Was China s rate of poverty reduction even faster than routinely assumed? Accounting for the effects of migration

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1 Was China s rate of poverty reduction even faster than routinely assumed? Accounting for the effects of migration Klaus W. Deininger, John Giles, Songqing Jin and Hui Wang Abstract: Migration is recognized as a key mechanism of resce transfer and poverty reduction globally and in China. The way in which statistics are computed implies that, even after accounting for remittance inflows, migrant households welfare remains significantly below that of non-migrants. To explore whether this may be a result of data processing methodology, we use panel data from 8 provinces to compute alternative measures. Results suggest that adjusting for migrants absence increases per capita income and expenditure for migrant households (then estimated to be better off than non-migrants) and a significant reduction in poverty level. Implications for poverty estimates in China and elsewhere are explored. Keywords: Household definition, migration, poverty, inequality JEL: O15 R23 1. Introduction 1

2 Over the last two decades, the importance of international migration and the associated remittances has increased dramatically; in fact the latter have become a major determinant of global capital flows. Updating earlier figures (Ratha and Shaw 2007), the World Bank estimates that some 215 million individuals migrated across international boundaries in The size of private migration remittances to developing countries, estimated at US$ 325 billion in 2009, exceeded that of portfolio investment and official development assistance, approaching the size of total foreign direct investment (Yang 2011). Migrant remittances not only exhibited enormous growth, increasing at 12.9% per annum in real terms in the 1999 to 2008 period, but also had other desirable characteristics. Most importantly, in contrast to FDI which is highly volatile, dropping by almost 40% in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, they were very resilient to variations in the global economy. They have been shown to not only reduce poverty directly by transferring resces to poor areas and households but also to contribute to economic development by helping sending households and communities to cope with shocks (Yang 2008), invest in human and physical capital (Mora and Taylor 2006), start entrepreneurial activities, and help spread new ideas, values, and norms (Docquier et al. 2011). Internal migration in China, which was virtually non-existent even a few decades ago, has increased dramatically over the last decades to become a key driver of the country s economic expansion. In fact, internal migration in China is quantitatively more important than cross-border migration in the rest of the world combined: with million, according to the 2010 Population Census (NBSC 2012), the number of China s internal migrants is larger than the 215 million cross-border migrants in the rest of the world (Sirkeci, Cohen, and Ratha. 2012). While international migration is either permanent or for long periods, China s migration is almost all seasonal and temporary 1 Detailed data by country are available at 2

3 (Whalley and Zhang 2007). It has been shown to have significant direct and indirect effects to reduce households exposure to agricultural production shocks and the need for low-return precautionary savings (Giles 2006). And by helping to reduce poverty in China at a fast pace, migration contributed to global achievement of the MDGs and poverty reduction. While there is thus little doubt that migration made a major contribution to China s progress in reducing poverty (de Brauw and Rozelle 2008, Du et al. 2005), official statistics suggesting that, even after migrants contributions are taken into account, households with migrants are significantly worse off than their peers, seems to be somewhat of a puzzle. A key reason for this may be the way in which migrants contribution to their household of origin is treated in national statistics. First, per capita consumption will be affected by whether or not migrants are considered part of the household of origin. In fact, contrary to what is practiced by most countries, China counts migrants as part of the sending household even if they are absent for periods longer than 6 months. By overestimating true household size, this may impart a systematical downward bias on migrant households estimated per capita income. Second, resident household members who respond to the standard household survey that underpins national estimates may either omit migrants income or consumption or report it with error. Any of these will affect estimates of sending households welfare, rates of rural poverty reduction, and rural-urban inequality. The importance of these issues has long been recognized; in fact China National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has repeatedly alerted provincial offices of the need to ensure consistency in computing relevant figures. Still, empirical work is needed to assess whether such biases may be relevant in practice. To do so, we use individual micro-data for about 2,000 households in 8 provinces during the 5-years from 2005 to 2009 from 3

