Social Network:A Stepping Stone or A Stumbling Block for the Human Capital Accumulation of Rural-Urban Migrants?
Improving the human capital accumulation of rural-urban migrants is the key to promoting a new type of urbanization.It is also an important guarantee for achieving industrial structure upgrading and economic structure adjustment,as well as establishing a modern economic system in the context of the new development pattern.In the process of rapid urbanization,it is of great significance to study the mechanism of human capital investment decision-making of rural-urban migrants.As an important supplement to the formal system,social networks are an important channel for rural-urban migrants to obtain information about the labor market and an important basis for making relevant decisions.Due to the difference in information access ability caused by education differentiation,the unequal access to information caused by institutional obstacles,and the lag of information access mode caused by the lack of information bridge,there is an information disadvantage for rural-urban migrants in the labor market.In addition,affected by the thought inertia of traditional and native culture,a social network based on kinship and geographic ties has become an important channel for rural-urban migrants to transmit information and gain employment.How will social networks affect the human capital accumulation of rural-urban migrants?By building a theoretical model and making an empirical analysis,the aforementioned problems are studied from both theoretical and empirical perspectives.First,a model is developed to deduce and analyze the mechanism of the effect of social networks on the human capital accumulation of rural-urban migrants.Based on the data of Rural-Urban Migration in China,this study uses the probit model to empirically test the impact of social networks on the human capital investment of rural-urban migrants and uses the conditional mixed process to deal with the potential endogeneity in the model.It is found that employment through a social network will significantly reduce the probability of human capital investment of rural-urban migrants.The analysis of the mechanism suggests that a social network can shorten the search time and improve the efficiency of job search,which is an important reason for the lack of human capital investment motivation of rural-urban migrants.Specifically,when the search efficiency of social networks is high,the opportunity cost for rural-urban migrants to invest in human capital increases.In this situation,employment through social networks reduces the expected utility and motivation of human capital investment of rural-urban migrants.Moreover,the role of social networks in improving job search efficiency gives employed rural-urban migrants the opportunity to realize the importance of human capital accumulation.In this case,employment through social networks results in a lack of motivation to invest in human capital even after finding a job.The contributions of this study are as follows.First,it discusses the influencing factors of the human capital accumulation of rural-urban migrants from the perspective of social networks.Therefore,this study expands the relevant research on the human capital accumulation of rural-urban migrants.Specifically,although existing literature has explored the influencing factors of rural-urban migrants on human capital investment from multiple perspectives,there are few analyses based on the perspective of social networks.As a consequence,it is a beneficial expansion to the literature on the human capital investment of rural-urban migrants by studying the impact and mechanism of social networks on the human capital investment of rural-urban migrants.Second,this study deepens relevant research on social networks by incorporating human capital investment decisions into the social network equilibrium model.This study also has some policy implications.On the one hand,we should correctly understand the impact of social networks on rural-urban migrants'ability development or human capital accumulation.It is a double-edged sword for rural-urban migrants to use social networks to achieve employment.Therefore,measures should be taken to reduce rural-urban migrants'dependence on social networks,such as building a two-way information transmission platform for labor market supply and demand.On the other hand,we should make effective incentive policies to mobilize the enthusiasm of rural-urban migrants for human capital investment,such as providing certain material and spiritual rewards to rural-urban migrants who participate in training.In addition,more efforts should be made to convey the message that"knowledge is power,technology is capital,"making rural-urban migrants aware of the importance of human capital investment.Thus,setting an example and using social networks to transmit information on human capital investment among rural-urban migrants,thereby forming a demonstration effect.
Social NetworkHuman Capital InvestmentRural-urban MigrantsJob Search