Does Digital Infrastructure Facilitate Rural‐to‐Urban Migration? Evidence From China

ABSTRACT This paper exploits the staggered rollout of the Broadband China Policy as a quasi‐natural experiment to examine the impact of digital infrastructure expansion on rural‐to‐urban migration in China. Using data from the 2012 and 2018 waves of the China Family Panel Studies, we provide robust evidence that improvements in digital infrastructure significantly increase the probability of rural residents migrating to urban areas by 4.7%, corresponding to an approximately 18% increase relative to the migration rate in the sample. Mechanism analysis indicates that digital infrastructure facilitates migration mainly by reducing information frictions, strengthening social networks, and easing liquidity constraints. Heterogeneity analyses reveal that (i) the effects are stronger among individuals with lower educational attainment, middle‐aged and older cohorts, and women; (ii) migration is primarily promoted within counties and across counties or cities within the same province, while no significant effect is found for interprovincial migration; and (iii) migration induced by digital infrastructure expansion is concentrated in mid‐ and low‐skill occupations rather than high‐skill professional jobs.