4 China s Rural Household Survey () applying a consistent methodology throughout. In line with discussion, two elements will be important to do so. First, we adjust household size by either dropping migrants who were absent for more than 3 months (as is done by most countries) or by pro-rating them depending on the number of months they actually were present in the household. Second, we net out migrants income or expenditure so that we only remittance-related transfers or items actually consumed by migrants during their presence in the household are counted. Results suggest that these methodological issues may indeed affect estimates of consumption and poverty. Our adjustments increase estimated per capita consumption or expenditure for migrant households by between 20 and 25%. While unadjusted figures would suggest migrant households being wore off than those without migrants, this is no longer the case with adjustments; in fact households with migrants are then estimated to be better off than non-migrant ones. Given the large number of migrants, this affects aggregate statistics; it points towards a much faster reduction of poverty than would be suggested by unadjusted figures with the poverty headcount decreasing by 2 to 5 percentage points. While it also points towards a slight increase in inequality within rural areas, this implies that, if data in line with international conventions are used, the drop in Chinese poverty has been even faster than otherwise. The paper is organized as follows: In Section 2, we draw upon existing studies of impact of migration on household welfare using different household definitions to motivate this paper. The data and alternative measures of household size are presented in Section 3. The empirical results are presented in Section 4, which is followed by conclusion and policy implication in Section Assessing the impacts of migration 4

5 Estimates of the economic impacts of migration in rural China may be biased for two reasons. First, migrants are counted as part of the sending household even if they stay away from a household for longer than 6 months, thus reducing estimated per capita income or expenditure. Second, if migrant income and consumption are recorded inconsistently across provinces or with error, outcome variables will be further affected even if otherwise data are of high quality. Data from China and elsewhere provide circumstantial evidence suggesting that this can indeed affect estimates of consumption, poverty, and distributional outcomes. While back-of the envelope efforts to correct for differences in household size are possible and indeed reported in the literature, they implicitly assume that the size and magnitude of bias introduced by potentially erroneous reporting of migrants income or expenditure is constant across reporting units. If this is not the case, proper adjustment will require use of micro data. 2.1 Importance and impact of migration in China With more than 250 million of migrants or 30% of the country s total labor force, the magnitude of internal migration in China is very large. Restrictions on migrants ability to gain residency at the destination imply that virtually all migration is temporary (Fleisher and Yang 2003), prevent equalization of income levels (Whalley and Zhang 2007), and contribute to persistent cross-regional imbalances (Au and Henderson 2006). Still, migration is credited with having made a major contribution to China s rapid progress in poverty reduction (Ravallion and Chen 2007). It also contributed to narrowing large rural-urban income gaps. With 41% of migration being between rural and urban and 18% between rural and rural areas, migrants originating in rural areas account for almost two thirds of total migration flows (Cai and Wang 2003).While high incidence of migration by the poor (de Brauw et al. 2002) could in principle reduce 5

6 poverty in sending communities (Zhao 2002), actual impacts are less clear (Du et al. 2005). Migration tends to benefit sending communities as migrants earn more at the destination than what they could have earned if staying at home. Reduced form crossnational estimates suggest that migrant remittances have a significant impact on reducing poverty; while one study finds that a 10% increase in remittances is estimated to lead to a 3.5% drop in the share of poverty (Adams and Page 2005), another one finds that a 2.5% increase in the remittance to GDP ratio is associated with a 0.5% decrease in poverty. Comparing the income loss due to migration (i.e. what migrants would have earned) to the gains from remittances generally points towards an equalizing effect of remittances but points towards wide variation across countries in the elasticity of poverty reduction to migration income (Acosta et al. 2008). For sending communities, key parts of the debate revolved around whether migration leads to a net loss of talent or whether emigrants remittances and returnees skills may compensate. Remittances can allow sending households manage risks (Rosenzweig and Stark 1989) encage human capital investment (Woodruff and Zenteno 2007, Yang 2008), improve educational outcomes (Mansuri 2006), and foster entrepreneurship in capital intensive sectors (Banerjee and Munshi 2000). Parents remittances and exposure to new ideas have been shown to improve migrant children s education (Cox Edwards and Ureta 2003, Glewwe and Jacoby 2004). These effects may be wealth-differentiated, for example due to entry costs associated with migration (Mendola 2008). The positive effects of migration may be tempered by other factors, e.g. young males dropping out of school forgoing secondary education to migrate (Acosta 2011) and in the process possibly unduly stretching females workload (McKenzie and Rapoport 2006). 2.2 Measurement issues that might affect poverty estimates 6

