Urbanization - Reconfiguration Of Population And Land Elements

Since the reform and opening up, urbanization has played an important role in China’s economic growth in the past30years. For China’s rural labor force, urbanization is a great productivity release. For the industry of the city, urbanization also promotes the industrial concentration and the tertiary industry. In summary, the urbanization of China is a process in which labor and land distortion is being eliminated. From1982to2010, China’s urban population has increased by216%. At the same time, urban construction land area increased by456%. The2010census showed that more than half of China’s population already living in cities and towns. With the deepening and acceleration of urbanization, a number of related issues also came along:1, Due to the lack of data, the existing literature did not reach a common understanding on the urbanization process. On the one hand, the existing data lead to a confusing picture of how much remaining population can be transfer to urban area. How to understand the differences in these statistics? What is the future of China’s urbanization?2, The urbanization and citizenization of migrant workers did not occur synchronously. While the non-agricultural hukou population accounted for only29.1%of the total population, the urban population has more than half of the national population. This shows that the fact that for every three the person living in urban, one person does not have urban household registration. The mismatch of hukou identity actual residence causes the effeciency loss of the town’s economic development. How to deal with this problem?3, Urbanization does not only mean that the rural population migrates into the cities, it also means that rural land is reclassified as urban construction land. What is the role of the urbanization of the population and land respectively? Population urbanization and land urbanization sometimes do not the have the same speed. How will the land allocation behavior of local government affect the economy?4, The urbanization of population and land are not two independent processes, they can affect each other. The new designated urban region will bring population, while the agglomaration of population increase the productivity, and will futher demand more land. How can we push the both urbanization process by coordinate them to each other? In the context of the above problems, we can easily sum up two clues about urbanization:urbanization is not only the migration of population to urban area; it also means the land reclassification. These two separate but closely related processes of urbanization in the past few decades have played an important role in the economy development. We focus on the urbanization of the population and land, and study the detailed process of China’s urbanization and the efficiency improvement they bring about. We also combined these two elements together, and study how they will affect each other. The main conclusions of this paper list below.1, The urbanization of the population and land are the two most important aspects that make up China’s urbanization. Population urbanization and land urbanization play half of the2000-2010Chinese urbanization respectively. Each year, about900million people migration to cities, while the population of same scale experience urbanization by land reclassification.2, We calculate the the urbanization rate of rural population of each age by calculating the two censuses. We also predict future changes in the urbanization of the population in the current rate of urbanization. China’s urbanization rate will rise to60%in2020,70%in2032and80%in2049. Even if the pace of urbanization is only half of the current speed, the urbanization rate will exceed70%in2052.3, We study the rural-urban migration stock in2010. We find that about40percent of the young urban population is rural migrants. Accordingly, as of the young people who originally lived in rural areas, more than30%had migrated to the cities and towns. By studying the age structure of rural population, we can quickly find a proportion of the rural population in farming which is decline with age. We also study the structure of education and income structure of the population of rural-urban migration in the past10years. With the increase of the total population of rural-urban migration, highly educated rural-urban migrants rose by more than30times, while the low education population barely increased. This may be brought by higher education enrollment expansion. The wage stagflation of highly educated migrants and the rapid increase of the wages of less-educated migrants are also two major problems.4, We find that in the past20years, the land was overall allocated to the highest efficient cities. But this mode only exists before2006. In2006-2010, a large number of urban construction lands are allocated to the lower efficient area. The same phenomenon can be observed in the allocation of industrial land, though not so significant. We can find that industrial land is relatively more allocated to the central and western provinces rather than higher output efficiency southeastern provinces in the past five years.5, We study the the factor allocation effects brought by the urbanization of the population. Using dynamic monitoring of the mobile population data in Shanghai, we measure the wage distortions in the wage residuals and the wage distortions caused by the macroeconomic implications. We find that the large scale of migration process comes along with the decreasing of labor price distortions and the increasing of output efficiency. At the same time, the urbanization of the population to urban areas also reduces the degree of aging in the urban areas, and supports a smooth operation of the urban pension insurance fund. In2010-2100, the young population brought by urbanization can greatly support the pension insurance system, the effect of which is equivalent to the30%increment of the real contribution rate. If we combine the fertiltity rasing policy and the retirement age postpone policy together, the urbanization urban pension insurance system will have a healthier run.6, We find that the land factor reallocation has a greatest significance on the increasing in total output. Based on a research of395county-level cities, we find that the output elasticity of non-agricultural land is higher than that of agricultural land. Furthermore, after considering the location of the land, we find that the output elasticity of non-agricultural land will change with the changes of location. It is close to1in the east, and to0in the west. At the same time, the output elasticity of agricultural land and will not change with the location. This prompted us to make full use of the comparative advantages of the land in each location. Calculating the optimal allocation of the land, we find that the GDP in2008will be able to rise to30.1million from28.5trillion billion if we reallocate the urban land on the constraint that the total land and the total agricultural land will not change.7, This paper studies the quality and stock of rural-urban migrants with the land factor reallocation. Different from the estimates of past literature, we find that rural land can substitute the education attainment of the rural population. The rigid system of land transfer may lead to inefficient supply of human capital of migrants. The relasionship between the reallocation of the land and the number of the population urbanization is composed by the pull and thrust effect. The absorptive capacity of the population of the prefecture-level cities and municipal districts is higher than county-level city, and the absorptive capacity of the the eastern prefecture-level city is higher than the central and western prefecture-level city. We also find that the land allocated to the eastern cities will also improve the population absorb ability as well as the efficiency of land use. In the thrust effect, we find that rural land distortion within the village makes a waste use of rural labor. When rural land distortion within the village is eliminated, China will be able to releasing12%of the rural labor force while maintaining the agricultural output.