The "migrant worker wave" is a trend caused by farmers going out to work one after another. Every year around the first month of the lunar calendar, a mighty army of migrant workers travels south and north, east and west, and railway and highway traffic flows like water, intertwining into a "Spring Festival Transport Wave" that lasts for more than a month. In the past, people always said that the countryside was a big sponge, but now the "tide of migrant workers" is pouring out in waves, beating at the door of the city. Since the reform and opening up, the tide of commodity economy has impacted every corner, and has also strongly shocked the farmers who "face the loess and back to the sky".

The reasons for the formation of the migrant worker wave:

1. Dual social structure

From a deeper perspective, the emergence of the "migrant worker wave" is essentially rooted in the long-term formation of the dual social structure. The huge contrast of interests in the meta-social structure is the product of my country's dual social structure under specific historical conditions. It is an inevitable phenomenon of the opposition between urban and rural areas and the inevitable result of the lag in the comprehensive development of rural society. On the one hand, more than 80% of my country's population is distributed in rural areas, and less than 20% of the population is concentrated in cities; on the other hand, due to various reasons, rural economic and social development is slow, income is poor, status is low, employment opportunities are few, and cultural life Poverty is in stark contrast to the city. It is well known that after the founding of the People's Republic of China, China adopted a development strategy that tilted heavily towards cities and heavy industry. The urban and rural interest structure has always been tilted towards the city at a large angle, including the supply of daily necessities such as commercial grain and the supply of production materials. In terms of fairness, such as medical insurance, employment, education, housing, etc., the welfare of citizens is guaranteed and improved, but the rural population, which makes up the largest population in China, is rarely considered. With its brand-new institutional reforms and the resulting organizational mechanisms, China has basically successfully met the severe challenges of population expansion after the founding of the People's Republic of China. However, strong institutional constraints have prevented the rural population from sharing the benefits of industrialization. As a result, while urban industrialization is advancing at a rapid pace, the urbanization of the rural population has seriously lagged behind, leading to a phenomenon of "industry without urbanization" as the World Bank called it in 1982. The price of "de-urbanization" is high, and it hinders the pace of modernization of the entire nation - China has been unable to force the relative share of the rural population to continue to decline in order to accelerate economic growth and social changes. The development strategy tilted towards cities and industries has opened up a huge historical gap between urban and rural areas that is difficult to bridge in the short term. The "double dual structure" (the coupling of dual economic structure and dual social structure) economic and non-economic Sexual differences are shown to be extremely pure. After the 1950s, my country gradually established a dual system of urban and rural divisions. The operation of this system is based on two sets of policies in many aspects: one set of policies for cities and another set of policies for rural areas. Over the past few decades, it has been gradually stabilized, and with the addition of household registration and identity creation standards, a pattern of "divided urban and rural areas, one country, two policies" has been formed. The basic pattern and management system of this social structure have not changed substantially to this day: the national income policy is more tilted towards cities, and the gap between urban and rural areas has not narrowed, but is widening; farmers bear more social management costs than in the past, This is manifested in the fact that there are numerous and endless types of fees and charges, and farmers' burdens become "increasingly heavier." Therefore, if the social structure of urban-rural antagonism is not fundamentally changed, it will inevitably lead to the vicious development of the "migrant worker wave", intensify the antagonism between urban and rural areas, and promote the abnormal development of society.