7 The main sce of information on poverty and household welfare in rural China is the rural household survey (), collected regularly by China s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). This is a nationally representative panel survey. Samples are equally sized for each of China s provinces and the panel rotates every 5 years. Concerns about sampling error due to non-response of wealthy households (Benjamin et.al, 2005) seem to be limited to urban areas. Non-sampling error is reduced by requiring households to maintain a daily consumption diary, in addition to transaction books for cash and goods that serve as the basis for computing income and consumption (, 2004). Within the household, the relevant diaries are kept by the head or the working member with the highest level of education. Supervision is tight - a local supervisor - normally a village resident- visits households every fortnight and a control structure is built around county survey officers (Chen and Ravallion 1996). Compared to other panel surveys this results in high data quality (Jalan and Ravallion 1998) and low rates of attrition as (Alderman et al. 2001). While there is little doubt that the survey provides data of very high quality on household members present at the time of the interview, underlying definitional assumptions on household membership and attribution of migrants income or consumption may systematically affect information on households with migrants in ways that may differ from global practice. The internationally accepted household definition is based on sharing of food and habitation. 2 According to this definition, migrants who are absent from the household for longer than a given period, generally 3 months per year, are not considered members and excluded by most studies. 3 By contrast, the 2 The UN defines households based on the arrangements made by persons, individually or in groups, for providing themselves with food or other essentials for living (Handbook on rural households livelihood and well-being, UN, 2007).The definition by Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) is a person or a group of persons, related or unrelated, who live together and share a common sce of food (DHS comparative studies No.14, 1994), and the definition in Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) bases membership on the actual number of months of residency in the house, except for household head (Benjamin et al. 2005). 3 Studies show that reported household size depends on questionnaire design. For example, in Mali inclusion of additional keywords in the questionnaire increased reported household size, significantly altering statistics on assets, consumption and production (Beaman and Dillon 2012). 7

8 definition, as laid out in the survey manual (Nong Cun Zhu Hu Diao Cha Fang An) is based on resce pooling. 4 Migrants are considered household as members long as all or part of their income is pooled with that of other household members even if they have been away for more than 3 months per year. If definitions are consistently applied this would affect international comparability but a unproblematic internally. The fact that resident members may not be able to provide accurate information on migrants income or expenditure can, however, lead to bias the magnitude of which may vary over time and space depending on a factors such as instructions given by the provincial NBS office and the relative importance of migration. To appreciate the potential for such bias, a closer look at the way in which data is collected is useful. Total expenditure is calculated from data recorded in two transaction books for each household as the sum of spending under the headings of food, clothing, housing, household facilities and articles, transport and communications, culture, education and recreation, healthcare and medical services and others. Household net income is defined as the sum of income from wages and salaries (including migration income), net income from family production, income from properties and income from transfer. Both data sces are is widely used for poverty measurement sces are is widely used for poverty measurement (Chen and Ravallion 1996, Chen and Ravallion 2008) Benjamin et.al, 2005; and to make inferences about household welfare (Brandt and Holz 2006). In addition, the obtains demographic and employment data from a quarterly interview that is administered by the resident supervisor. This includes information on household composition as well as detailed information on migrant workers such as destination, length of stay, income and expenditure during migration. 2.3 Empirical relevance 4 This definition of the households corresponds to those used in other widely used Chinese datasets such as the RCRE and CHIPS. 8

