Return migration and Hukou registration constraints in Chinese cities

This paper documents the patterns of return migration and labor mobility constraints in China using two unique data: the 2017 China Household Finance Survey and a newly developed urban Hukou registration index. The size of return migrants is larger than that of migrants without local Hukou registration. Majority of return migrants move from more developed region back to their less developed home town where they have Hukou registration. Empirical results show that Hukou registration barrier, typically higher in more developed cities, leads to a higher probability of returning among low-skilled migrant workers, and such an effect only exits among migrants moving across provinces and migrants with rural Hukou.