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About two-fifths of the population in Shanghai, the largest city in China, are migrants. In order to live in Shanghai permanently, many migrants strive to gain Shanghai hukou because of its close connection to easier access to jobs, schools, social welfare, and other opportunities in Shanghai. In this paper, we use newly available data from the 2013 Fudan Yangtze River Delta Social Transformation Survey. This survey sampled Shanghai residents born in the 1980s, regardless of hukou status. We evaluate how young migrants’ original hukou type and locale as well as individual and family characteristics are associated with gaining Shanghai hukou, and explore how Shanghai hukou is related to home ownership, car ownership, and income. The analyses reveal that migrants with great resources tend to gain Shanghai hukou, which, in turn, leads to greater access to home ownership; hukou plays a weaker but important role in car ownership and income. Our study indicates that Shanghai hukou is beyond the reach of poor and less-educated migrants and remains a powerful engine of social inequality in China.
Qian et al. (Fri,) studied this question.