2. Driven by comparative benefits

In recent years, the problem of low comparative benefits in agriculture has become increasingly serious. Due to various reasons, farmers’ burden has become chronic, often after a year of hard work. However, the harvest was meager, which greatly dampened the enthusiasm of farmers to grow grain and farm. As a result, abandonment occurred frequently, and more than half of the labor force was lost. Food is the most basic means of living for people. When completing the contract ordering task, Liangong not only borne the public agricultural tax; it also borne a "hidden tax" equivalent to the price difference between the brand and the market. The larger the price difference, the more benefits farmers lose. The price of agricultural products has been lower than the value for a long time, which is also a manifestation of the overburden on farmers. Regarding price issues, there is still a "scissors gap" problem in the exchange of industrial and agricultural products. The income distribution between urban and rural areas and between workers and peasants is unfair, and the scissors gap has existed for a long time, and has been widening again in recent years. The decline in land value is the result of leaving one's hometown and losing the binding force of tradition, as opposed to the pursuit of a new lifestyle in the city. In traditional social forms, the value of land goes far beyond economic scope. But now they are being disintegrated by a new measurement scale. Compared with rural non-agricultural industries and compared with urban secondary and tertiary industries, the comparative benefits of agriculture are lower. This is first reflected in the difference in per capita total. Secondly, the low comparative benefits of agriculture are reflected in the difference in per capita growth. One of the reasons for this income gap and expansion trend is the expansion of the gap between the prices of agricultural and sideline products and agricultural production means. In recent years, the prices of agricultural production materials have risen too fast, which has increased agricultural costs and reduced farmers' income. The comparatively low benefits of agriculture are an objective reality. When farmers realize this, they will have a strong tendency to leave agriculture. At the same time, the imbalance of regional economic development in my country and the gap between urban and rural areas still exist and have widened. The Matthew Effect of this development determines that developed areas have an extremely strong psychological pull on the majority of farmers. Whether they are poor or subsisting farmers in the central and western regions, they are attracted by the relatively high income in the east and go to the coastal areas to "dig for gold". This is a manifestation of the iron law of income preference that "people go to higher places".

When discussing the benefits brought by farmers' migration to cities, economist Dafanzo pointed out that "the benefits of migration include not only an increase in income and an increase in lifetime additional benefits, but also non-wage income (higher benefits and agricultural subsidies). ) and a better environment. This also fully demonstrates that under market economy conditions, the induction of comparative benefits is the basic motivation for the migrant workers’ wave. The distribution of labor force among different industries depends on the industrial structure and the labor rate structure of different industries. It reminds us that with the development of the economy and the improvement of farmers' income level, the proportion of food consumption is gradually declining, so most agricultural products are commodities with income elasticity lower than 1, whether measured from the industrial structure or the employment structure, a country's income elasticity is lower than 1. , with the evolution to modern society, the declining share of agriculture in the entire national economy is a common trend, which has been confirmed by the economic development of almost all countries (regions) compared with the international "standard structure". It shows that China is a country with obvious structural characteristics of urban and rural "dual economy", that is, the urban industrial sector with high productivity and high wages coexists with the traditional agricultural sector with low productivity and low income. There is an employment structure transformation that lags behind the industry in the economic structure. Structural transformation and the deviation of the urbanization level from lagging behind the industrialization level have suppressed economic growth. Therefore, adjusting the structural deviation means the liberation of productivity. This adjustment will naturally become an important driving force for the growth of the national economy, both in urban and rural areas. Compared with the three industries, the comparative benefits of agriculture have always been low. Since most agricultural products are daily necessities, the price elasticity is insufficient. Increased output will lead to a greater decline in prices, resulting in the phenomenon of "increasing production cannot increase income" in agriculture. , when farmers rely on agriculture to get rich and face the dual constraints of market limitations and limited resources, it is natural for some farmers who are flexible and adventurous to leave the countryside and enter cities or other areas to seek employment opportunities.

3. Driven by reform and opening up

After the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the household contract management responsibility system was widely implemented in rural areas. On the one hand, it broke the collective labor management system of rural people's communes and improved With the improvement of labor productivity, farmers have gained autonomy in land management and the right to find employment and income outside of agricultural labor, thus transforming agricultural labor from "hidden unemployment" in the past to "explicit unemployment" in reality. At the same time, the labor force has been given free control over the flow of power; on the other hand, the output of major agricultural products such as grain has greatly increased, and long-term shortages have become a balance between supply and demand, with abundant harvests, and the system of unified purchase and marketing of grain and oil has been changed, which can basically meet the needs of people entering the city. The need for food supply for employed farmers provides the most basic material living conditions for rural labor mobility. From a city perspective, reform and opening up has broken down the original urban-rural barriers and created many more job opportunities than before. In rural areas, the implementation of the household responsibility system has given farmers autonomy. In agricultural production, labor time and production time are inconsistent, and agricultural production has the characteristics of a long production cycle, which can be fully exposed after the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee. , rural areas carried out economic reforms and promoted the transfer of part of the labor force to non-agricultural industries. So far, my country's rural labor force has broken out of the traditional employment model. Nearly 150 million laborers have left the "yellow land" and become an eye-catching main force in non-agricultural industries. With the major shifts in our party's economic policies since the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee, the flow of farmers in our country has also increased sharply. The emergence of this large-scale flow phenomenon is an inevitable product of the development of the commodity economy. With the reform of the economic system, the concept of commodity economy has been established in the minds of farmers. Farmers confirm that the conditions for economic development are realized through commodity currency. They are no longer limited to the scope of the natural economy. Some farmers have broken through the "small but complete" and "big but complete" ideas of the natural economy.

