journal, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, and Journal of Comparative Economics.

Differential fertility drives migration. Little empirical research probes in the demography of migration in the literature of both international and internal migration. We are the first to systematically analyze the demography of China’s internal migration in 1996—2015. We find asymmetric impacts of “push” and “pull” demographic factors in determining cross-prefecture migration. An increase in rural cohort size by 1,000 people pushes 254 migrants out of the origin prefecture, while a reduction in urban cohort size by the same amount pulls 929 migrants into the destination prefecture. The push and pull effects of cohort sizes are amplified when origin and destination prefectures are physically and socially connected. We also explore the demographic impacts by skills of migrants, directions of flow, and reasons of migration.