Migration and its effects on relative deprivation and health in China : evidence from a national survey

Abstract

Relative deprivation, including objective and subjective relative deprivation, is associated with poor health. Rural-to-urban migrants may experience relative deprivation during the migration process, potentially related to urban-rural socioeconomic discrepancies. It is thus critical to examine the role of relative deprivation in the relationship between migration and health.

Three research questions are: 1) Does relative deprivation mediate the associations between migration and health? 2) Do different measures of relative deprivation, have different effects on the relationship? 3) Do relative deprivation and health of rural-to-urban migrants change with migration duration and distance? Relative deprivation was measured by subjective social status, income rank, and the Yitzhaki Index. Lower subjective social status, lower income rank, and larger Yitzhaki Index indicate higher relative deprivation. Health was measured by self-reported health, physical discomfort, and mental health.

To answer these questions, data from China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) were used to analyze the following two studies. In Study 1, those who were rural-to-urban migrants (N2012=924; N2014=966) and rural non-migrants (N2012=19,120; N2014=16,881) in a given year were included in cross-sectional analyses, whereas those who were rural non-migrants in 2012 but became rural-to-urban migrants in 2014 (N=174) and those who were always rural non-migrants in these years (N=12,577) were included in two-wave analyses. Propensity score matching (PSM) were conducted to solve self-section issues before doing difference-in-difference (DID), regression, and mediation analyses to test the relationship between migration, relative deprivation, and health. Study 2 adopted regression analyses to examine how relative deprivation and health changed with migration duration and distance, and only rural-to-urban migrants in 2014 (N=622) were included.

In Study 1, both regression and DID analyses after PSM indicated rural-to-urban migrants had higher income rank and larger Yitzhaki Index in a selected geographical area. DID analyses after PSM supported migrants had lower income rank in the general population, and marginally significantly lower subjective social status and higher values of physical discomfort. Mediation analyses after PSM demonstrated subjective social status could mediate the associations between migration and three measures of health in 2012 and 2014, and income rank in a selected geographical area could mediate the relationship between migration and self-reported health in the two-wave analyses. Sensitivity analyses with different calipers generally indicated similar results to the caliper as 0.25*SD.

In Study 2, the associations between migration duration and three measures of health were non-significant. Migration duration were not significantly associated with subjective social status, but those with longer duration had lower income rank and larger Yitzhaki Index in the general population and in a selected geographical area, although they were only marginally significant. Compared with intra-county migrants, inter-county/city migrants had lower subjective social status, and interprovincial migrants revealed a lower odds of reporting physical discomfort, which was also marginally significant.

This study presents a new mechanism to examine the relationship between migration and health. The mediating effects of relative deprivation do not deny other potential pathways. Health policies and social policies promoting health and fairer income distribution can be employed to improve migrants’ health and evaluations of relative deprivation.