The Citizenship Advantage in Psychological Well-Being: an Examination of the Hukou System in China
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Demography (2021) 58(1):165–189 Published online: 12 January 2021 DOI 10.1215/00703370-8913024 © 2021 The Authors This is an open ac cess ar ti cle dis trib uted un der the terms of a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). The Citizenship Advantage in Psychological Well-being: An Examination of the Hukou System in China Qian Song and James P. Smith ABSTRACT Given that Chi nese mi grants with rural hukou sta tus are not consid ered full cit i zens in their ur ban des ti na tions, ru ral-ur ban hukou conver sion signifies full cit i zen ship at tain ment in urban China. We assess causal ef fects of three major types of ur ban hukou at tain ment—mer it-, pol i cy-, and fam i ly-based hukou con ver sion—on mi grants’ psy cho log i cal well-be ing in mid dle- and lat er-life. We fur ther ex am ine how hukou mat ters—how pe ri ods and hukou des ti na tions alter the values of spe cific urban hukou and their psy cho log i cal health im pli ca tions for in di vid u als. We use the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (2015 data) and life history data (for 2014) for anal y sis. To as sess the ex tent to which the salmon ef fect contrib utes to es ti ma tion bias for migrants, we compare re sults from a sample with current migrants and one with cur rent and returned migrants. To ad dress for se lection into hukou con ver sion, we adopt in verse prob a bil i ty–weighted re gres sion ad just ment meth ods. We show that the salmon bias sig nificantly dampened causal es ti ma tes. Merit- and poli cy-based hukou con ver sion has pro tec tive ef fects on psy cho log i cal well-be ing. Policy-based con vert ers have better psycho log i cal health than other types of convert ers. Hukou con ver sion in the pre-1978 period conveys greater psycho log i cal bene fits than that in the post-1998 pe ri od, when economic and social values of urban hukou have decreased. Hukou con- vert ers in the cities with the most resources enjoy better psycho log i cal well-being than their counter parts in other cities. Our study joins the emerging liter a ture in in ves tigat ing how cit i zen ship con veys ad van tage in health and well-being. We dis cuss these re sults in the global context as well as the context of China’s decades of evolu tion of hukou pol icy and the ur ban i za tion pro cess. KEYWORDS Citizenship ad van tage • Depressive symp toms • Immigration • Salmon bi as • Hukou sys tem Introduction As peo ple through out the world become more mo bile, mi grants’ lim ited ac cess to full citi zen ship rights in des ti na tions has been a com mon ex pe ri ence for mi grants and a grow ing world wide concern. The power of citi zen ship is deeply rooted in insti tu- tional dis crim i na tion be lieved to be one of the fun da men tal causes of health inequities ELECTRONIC SUP PLE MEN TARY MA TE RI AL The online ver sion of this ar ti cle (https://doi.org/10.1215/00703370 -8913024) contains supplementary material. Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/demography/article-pdf/58/1/165/915888/165song.pdf by guest on 25 September 2021 166 Q. Song and J. P. Smith (Gee and Ford 2011; Link and Phelan 1995). Exclusionary pol i cies, such as set ting bound aries for so cial rights and en ti tle ments, have created a broad-scale segre ga tion be tween full citi zens and those with a more precar i ous sta tus (Gee and Ford 2011). Those with out full citi zen ship rights are of ten de prived of so cial ser vices and en ti- tle ments, have limited ac cess to healthcare, and lack the so cial sup port neces sary to buffer these stress ors de rived from citi zen ship denial in desti na tions (Amuedo- Dorantes et al. 2013; Riley et al. 2017). For ex am ple, un doc u mented mi grants may ex pe ri ence chronic stress from a lack of sense of dig ni ty, stand ing, or be long ing (Abrego 2008; Gonzales 2016); fear of risks of de por ta tion or family sep a ra tion (Brabeck et al. 2014; Dreby 2012); and so cial dis crim i na tion and iso la tion (Gonzales 2011; Negi 2013)—all of which may contrib ute to adverse health outcomes. However, cur rent un der stand ing on whether citi zen ship is a cause of health dis par- ity is lim ited (Gee and Ford 2011). Three rea sons con trib ute to this gap in knowl edge. First, a large liter a ture has been de voted to compar i sons of non cit i zen mi grants and lo cal cit i zens. However, in early life, local cit i zens usu ally enjoy more advantaged so cial and healthcare en vi ron ments than noncit i zen migrants, and with an absence of stress-in duc ing mi gra tion ex pe ri ence and migra tion se lec tiv i ty, they are sig nificantly dif fer ent in many ways from noncit i zen migrants and thus cannot be appro pri ately com pared with them. Second, even among migrants, the wide va ri ety of se lec tiv- ity as so ci ated with cit i zen ship en try is not always suf fi ciently taken into ac count. Finally, most re search has relied on des ti na tion-based sur veys col lected from cur rent mi grants, mak ing it diffi cult to enumer ate return mi grants, who tend to be se lec- tively less healthy, thus po ten tially bias ing causal es ti ma tion. This study assesses the causal link of citi zen ship and health by addressing each of the pitfalls presented in the liter a ture. Another gap in the liter a ture is that existing research has rarely gone beyond a sin gle group of im mi grants ob served at a sin gle point in time, thereby limit ing our un der stand ing in how con text shapes mean ings and val ues of cit i zen ship for in di vid- ual well-being. Do the mean ings and val ues of cit i zen ship re main con stant for sub- groups and over time and across place? In the broad his tor i cal con text of so cial and pol icy changes, struc tural and so cial im pli ca tions of citi zen ship rights may be al tered (Alba 2005). These his tor i cal con texts may in ter sect with in di vid ual life course to pro duce dis pa rate health outcomes in the long term for those who have re al ized citi - zen ship mo bil i ty. We need a bet ter un der stand ing of how this con tex tu al ized citi zen- ship power dif fer en tially af fects the health of dif fer ent groups. This study aims to address these two gaps in the realm of psycho log i cal health by uti liz ing a na tion ally rep re sen ta tive data with in di vid ual life his to ries in the con- text of hukou pol i cies in China. We ask, first, whether citi zen ship at tain ment (i. e., ur ban hukou conver sion) has a causal ef fect on indi vid ual depres sive symp toms in mid- and later life. Although most research has lumped all types of hukou mo bil- ity togeth er, we dif fer en ti ate groups by ways in which hukou mo bil ity was re al- ized: (1) mer it-based converters, by which mi grants with higher hu man, cul tur al, or fi nan cial capi tal gained urban hukou through higher ed u ca tion, em ploy ment, or per sonal suc cess; (2) fam i ly-based con vert ers, by which mi grants obtained ur ban hukou through family ties, usually as a depen dent spouse or child; and (3) pol i cy- based con vert ers, whereby the whole village or commu nity was incor po rated into city ju ris dic tion as an ur ban i za tion pro cess, and in di vid u als obtained ur ban hukou Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/demography/article-pdf/58/1/165/915888/165song.pdf by guest on 25 September 2021 The Citizenship Advantage in Psychological Well-be ing 167 “at the place.” We exam ine the ef fect of hukou mo bil ity for each type of hukou con ver sion. Second, we look into in ter nal var i a tion in hukou con vert ers and in ves ti gate how dif fer ent groups ex pe ri ence their hukou mo bil ity in var i ous con texts and dif fer en- tially ben e fit from hukou conver sion.