Clare Murphy

Though Chinese urbanization has been studied on many different fronts, from microeconomic labor changes to macroeconomic income gaps, no available study clearly articulates the effects, if any, of rural migration to cities on the rural residents they leave behind. The purpose of this study is to show how rural-to-urban migration in mainland China affects aggregate rural consumption from 2010 to 2018. Rural consumption and income data from the National Bureau of Statistics of China was organized by percentage of urban population as the number of years the province had greater than 50% of their populations as urban. After running correlations by province category on income and consumption against floating population, as well as rural consumption against provincial percentage of urban population and rural consumption against rural income, the R2 values and slopes were recorded. Firstly, it was found that the more urban the province is, the greater the consumption and income within that province. It was also found that the rural-to-urban population has some qualitative impact on rural consumption. Generally, provinces that switch from rural to urban provinces over the period experience greater impacts on consumption in relation to floating population, especially in consumption categories such as transportation and communication, than entirely rural or entirely urban provinces. However, in the absence of more specific migration and savings rates, the full extent of this result cannot be quantified.