Rural-urban Migration, Rural Household Income and Local Geographical Contexts——A Case of Northwestern Guangxi, China

This paper aims to examine New Economics of Labor Migration (NELM) in the northwestern Guangxi, China and investigate the relationships among rural-urban migration, rural household income and local geographical contexts. Stratified sampling and typical case study were adopted and 236 questionnaires were collected from four vil- lages, Daxin, Lixin, Longhe and Yongchang. We analyzed the rural-urban migration rate, household income and local geographical factors, focusing on the ratio of remittance income to total household income. Data descriptions and sta- tistical methods, such as Pearson Chi-square test, Contingency coefficient, Eta, Pearson correlation coefficient, t-test, multiple comparisons (LSD test, Tamhane T2, Dunnett T3 and Dunnet C test) were used. The results are as follows. Rural households’ income is diversified in survey villages so the motivation of rural-urban migration in the study area can be partly explained by NELM. The migration rate of households (the percentage of households with migrants in survey households) in survey villages varies from 50% to 86%, while the proportion of remittance income to house- hold income is in the range of 30% to 80%. In the village of Yongchang, with the least average arable land area per household, the remittance income plays a vital role in household income (80%). And the statistical findings show that the proportion is significantly and negatively correlated with arable land area per household. The conclusion is that di- rect effect of migration, i.e., the contribution of remittance to household income, is negatively correlated with the con- tribution of resources to local income.