Eveline Van Leeuwen, Viktor Venhorst (p)

In housing and migration research it is often noted that the correlation between stated intentions to move and revealed moves is limited. In this paper, we will use data on revealed and stated intentions in a novel way, in order to better understand residential preferences. In particular, we are interested in disentangling the life course dimension of residential preferences from the housing career dimension. An individual's life course position (i.e. the combined states of houshold composition, age, labour market status including commuting) determines current residential preferences. But, at the same time, one's housing career up to that point potentially also influences current residential demands. What have individuals learned from their previous residential spells in certain types of regions? Do they seek similar regions, or is a change on the cards? What is the relative importance of the past housing career relative to current life course states?

The Netherlands, with its high density, provides an interesting case to study this question. Accessibility is considered good everywhere, which will allow us to focus more on other qualities of the regional surroundings. We will use a number of waves from the extensive Dutch WOON survey, which provides us with a repeated cross section of a large number of Dutch households. We have information on their past residential location, their current residential location, as well as their stated intention to move and the characteristics of the sought-after destination. We will identify the effect of the past housing career comparing past and current residence, and use this transition to explain the step from current to desired location, controlling for housing hedonics and personal characteristics. We ask who continues to move to similar regions, and who seeks new surroundings. We also ask whether the current life course states are critical in explaining the difference, or whether the experiences from past residential areas play a more important role.

Timo Mitze (p), Nino Javakhishvili-Larsen

We estimate the labor market returns to migration for Danish graduates from higher education institutions in 2006-2011. Specifically, we apply microeconometric tools to identify whether graduates get rewarded for their migration effort or not once we control for their personal characteristics and local labor market conditions in the graduates’ place of residence at the time period of graduation. We use both the employment probability after graduation as well as the observed entry wage as outcome variables of interest. Accounting for the fact that the migration decision cannot be regarded as exogenous to the observed labor market outcome, we apply endogenous treatment models and make use of instrumental variables (IV) derived from exogenous local labor market conditions in the graduates’ place of residence at the time period of graduation. These labor market conditions are collected for 98 Danish municipalities (NUTS4 level). We also account for the fact that returns to migration may differ by education categories and thus distinguish between academic graduates (i.e. from universities) and professional graduates (i.e. from vocational colleges). With regard to the empirical results, our reduced-form estimates show that spatially mobile graduates have a 0.5% higher probability of being employed and earn, approximately, 7% higher entry wages. Both mobility-related differences in labor market outcomes are higher for academic graduates compared to professional graduates. Once we control for the endogeneity of the migration decision by means of IV estimation, we find that the positive difference in outcomes holds for academic graduates, while we do not find any causal effects for professional graduates. The latter may stem from the fact that spatial mismatch for professional jobs is less pronounced than for the academic professions and hence, professional graduates face thick local labor markets. The empirical results for the underlying first step migration equation show that the graduates’ mobility decision is both influenced by personal characteristics as well as local labor market conditions. When we finally decompose the results into different migration patterns within the rural-urban context, we find that graduate migration towards urban areas (both from urban and rural origin regions) is associated with the largest positive differences in labor market outcomes. While this result is in line with the literature on the urban wage premium, we also find that mobile professional graduates can obtain a positive labor market outcome once they move to rural areas.

Hans Westlund (p), Kyle Farrell

One of the more prevalent characteristics that differentiate pre-reform and post-reform China is its level of urbanization; which recently crossed the 50 percent threshold. The shift from a planned economy to a market economy has resulted in new patterns of urbanization that have impacted the overall composition of China’s system of cities. However, a tendency to view the urban transition as a constant and uniform process has resulted in a rather limited understanding of China’s urban transition. This paper attempts to fill this lacuna by introducing an analytical framework that offers a transdisciplinary explanation of China’s components of urban growth (migration, natural population increase and reclassification of rural areas as urban) and their impacts on China’s system of cities (speed, city-size class and spatial distribution). Based on a literature review, expert interviews, and statistical and spatial analyses, this paper comes to the following findings: firstly, that the speed of China’s urbanization is not solely dependent on the growth of its urban population, but also on the reduction of its rural population; secondly, contributions from both reclassification and migration in the post-reform era have contributed to a more balanced size-distribution of cities; and, thirdly, since migration has overtaken reclassification as the dominant component of urban growth, this has resulted in a less geographically balanced urban system favoring the eastern coastal region. The paper concludes with reflections on China’s ‘New Type Urbanization Plan 2014-2020’ in light of these findings.

Neha Jindal (p)

It has been widely documented in recent literature that a good match between worker's acquired skills and what is required for their job is very important to ensure that best use is made of human capital investment. In India recently, the “Job-educational mismatch” among educated class is a pressing issue. In literature the spatially limited job search is considered as one of the most common explanation of job-educational mismatch. Most of the past studies observed that the spatial mobility reduces the risk of being over-educated i.e. the person who is geographically more flexible in terms of job search is able to reduce the probability of being over-educated. In our study, we try to investigate the relationship between spatial mobility and over-education by focusing on the experience of Indian economy. Spatial mobility is directly measured through migration within national boundaries. We have used the data from 64th round of National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) report that is based on “Employment & unemployment and migration particulars” and conducted in 2007-08. The methodology used in this analysis takes into account the issue of self–selection bias between employment and job-educational mismatch. Our findings provide evidence of the negative relation between migration and job-educational mismatch, which indicates that the migrants have significantly higher level of education than non-migrant in the same occupation. In the second part of the study we look at the wage effect of the job-educational mismatch. The job-educational mismatch is associated with wage penalty i.e. individuals who are over-educated for their job tend to receive lower wages as compared to those who are employed in occupations with the required education. Moving beyond this, we test this wage effect of over-education among migrants and non-migrants. We find that the migrants do not suffer from the wage penalty of job-education mismatch. This suggests that migration decision is driven by wages and in this process migrants are compromising on the job-educational mismatch.