The Determinants of Stress in China: A Comparison between the Rural, Urban and Migrant Populations

Abstract

This paper uses data from the Chinese Household Income Project (CHIP) 2007 to analyze the impact of personal, work, family, and health and behaviour characteristics on the probability of being stressed in China in relation to the respondents’ Hukou Status. The Hukou system is a registration system in China that determines where a person is allowed to live and work. In this paper, three population groups are analyzed: urban, rural, and rural-urban migrants. The results show that both urban and migrant people are about 5 percentage point more likely to be stressed than rural dwellers, no matter what specification is used. We observe that male workers have lower probability of being stressed than females and that marital status affects females only. When all the characteristics are studied separately by Hukou status, we see that work characteristics such as unemployment decrease stress for urban citizens only. Poor health increases the likelihood of being stress for all respondents, while smoking behaviour only affects rural people. In addition, Oaxaca decompositions between urban and rural people and between urban and migrant people are performed. The results further show a small total explained effect and a large effect of the constant term in the unexplained part.