9 Evidence from other countries suggests that changes in household definition may indeed give rise to differences in estimated household welfare. In Vietnam s Household Living Standards Survey (VHLSS), for example, the definition of households was changed between 1998 and In the 1998 data, migrant households have lower expenditure than non-migrant ones (de Brauw and Harigaya 2007) whereas after the change, households with migrants who migrate more than 6 months but less than a year have higher expenditure than non-migrant ones (Nguyen and Winters 2011). Either the change in household definition between the two surveys (with migrant workers counted as household members in the 1998 but not in the 2004 VHLSS) or mis-reporting of income/consumption for migrants away from home could explain this. As failure to incorporate changes in household size may underestimate the impact of migration on income and poverty, a number of studies performed a rough adjustment for changes in effective size of migrant households by deducting the number of migrants from household size. In Ghana and Albania, two economies that depend on migration to a significant extent, adjusting for household size is shown to increase the estimated impact of migration to between 2.7 and 4.5 or 2.5 to 3.8 times the uncorrected impact, respectively. Impacts on poverty estimates are even bigger, between 2.6 and 4.4 times in Ghana and 1.1 to 2.5 times in Albania (Schiff 2008). In Mexico, a 2003 National Rural Household Survey obtained complete migration histories for more than 20 years from each household, making it possible to capture migration-induced changes in household size to obtain a consistent measure of per capita income/consumption (Mora and Taylor 2006). But imputing migrants home earnings from observations on non-migrants is not simple and involves a number of key decisions (Barham and Boucher 1998). In China, the issue has been discussed conceptually (Rozelle et al. 1999) and some studies aim to make empirical adjustments to address it. Household data from two 9

10 provinces illustrate that, although aggregate rural household income falls by 3%-12% as a result of migration, per capita income for those left behind increases by between 16%- 43% (Taylor et al. 2003). A sub of NBS 2008 data from 9 major migration sending or migration receiving provinces (Hebei, Jiangsu, Anhui, Zhejiang, Henan, Hubei, Guangdong, Chongqing and Sichuan) leads to similar conclusions: per capita income is lower for migrant households if migrants are counted as household members but the opposite holds if household size is adjusted to account for migrant members time or residence in the household (Yue and Luo, 2010). While all of these studies support the notion that adjustment is important, the focus on migration-related shifts in household size accounts only for one of the two potential sces of bias. If information on migrants income or consumption is systematically biased, such adjustment will be incomplete and there will be a need to complement it with evidence on actual incomes and spending from the micro-data. 3. Data and methodology We use individual micro-data from China s for 8 provinces to explore the extent to which migrants income may be underestimated. Our descriptive data suggest that, in line with definitions, migrants absent for more than 3 months are consistently considered as members. Data on income and consumption document great heterogeneity in these outcomes. We then discuss options to adjust household size and per capita income and expenditure. 3.1 Data and analytical issues To empirically assess how adjustments for household size or migrant expenditure may affect consumption and income estimates, we use a sub of panel data in 2005 to 2009 inclusive from 8 provinces (211 counties). In each county, one village was randomly selected for inclusion, yielding a total of 2,089 households with 7,498 10

11 individuals for whom data are available in every year of the 5-year period. As sizes are identical across provinces, provincial rural population in each of the years is used to construct weights. To make expenditure and income data comparable, we express them in 2005 prices using NBS provincial rural consumer price index (CPI) as deflator. Also, to reduce potential bias from cross-province variation of rural prices, we use RBSC s rural CPI at provincial level to construct a cross-province CPI deflator following the method suggested in the literature (Brandt and Holz 2006). To check consistency with aggregate statistics, we compare means from data to province-level information reported in statistical yearbooks. Results from doing so in table 1 highlight that aggregate statistics are close between from data and the entire. The data thus seem suitable for making inferences about the impact of different types of adjustment. Micro-data also allows us to check the extent to which household definitions were applied as intended and to explore the consistency with which expenditure and income is reported. Table 2 suggests that migrant workers are almost universally considered to be household members; in fact there are only very few non-permanent residents in the, most of them students. Regarding income and expenditure we note that, for 42% of migrant households, what is recorded as migration income in the households income module equals migrant remittances from the member level data in the Demographics and Employment module. This suggests that in many cases those in a migrants place of origin may not be fully aware of his or her income and that instructions differed across provinces so that simple back-of the envelope adjustments are unlikely to result in credible estimates. Beyond whether or not migrants are counted as household members or not, there may be biases in reporting of expenditure or income. In the diary of income and expenses filled by residents, consumption by migrants who are not physically present in the 11

