Różne działania mające na celu ograniczenie migracji niewykwalifikowanych pracowników z obszarów wiejskich do miast mogą doprowadzić do poprawy Pareto zarówno dla mieszkańców miast, jak i wsi. Poprawę (w sensie Pareto) sytuacji mieszkańców miast i wsi można osiągnąć poprzez różnorodne działania ograniczające napływ pracowników ze wsi do miast.
Introduction
Shukla and Stark (1990) analyze several policy implications of agglomeration economies in the city for rural-to-urban migration. Bertinelli and Black (2004) examine a model of rural-to-urban migration with congestion costs in the city.
The basic analytical framework
Then, the value of the marginal product of labor of the efficiency unit in the rural area is g(hr). Thus, in the rural area, the income of an unskilled worker (that is, the wage for his unit of labor efficiency) and the earnings of a skilled worker are g(hr) and )βg(hr ), respectively.
Restricting rural-to-urban migration can improve social welfare
Restrictions placed on the migration of the unskilled
However, our general equilibrium framework shows that the efficiency effect of urban agglomeration can be completely diluted by the declining level of average human capital in the city as a result of rural-urban migration of unskilled workers. Proposition 2: The restriction of rural to urban migration of unskilled workers can result in a Pareto improvement. Proposition 2 implies that, from the perspective of production efficiency in the economy as a whole, without restrictions on rural-urban migration, there are too many unskilled migrants.
10 Intuitively, we can consider the following scenario: suppose that before rural-urban migration occurred, the urban wage (for unskilled workers) is higher than the rural wage. 11 However, a policy that restricts rural-to-urban migration only of unskilled individuals will result in a large urban-rural income gap. Hukou is an effective tool to limit rural-urban migration, especially of unskilled workers (see for example Chan and Zhang, 1999; Wu and Treiman, 2004; Au and Henderson, 2006).
Mass migration from rural to urban areas will significantly reduce average human capital in cities, although it improves the agglomeration economies of cities. Without any restrictions on rural-urban migration, the net effect will be negative and urban productivity will be driven to low levels. Yet it improves the efficiency of urban production more than free migration from the countryside to the city would.
Restrictions placed on the migration of the skilled
However, the Hukou system may not necessarily lead to optimal production efficiency in the cities. To rigorously establish this possibility, we denote the proportion of the skilled workers held in the rural area by x. Theorem 3: If g'(0) is sufficiently large, total output will be greater if some skilled workers work in the rural area.
Thus, the interesting political implication is that it is possible to improve Pareto if the government subsidizes some skilled labor in the countryside so that they do not move to the city or move from the city to the countryside.12 The presence of a certain number of skilled workers in the countryside can significantly reduce the migration of unskilled workers from rural areas to cities. 12 For the United States, an analysis based on data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Labor Market Experience from 1979 to 1998 (Gould, 2007) found that for white-collar workers, the human capital gains from working in the city transferable to rural areas. There is no evidence that moving to the countryside nullifies the usefulness of human capital, even if it is acquired in the city.
14 It could be argued that if there are few skilled individuals in the countryside, the (private) returns of the skilled in the countryside will be high. In most developing or even developed countries, cities have a much higher proportion of skilled workers. However, the private returns (earnings) of the skilled are much higher in cities.
Additional policy implications
Subsidy to the rural sector
Proposition 1, the net wage for each unit of effective rural labor will increase from g(0) to g(0)+λ. We postulate that the subsidy is financed by taxing the workers in the city, and we assume that the tax rate is flat. With free labor mobility and perfectly competitive labor markets, the urban wage rate for the unskilled workers must be equal to the rural wage rate for the unskilled workers, so that no further rural-to-urban migration occurs.
Thus, with government intervention of tax and subsidy, the equilibrium condition is for the equalization of the (net) wage rate in the rural and urban areas. Since we are studying a static model, we assume that the government's budget must be balanced: the total subsidy payments to the rural sector are equal to the total tax revenue in the urban sector, that is. We now show that the subsidy to the rural sector can lead to a Pareto improvement for both urban and rural dwellers.
