Beschreibung:
Urbanization, by definition, is accompanied by a large loss of rural population. This transition can lead to the problem of population hollowing, or the migration of young to middle-aged adults while leaving only the young and old in rural areas. This paper studies the impact of rural population hollowing on rural residents’ welfare. Taking rural China as an example, based on the data of 4,451 households from 298 villages, we find evidence of an inverted U-shaped relationship between the degree of population hollowing and the happiness of rural residents, indicating that low levels of population hollowing correspond to increases in happiness but higher levels lead to a decline in happiness. For China now, nearly 80 percent of the villages in our sample have a degree of population hollowing that is less than the turning point value, meaning that a further increase in rural population hollowing will not lead to a decline in happiness and urbanization is still an effective strategy to improve the welfare of rural residents. We additionally explore mediating channels, as well as heterogeneity by age cohort