12 household is often excluded. 5 On the income side, the fact that in many cases data report remittances as the only income -which is correct from the perspective of the sending household but not the migrant- would underestimate migration income. 6 The size of the difference will depend on the prevalence of migration; while differences are likely to have been minuscule in the 1980s when levels of migration were very low, they could be substantial for more recent periods and provinces with a large share of internal migrants. 3.2 Adjustments made To obtain consistent figures, we adjust for the number of household members and resce flows in line with the arguments made above. Two methods are used to adjust for variation of household membership. One is to rely on the accepted international definition and drop all members who lived in the household for less than three of the last twelve months. A second is to use information on the number of months a member resides at the place of origin to define effective membership in terms of the share of time spent at the home. 7 Table 3 illustrates the reduction in household size resulting from both adjustments; mean household size decreases from some 4.1 to about 3.5 or 3.6 adult equivalents for adjustments 1 and 2, respectively, a decrease of about 15% or 11%. For income and consumption, adjustment is potentially more complex. We follow Yue and Chu (2010) in assuming that (i) data on consumption recorded in the diary refers only to currently co-resident members, i.e. migrants consumption away from home is omitted; (ii) migrant remittances, representing an inflow for the reporting household, are recorded accurately; and (iii) income by migrants is either reported with 5 This was confirmed by NBSC staff. and is evident from the data: data, among 3571 observations with migrants migrating at least 6 months, 2084 of them have at least one heading migration consumption greater than household total consumption under that heading. 6 Based on NBS staff, some provinces (e.g. Hunan and Guangdong in ) are much more careful than others in terms of instructing households to keep a consistent record of migration income. 7 In other words, if q is the number of months a member spends at home, his contribution to household size will be q/12. Since most migrant workers are long-term ones, the differences among two adjustments are not big. For distribution of migration periods, see Appendix Table 1. 12

13 error or inconsistently. This allows us to consumption and income for the core household members in 3 steps. First, we subtract reported migration income earned by all migrants (i.e., those away for more than 3 months) from reported net household income. Second, we add reported remittances by all migrants to what had been obtained in the first step. And finally, we add to what is obtained in the second step the reported migration income earned by non-migrants (i.e, those migrating for less than 3 months). Adjusted net per capita income or consumption is then calculated by dividing adjusted net household income by adjusted household size. 4. Results Using adjusted figures significantly increases migrant households per capita income (by between 12 and 26 percentage points) and consumption (by 23 to 28 points). With the adjustment, households with migrants are estimated to be better off than those without, contrary to what is suggested by standard analysis. Per capita consumption is estimated to increase by between 12 and 13 percentage points. While this leads to a modest increase in inequality within rural areas (with increases in the Gini of slightly less than one point for consumption and 3 points for income), it is likely to narrow the income gap between rural and urban areas and we demonstrate that estimated levels of poverty based on the adjusted measure are significantly below unadjusted ones. 4.1 Consumption and income Means and Gini coefficients for all households adjusted income and consumption per capita in different years are in table 4, with and without adjustment. We note that with adjustment, income and consumption increase, suggesting that NBS traditional household definition has underestimated rural households well-being. Under adjustment 1, which corresponds to international practice, per capita income increases by between 9.5 and 12.2 % and consumption by between 10.8 and 12.5 % (figures for adjustment 2 13

