The Impact of Urban Health Care on Migrants’ Settlement Intention: Evidence from China

Abstract

Improving migrants’ settlement intention is of great importance in the process of China’s new urbanization. By exploiting the data from the China Migrants Dynamic Survey conducted by the National Health and Family Planning Commission of China, this study empirically explores the effects of urban health care on migrants’ settlement intentions. Urban health care is measured by the establishment of migrants’ health records in this article. Additionally, marginal effect analysis, propensity score matching, the random sampling method, the placebo test, and the two-stage least squares method are adopted to tackle potential selection bias and endogeneity concerns. As indicated by the empirical results, urban health care could significantly improve the migrants’ settlement intention. After controlling for the influence of individual characteristics, household characteristics, and migration characteristics, urban health care still plays a significant role in promoting settlement intention. As revealed by the heterogeneity analysis, urban healthcare effects are significantly larger for migrants with agricultural hukou registration, a spouse, younger age, higher income level, and moving into the first and second-tier cities. Meanwhile, considering the impact of housing pressure on migrants’ settlement intentions, this study uses household housing expenditure as a moderator to further analyze the relationship between urban health care and settlement intention. It is found that housing pressure can weaken the positive effect of urban health care on migrants’ settlement intention. The research conclusions contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the migrants’ settlement decisions and provide rich implications for city managers and policymakers.