Life‐Course Mobility and Occupational Trajectories: Gender Disparities in Later‐Life Economic Welfare Among Rural‐Hukou Adults in China

ABSTRACT China's rural‐to‐urban transformation has produced diverse mobility and occupational histories, but their implications for economic welfare in later life remain unclear. Using CHARLS life‐history data for 8840 middle‐aged and older adults with rural hukou, this study reconstructs annual mobility and occupational states from 2000 to 2014 and links the resulting trajectories to household per capita non‐food consumption in 2015. Sequence analysis identifies two mobility and four occupational trajectories. Survey‐weighted OLS models show that sustained predominantly intra‐provincial mobility is associated with higher consumption than stable no mobility, while managerial wage‐employment mixed and non‐agricultural self‐employment trajectories are associated with higher consumption than stable agricultural employment. These associations vary by gender. The sustained‐mobility contrast is weaker among women, whereas the non‐agricultural wage‐employment contrast is more positive. The decomposition identifies a significant male‐female consumption gap. Its marginally significant explained component accounts for 19.62% of the gap. Mobility trajectories account for a significant share of the gap, whereas the occupational‐trajectory contribution is small. Results are robust to excluding observations with low silhouette widths. Later‐life economic welfare is thus associated not with mobility or non‐agricultural employment in general, but with the particular pathways through which spatial and working lives unfold.