14 are % and %. In light of the similarly sized changes for income and consumption, the ratio of consumption over net income is thus little affected, in fact its mean and time trend are close for figures with and without adjustments. We do, however, note some time variation whereby, between years, it was highest in 2007, pointing to consumption smoothing during crisis. The right panel of Table 4 indicates that adjusted figures increases estimated inequality. While the size of the increase is marginal for the consumption-based measure (less than 1% in both cases), it is slightly larger for income-based measures. As adjustment will not affect estimated income for those without migrants, it will be of interest to see how it changes estimated welfare for migrant households. The first two columns of table 5 point towards marked differences between households with and without migrants in terms of per capita consumption with the former only consuming between 88% and 78% (in 2007) of the latter [note that differences are less pronounced for income]. This relationship is completely reversed with adjustment which increases migrant consumption by between 24 % and 27 % so that households with migrants enjoyed on average consumption that was higher by 8.8%-10.5% in all years except in 2007 when, due to the crisis, per capita consumption by both was almost equal. The same holds for income per capita which is between 8.8 and 11.7 % higher under adjustment 1or between 5.4 and 7.9 % under adjustment 2. In the case of consumption, results from the two adjustment methods are even more consistent with adjusted consumption expenditure per capita being or percentage points higher, respectively. As cdfs of per capita income and expenditure in appendix figure 1 illustrate, the adjusted measure dominates the unadjusted one fro consumption but not for income. 4.2 Poverty measures 14

15 To explore how adjustment affects measured poverty, we use the 1.25$ per day poverty line that would translate into an unadjusted Y 1579/year and Y 1152/year using the adjustment suggested by Chen and Ravallion (2008). 8 Results from computing the poverty head-count (P 0 ), the poverty gap (P 1 ), and the squared poverty gap (P 2 ) for this and the $1/day poverty line are reported in table 6. Beyond the marked reduction in poverty visible over the period, as a continuation of earlier drops in poverty, adjusting the data to correspond to international definitions further reduces estimated levels of poverty, with a drop of the headcount by between 2 and 5 percentage points. While adjustment also reduces the poverty gap, the decrease is less pronounced, suggesting that it is the poorest of the poor are less affected. As they use the same poverty line, results for 2005 in Table 6 are directly comparable with Chen and Ravallion (2007). Not surprisingly, as theirs is a national whereas s is restricted to rural areas, their headcount ratio is 26.4% and 15.6% for the unadjusted and adjusted poverty line, respectively, lower than figures of 37% and 16.7%. However, with adjustment, head count ratio (13.4% or 13.9%) is significantly below the national one reported by them. The same pattern holds for the poverty gap. The traditional household definition by NBS thus seems to result in an over-estimate of poverty. Adopting a definition in line with global practice would imply that China s progress in reducing poverty was even faster than traditionally believed. To demonstrate that this result holds independently of the specific poverty line applied, we report similar figures of the $1/day poverty line in the right half of panel 6. As can be easily verified, the substantive result is not affected. 5. Conclusion and policy implication 8 Using 2005 International Comparison Program (ICP) data, the consumption PPP for China in 2005 is 3.46 Yuan to the dollar so that we would obtain a consumption poverty line of Yuan per year. As 2005 ICP prices are not - representative of China s rural areas, it has been suggested to reduce them by 37% to account for price differences (Chen and Ravallion, 2008) and we follow this suggestion here. 15

16 The way in which household membership is defined and expenditure or income is accounted for has far-reaching impacts on estimated levels of poverty and, in light of China s global importance, achievement of the MDGs. Systematic differences in the way migration is accounted for between China and the rest of the world could thus have farreaching impacts on estimated levels and changes in income. Use of micro-data allows us to demonstrate that adjusting for these will affect estimated consumption growth and poverty reduction as well as the relative welfare of migrants vs. non-migrants. Making provisions in line with this will be important as migration is likely to become even more important in the future. 16

