Abstract

Residents’ working outside of the village in China is the beginning of internal migration. Although there is a affluent literature on residents’ working outside of the village, few existing studies deal with the role of water at the village-level. This paper will fill this gap and deal with the working outside of the village choice made by rural migrants with the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) data. The paper employs a stepwise regression model to investigate the determinants of rural residents working outside of the village in China. The results showed that number of households in a village using drinking water from tap water is positively correlated with total number of residents working outside of the village. Number of households using river, lakes, and brooks in a village as drinking water is positively correlated with female percentage of residents working outside of the village. Number of households using tap water in a village as drinking water is negatively correlated with female percentage of residents working outside of the village. Some policy implications are presented in the end.

Key words: Usage of drinking water, working outside of the village, China, rural residents.