Title： The impact of urban quality improvement on migrants: A perspective from children's migrating together
ABSTRACT：In the urbanization process, migrants are often the most easily overlooked and marginalized group. Yet, when a country seeks urban quality improvement, migrants should be the group that receives the greatest policy attention. Using data from the China Migrants Dynamic Survey (CMDS) 2011-2018, this study takes China's National Quality-Enhancing-City Demonstration City as the policy shock and employs a difference-in-differences (DID) model to estimate the impact of urban quality improvement on children's migrating together. Our findings indicate that urban quality improvement significantly promotes children's migrating together. This effect operates primarily through three channels: increasing household income, expanding participation in medical insurance, and strengthening long-term settlement intentions. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the policy exerts a more prominent promoting effect on children's migrating together for migrants with lower education, those employed in SOEs, and intra-provincial migrants. Meanwhile, the policy's marginal effects decline with child age. Further analysis reveals that policy exerts positive spillover effects on migrants in adjacent cities within the same province, but exert no such effects on non-adjacent cities within the same province, adjacent cities outside the province, and non-adjacent cross-provincial cities.
Keywords: Urban quality improvement Children's migrating together Settlement intentions Spillover effects
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iref.2026.105849