17 Table 1: Comparing income and consumption statistics between year book and data Net income per capita National Heilongjiang Zhejiang Anhui Henan Hunan Guangdong Sichuan Guizhou Total consumption per capita National Heilongjiang Zhejiang Anhui Henan Hunan Guangdong Sichuan Guizhou Food consumption per capita National Heilongjiang Zhejiang Anhui Henan Hunan Guangdong Sichuan Guizhou Sce: Statistical yearbooks and own computation from NBS panel 17

18 Table 2: Numbers of non permanent residents and migrants Year No.of households Number of migrants 1,178 1,250 1,259 1,204 1,272 --migration period >=3 months 1,113 1,201 1,197 1,157 1,205 --migration period >=6 months 974 1,072 1,089 1,024 1,085 No. of individuals 7,498 7,447 7,215 7,109 6,949 No. of non permanent residents enrolled students migrant workers others Sce: Own computation from NBS panel 18

19 Table 3: Mean household sizes under different definitions Traditional measure Adjustment 1 Adjustment 2 Persons Persons % of trad. Persons % of trad Sce: Own computation from NBS panel 19

20 Table 4 Mean of income and consumption under different definitions of household Mean Income per capita Gini coeff. Trad. Adj. 1 % incr. Adj. 2 % incr. Trad. Adj. 1 Adj Mean Cons. per capita Gini coeff. Trad. Adj. 1 % incr. Adj. 2 % incr. Trad. Adj. 1 Adj Note: Numbers are deflated by provincial rural CPI and weights are applied to adjust for differences in size of provinces. The traditional measure includes all permanent residents reported in NBS household roster. In all income measures, earnings by migrants at destination are excluded and remittances included. For consumption ***** Total household size either excludes those who had been outside their own county for 6 months or longer (Adjustment 1) or is computed in terms of effective membership, i.e. by computing the ratio of total months of migration by members outside their county (Adjustment 2). 20

21 Table 5: Comparing income and consumption for household with and without migrants Income per capita Year No migrant Traditional Adj. 1 % incr. Adj. 2 % incr Consumption per capita Year No migrant Traditional Adj. 1 % incr. Adj. 2 % incr Note: Figures are deflated by provincial rural CPI, weighted, and adjustments are as defined in the text. 21

22 Table 6: Levels of poverty under different household definitions Poverty line at $1 (2005 PPP value) Poverty line at $1.25 (2005 PPP value) Trad. Adj.1 Adj.2 Trad. Adj.1 Adj.2 Poverty headcount Poverty gap Squared poverty gap Note: We use $1.25 (in 2005 PPP value) as poverty line as recommended by Chen and Ravallion (2007) and Ravallion (2008). 22

23 Appendix table 1: Distribution of length of migration No of months of migration >= ,072 1,088 1,023 1, No. of migrants 1,175 1,248 1,257 1,202 1, % 23

24 Appendix table 2: Mean of food and non-durable goods consumption under different household definitions Per capita food consumption Trad. Adj 1 % incr. Adj 1 % incr. Gini coefficient Trad. Adj.1 Adj Per capita food & non-food consumption Trad. Adj 1 % incr. Adj 1 % incr. Gini coefficient Trad. Adj.1 Adj Note: Numbers are weighted by provinces, and deflated by provincial rural CPI. The traditional definition includes all permanent residents reported in the household roster. In adjusted definition 1, members who migrated outside of own county for 3 months or longer are excluded. In adjusted definition 2, members who migrated outside of own county for 6 months or longer are excluded. In adjusted definition 3, effective members (calculated as the ratio of total number of months of all members migrating outside of own county and 12 month) are excluded. In all the income measure, migration earnings at destination are excluded, while remittance is included. 24

25 Appendix table 3: Comparing food and non-durable consumption for household with and without migrants Non migrant Migrant Trad. Adj. 1 % incr. Adj. 1 % incr Non migrant Migrant Trad. Adj. 1 % incr. Adj. 1 % incr

26 cons cons_adj2 cons_adj cons05 cons05_adj2 cons07_adj1 cons09 cons09_adj2 cons05_adj1 cons07 cons07_adj2 cons09_adj1 26

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