Vulnerability and resettlement: mortality differences in northeast China by place of origin, 1870-1912, comparing urban and rural migrants

This paper analyzes longitudinal demographic data from forty villages in northeast China for 19,240 resettled rural migrants and their descendants based on 231,392 individual annual observations from 1870 to 1912. We identify important variations in vulnerability depending on geographic origins by contrasting urban immigrants from Beijing and rural immigrants from Liaoning and Jilin and their descendants. Urban immigrants from Beijing and their descendants clearly fared more poorly than rural immigrants with farming backgrounds in terms of survivorship. Moreover, this mortality deficit was most significant among male infants and children age 1-10 sui. In a later stage of resettlement, such mortality deficit disappeared among males age 1-5 sui, but it still persisted among males age 6-25. This is particularly surprising as government policy favored urban immigrants in terms of land grants and relocation and resettlement assistance. Our findings on the mortality differentials between urban immigrants and rural immigrants in these villages suggest that behavior and lifestyle constitute another important factor to the persistent "urban penalty" experienced by the immigrants from Beijing.