Do public employment services affect the self-rated health of migrant workers in China?

Abstract

Migrant workers greatly contributing to China’s industrialization and urbanization are confronted with increasing health risks. This study empirically investigates the effects of public employment services on the self-rated health of migrant workers in Shanghai China, by using data from the National Bureau of Statistics from 2015 to 2020. The estimation results under the Ordered Probit model illustrate that public employment services significantly improve the self-rated health of migrant workers, and vocational training, job development and other related services show an apparently positive correlation with the self-rated health. The marginal effect analysis reveals that public employment services obviously reduce the probability of health satisfaction as “average”, “relatively satisfied” and “relatively dissatisfied”, which translate into a significant increase in the probability of “very satisfied”. The mechanism analysis verifies that public employment services enhance the self-rated health by increasing the proportion of medical insurance and injury insurance of migrant workers. The results are still reliable by adopting the methods of subsample regression, Propensity Score Matching and variable substitution to conduct robustness checks. This study further enriches the literature on public employment services and the health status of migrant workers, and provides policy implications on improving the health status of migrant workers and the public employment service system of China under the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.