ABSTRACT
China’s household registration system, or the hukou system, has been established for over fifty years. Originally designed as a tool for controlling geographical mobility; in the reform era, it has evolved into one for welfare exclusion. The hukou system has divided China into multiple ‘welfare states’, particularly since the late 1990s, when municipal governments were entitled to make their own hukou admission policies. As the flow of migrant workers into cities swells unabatedly, the floating population – or urban residents without local hukou – has become a major policy issue in China. This paper analyses the origin and evolution of China’s hukou system as well as its policy effects. It points out that the current hukou reform cannot fully solve the problem of the floating population without establishing proper fiscal and administrative institutions for transfer and allocation of resources across regions. It suggests that China should facilitate the transferability of migrants’ social benefits and build up a nationally integrated social safety net for the entire population. The findings of this paper have strong policy implications for China’s urbanization process.
