Abstract
Over the past two decades, China has experienced significant internal labor mobility, and more than 160 million registered rural residents are now living as migrants in China's cities. Under the "guest worker" system, access to urban social insurance programs by rural migrants has been restricted, and even after legal reforms seeking to expand their participation, migrant participation among in urban health insurance and pension programs remains low. From the 2015 Rural-Urban Migration in China (RUMiC) Survey it is evident that only 31% of migrants were participating in urban pension and health insurance programs. This experiment is designed to understand whether poor understanding of social insurance, both the process of enrolling and costs and benefits, drives the relatively low rates of migrant participation in these programs. The team used the 2015 RUMiC survey as a baseline and then conducted an random information intervention in December 2015 and January 2016 in households of 13 cities where the RUMiC Survey was implemented. The team then evaluated the effect of the information intervention on the social insurance participation of treatment and control respondents using the 2015 and 2016 rounds of the RUMiC survey.