Empowering rural women through internal migration: Evidence from longitudinal data in China

Female empowerment continues to face significant challenges in many developing countries. This study explores how internal migration influences rural women's empowerment using longitudinal data from five waves of the China Family Panel Survey (2014–2022). We use fixed effects and instrumental variable methods to account for endogeneity concerns. Specifically, we exploit the staggered implementation of China's 2014 household registration (hukou) reform across provinces as an exogenous source of variation in migration opportunities. This reform, designed to relax internal migration restrictions and implemented in phases between 2014 and 2016, provides a quasi-natural experiment for identifying the causal impact of migration. Our findings reveal that internal migration significantly enhances rural women's labor market outcomes, autonomy in marital and fertility decisions, and political participation. The effects are particularly pronounced among women aged 16–35, those with medium to high skill levels, and those from low- to middle-income households. Additionally, we identify human capital accumulation and digital exposure as key mechanisms driving these empowering effects.