Thus, subsidizing the rural sector can lead to a strict Pareto improvement for both urban and rural residents, which unambiguously improves social welfare. We assume that the government chooses such mills as to maximize the output of the entire economy after imposing taxes and providing subsidies. Subsidizing the rural sector effectively limits rural-urban migration, which in turn mitigates the inefficient distribution of the average level of human capital between rural and urban areas.
Governmental expenditures on education
Totally differentiating (21) with respect to s and R, we get .. dR , that is, an increase in the total number of skilled workers will result in a lower fraction of skilled workers in the city if and only if. The model shows that without restrictions on (deterrent to) rural-to-urban migration, a government's attempt to increase educational expenditure and thereby the number of skilled workers will not increase wage rates in rural and urban areas as long as a large number of unskilled workers remains in equilibrium in the rural area. Thus, as the number of skilled workers (in the city) increases, the average human capital in the city may decrease.
If a city's economic well-being depends on its average human capital, as Lucas (2001) points out, for example, then the rather surprising result is that higher spending on education will lead to a lower level of average human capital in the city. and the same level of average human capital in rural areas, thus reducing the economic welfare of the entire economy. In other words, in a developing country where unskilled workers far outnumber skilled workers, increasing the stock of human capital alone will not change the inefficient distribution of average human capital between rural and urban areas caused by unrestricted rural-urban migration. As a result, an increase in the stock of human capital alone may not lead to a rise in the wages of workers in a country.
Suppose the government is free to decide on rural and urban education spending. Then, with free migration from the countryside to the city, the government will have expenditure on education only in the city, if the education system in the city is more efficient than in the countryside. This is because, with free labor mobility, all skilled workers will end up in the city.
Robustness of the Model
In this environment, unrestricted rural-to-urban migration is likely to lead to significant diminishing returns to all factors of production. In equilibrium, there will be a complete equalization of the wage rate of the unskilled workers in the rural areas and in that city, and the efficiency effect of urban agglomeration in that city will be completely diluted by the unrestricted rural-to-urban migration of the unskilled. workers. Next, it can be argued that the marginal productivity of unskilled labor in rural areas decreases and that further rural-to-urban migration may increase rural welfare.
However, since there are at least two factors of production in the rural sector viz. Consequently, limiting rural-to-urban migration of skilled labor will increase the marginal productivity of unskilled labor in the rural sector and thus may increase welfare in that sector. In other words, a more efficient way of allocating labor might be to encourage some of the skilled labor to work in the rural sector, rather than encouraging additional rural-to-urban migration of unskilled labor.
Finally, one could argue that urban agglomeration will bring high housing prices, which could push unskilled workers out of cities. Second, a large proportion of unskilled workers who migrate to cities in developing countries leave their families behind. These migrants typically send a large part (often most) of their (meager) income to their families in rural areas, and their demand for urban housing is usually quite modest.
Conclusions
Large segments of cities in developing countries consist of shantytowns and poor neighborhoods where housing prices are very low, although housing prices in other parts of the city can be as high as in cities in developed countries. the world (cf. Todaro, 2000). Slums and urban slums are being developed to provide low-quality, low-cost, and small housing units to meet this demand. With the free mobility of labor between regions, rural-urban migration will stop when urban and rural wages for unskilled workers are equalized: the urban wage will constantly fall with the migration of unskilled workers, reducing the average level of human capital in the city.
Furthermore, since the wages of skilled and unskilled workers in the urban area are affected by common productivity factors, the wage of the skilled workers will be driven to a low level by the unrestricted rural-to-urban migration. Our analysis therefore explains the negative consequences of rural-to-urban migration in the developing world. Moreover, our analysis yields several interesting policy insights: the analysis shows that measures aimed at limiting rural-to-urban migration by both unskilled and skilled workers may lead to a Pareto improvement for both the urban and rural dwellers, and it shows that without restrictions on rural-to-urban migration, increased educational expenditure alone may not raise wage rates in either rural or urban areas.
Despite its prominence in the development economics literature, the current body of research encounters great difficulty in explaining the consequences of the massive rural-to-urban migration flows that have occurred in many developing countries in recent decades. Our theory explains the different impacts of rural-urban migration in the past versus the present. In the current era of intensive knowledge production, the average level of human capital is a vital factor in the productivity of urban and rural areas.