4. National policy bias

After the founding of New China, due to the specific historical conditions and severe international environment at that time, our country chose the strategy of giving priority to the development of industry, especially heavy industry, and tilted development Capital-intensive heavy industry has absorbed a large amount of accumulation from rural areas, but it cannot provide corresponding employment opportunities for agricultural labor. To provide corresponding employment opportunities for agricultural labor. In order to solve the resulting series of contradictions, the policy of separating urban and rural areas was adopted. Due to restrictions on non-agriculturalization of farmers and monoculture management of the rural economy, almost all agricultural labor remains on the land. During the period of agricultural co-operation and communeization, due to the implementation of egalitarianism in distribution, basic life was guaranteed and conflicts were alleviated, and surplus labor existed in a hidden form. After the implementation of the joint production contract responsibility system in rural areas, farmers have gained operational autonomy, the situation of agriculture has been greatly changed, and farmers' living standards have been greatly improved. But as far as my country's macroeconomics is concerned, it is heavily biased towards cities. This is mainly reflected in two aspects: First, the proportion of investment in agriculture is small. Our country's agricultural income has accounted for more than 40% of the entire national income for a long time. However, the serious tilt of state investment has caused a series of problems in agriculture. The most important problem is that the agricultural ecological environment is not as good as before, and living expenses and production expenses have continued to rise. Improvement, and even negative benefits such as input being greater than output, have determined that a large number of farmers still want to leave the "farm gate" and move to the city. Second, the price gap between industrial and agricultural products has inhibited farmers’ enthusiasm for agricultural production. The widening gap between industrial and agricultural products has directly resulted in a significant income gap between workers and farmers.

Moreover, potential inflation still exists, and on the premise that the strong framework of industrial-agricultural relations has not changed, farmers are still the target of risk transfer, resulting in an overall decline in farmers' income. If compared with the income of urban residents, we can see the seriousness of farmers' income reduction and the urgency of increasing income. Farmers no longer want to stick to the land and have invested in urban industrial zones and coastal development zones.

5. Industrial structure adjustment

In 1940, American economist Colin Clark used the three-level industry classification method in his book "Conditions for Economic Progress" The law between economic development and changes in industrial structure. It is believed that "with the development of the economy and the increase in the per capita national income level, the labor force first moves from the primary industry to the secondary industry; when the economy further develops and the per capita national income level further increases, the labor force will move to the tertiary industry. The labor force in The distribution in the primary industry will gradually decrease, and the distribution in the secondary and tertiary industries will gradually increase. This evolution trend of the industrial structure is mainly due to the income differences between various industries caused by economic development. Higher-income industries are moving. We are currently in a period where the proportion of the secondary industry exceeds that of the primary industry and the proportion of the tertiary industry is rapidly increasing. This is a stage of accelerated urbanization and industrialization, which on the one hand has caused more and more rural areas. Surplus labor force; on the other hand, due to the accelerated development of urbanization, the proportion of labor force engaged in the secondary and tertiary industries has increased dramatically, and nearly 150 million rural labor force has been transferred to non-agricultural sectors. Industry. Since the reform and opening up, my country's urbanization development has entered a new stage, especially through the "removal of counties and establishment of cities" and the expansion of administrative regions, the acceleration of urbanization has led to the adjustment of the industrial structure, especially the labor force. The large-capacity tertiary industry has made great progress. Rural surplus labor has flooded into cities in order to obtain "expected returns."