Migration and Urban Poverty and Inequality in China

Using data from recent surveys of migrants and local residents in 10 cities in 2005, this paper examines how migration influences measurements of urban poverty and inequality in China, and also compares how other indicators of well-being differ for migrants and local residents. Contrary to previous studies that report that the income poverty rate of migrant households is 1.5 times that of local resident households, we find relatively small differences in the poverty rates of migrants and local residents. Although the hourly wages of migrants are much lower than those of local residents, migrant workers work longer hours and have lower dependency ratios and higher labor force participation rates. Including migrants increases somewhat measures of urban income inequality. Significant differences between migrants and local residents are found for non-income welfare indicators such as housing conditions and access to social insurance programs.migration, urban, poverty, inequality, social protection, China

The Dynamic Change in Wage Gap between Urban Residents and Rural Migrants in Chinese Cities

Although a significant wage gap has been found in many previous studies between urban workers and rural migrants in Chinese cities, it is still not clear how such a wage gap may evolve over time. This paper uses both a dynamic wage decomposition method and economic assimilation model with pooled cross-sectional data from the China Household Income Project Survey (CHIPS) of 1999 and 2002 to investigate the change in the wage gap between urban workers and rural migrants over time and its determinants in Chinese cities. The estimation results show that (1) there is a widening on-average wage gap between urban workers and rural migrants across the two surveyed years in Chinese cities, mainly caused by the decline in the return to education for rural migrants; (2) rural migrants can catch up with the wage level of their urban counterparts as the time they reside in the host cities increases, but because of the decline in the speed of catching-up over time, rural migrants cannot obtain wages comparable totheir urban counterparts in their life time, and more importantly well-educated rural migrants do not seem to have a significant advantage in this wage assimilation process than the lowlypoorly-educated ones. Both findings suggest that there might be discrimination against well-educated rural migrants which prevents them from obtaining a fair wage in the Chinese urban labour market.Wage differential, Migration

Can China's rural elderly count on support from adult children ? implications of rural-to-urban migration

This paper shows that support from the family continues to be an important source of support for the rural elderly, particularly the rural elderly over 70 years of age. Decline in likelihood of co-residence with, or in close proximity to, adult children raises the possibility that China's rural elderly will receive less support in the forms of both income and in-kind instrumental care. Although descriptive evidence on net financial transfers suggests that the elderly with migrant children will receive similar levels of financial transfers as those without migrant children, the predicted variance associated with these transfers implies a higher risk that elderly with migrant children may fall into poverty. Reducing the risk of low incomes among the elderly is one important motive for new rural pension initiatives supported by China's government, which are scheduled to be expanded to cover all rural counties by the end of the 12th Five Year Plan in 2016.Rural Poverty Reduction,Population Policies,Services&Transfers to Poor,Regional Economic Development,Labor Policies

The Labor Supply and Retirement Behavior of China's Older Workers and Elderly in Comparative Perspective

This paper highlights the employment patterns of China’s over-45 population and, for perspective, places them in the context of work and retirement patterns in Indonesia, Korea, the United States, and the United Kingdom. As is common in many developing countries, China can be characterized as having two retirement systems: a formal system, under which urban employees receive generous pensions and face mandatory retirement by age 60, and an informal system, under which rural residents and individuals in the informal sector rely on family support in old age and have much longer working lives. Gender differences in age of exit from work are shown to be much greater in urban China than in rural areas, and also greater than observed in Korea and Indonesia. Descriptive evidence is presented suggesting that pension eligible workers are far more likely to cease productive activity at a relatively young age. A strong relationship between health status and labor supply in rural areas is observed, indicating the potential role that improvements in access to health care may play in extending working lives and also providing some basis for a common perception that older rural residents tend to work as long as they are physically capable. The paper concludes with a discussion of measures that may facilitate longer working lives as China’s population ages.retirement, population aging, labor supply, pensions, China, Indonesia, Korea

Nonlinear FEM Analysis on Composite Beams with Web Opening Under Negative Bending Moment

In order to investigate the shear behaviour and main factors of steel-concrete composite beam with web opening under negative moment, simply supported composite beam under concentrated load was analysis through finite element method. The finite element software ANSYS is used to calculate and analyse nonlinearly ten specimens. The main changing parameters are thickness, reinforcement ratio of slab and size of opening. The analysis indicates that stiffness and ultimate capacity will reduce greatly after web opening under negative bending moment. Through increasing the thickness of concrete slab, its bearing capacity can be enhanced markedly, and increasing the reinforcement ratio of concrete slab can improve its deformability effectively. Concrete slab makes a great contribution to shear capacity of web opening composite beam under negative moment. With the increase of the height or width of opening, the shear force that concrete slab undertakes will increase relatively

MiR-449b-5p modifies glycolysis by lactate dehydrogenase A in gastric cancer

Purpose: To investigate the role of miR-449b-5p in gastric cancer (GC) metabolism. Methods: Human GC samples and their corresponding normal tissues were used in this study. Cell survival ability was evaluated using a commercial MTT kit. Glucose uptake, lactate production and ATP content were assessed using commercial kits. The expression levels of miRNAs were assessed by stem-loop reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). Results: MiR-449b-5p expression decreased in both GC tissues and cells. When the cells with low level of miR-449b-5p were transfected with miR-449b-5p mimics, glycolysis was inhibited (p < 0.05). Lactate dehydrogenase A (LDHA) was predicted as a target gene of miR-449b-5p and verified using luciferase reporter assay. MiR-449b-5p expression was up-regulated in GC cells (p < 0.05). Furthermore, miR- 449b-5p expression was related to long overall survival time in patients with GC. Conclusion: The findings demonstrate that miR-449b-5p reverses the glycolytic state of GC cells by targeting LDHA expression, and thus, it can potentially be developed for the treatment of gastric cancer

POWER SAVING METHOD FOR PLUGGABLE OPTICAL TRANSCEIVERS

Today, when optical transceivers are plugged into ports of network equipment and a user administratively shuts down a specific port, the network equipment does not remove the power from the optical transceivers and, instead, only the laser is shut down. When the user shuts the individual port with optical transceiver, the power consumption of the optical transceiver will be marginally reduced, however significant power is still consumed. Techniques described herein provide for switching products that are always ready, not always on. Techniques described herein provide for ports that are always ready to be powered up but are powered down when not in use to save power