Current Situation and Prospects for the Urbanization of Chinese Migrant Workers

This article uses the age-structure/life-cycle method to analyze the impact of migrant workers' employment on their urbanization. Since enterprises tend to employ younger workers and unemployed migrant workers tend to be middle-aged, we first apply the age structure/life cycle model to carry out our estimations, pointing out that in order to complete the urbanization of their families, migrant worker couples usually have to work for thirty years consecutively after marriage. On this basis, the article constructs a working life table for migrant workers and uses it to estimate the total quantity of Chinese migrant workers who have the minimum economic capacity required for urbanization. Taking into consideration future changes in the age structure of enterprise employment, we estimate that over the sixty-nine million migrant workers who were under thirty years old in 2006, together with their families, would already be in possession of the minimum economic conditions for settling in urban areas.