Journal of Comparative Economics 30, 376–394 (2002) doi:10.1006/jcec.2002.1781 Causes and Consequences of Return Migration: Recent Evidence from China 1 Yaohui Zhao China Center for Economic Research, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China E-mail: yhzhao@ccer.pku.edu.cn Received February 22, 2002; revised March 15, 2002 Zhao, Yaohui—Causes and Consequences of Return Migration: Recent Evidence from China Return migration is an integral part of the rural to urban labor migration in China. Using recent household survey data, this paper analyzes the determinants of return migration and the economic behavior of return migrants. The main findings are as follows. First, return migration is of limited scale and out-migration is still dominant. Second, both push and pull factors affect the return decision. Third, return migrants invest significantly more in productive farm assets but are no more likely to engage in local nonfarm activities than are nonmigrants and migrants. These findings suggest that return migrants may play an important role in the modernization process. J. Comp. Econ., June 2002, 30(2), pp. 376– 394. China Center for Economic Research, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China. C  2002 Association for Comparative Economic Studies. Published by Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: J61, J24, R23. 1. INTRODUCTION Rural China has experienced substantial out-migration of labor since the mid- 1980’s. Substantial empirical research analyzes the determinants of the migration decision, the means of migration, and the migrants’ contribution to household income (Hare, 1999; Hare and Zhao, 2000; Knight and Song, 1999; Meng, 2000; Solinger, 1999; Rozelle et al., 1999; Zhao, 1999a, 1999b, etc.). However, research on the impact of labor migration on the communities from which workers leave is relatively scarce. In the economics and sociological literature on internal and 1 The research is supported by the Robert McNamara fellowship of the World Bank, the Ford Foundation, and the Excellent Young Teachers Program of Ministry of Education, P.R.C. The author thanks James Kung, Jean Oi, Louis Putterman, Scott Rozelle, and workshop participants at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology for helpful comments. 376 0147-5967/02 $35.00 C  2002 Association for Comparative Economic Studies Published by Elsevier Science (USA) All rights reserved.