Abstract Based on the dynamic monitoring data of floating population in 2017, this paper discusses the impact of self-employment of migrant workers on their family migration. The study shows that self-employed migrant workers are more likely to move their families than employed migrant workers, which is more obvious in women, the new generation, non-higher education, inter-provincial migration and high-income migrant workers. After using tool variables to control potential endogenesis and adopting tendency score matching method to correct selective bias, the above conclusion is still robust. At the same time, self-employment also helps migrant workers to choose other migration modes with a higher degree of family-based migration. And the positive impact of employment on the family-based migration of migrant workers increases with the improvement of the degree of family-based migration. That self-employment of migrant workers promotes family migration is mainly achieved through the family space reallocation mechanism of urban independent living and rural land transfer. While the role of family labor reallocation mechanism such as spouse not working and the elderly moving with the elderly is relatively weak. The conclusion shows that the family migration of migrant workers can be effectively promoted by actively supporting flexible forms of employment such as self-employment. Providing convenience for self-employed migrant workers to live in cities and transfer agricultural land is conducive to the realization of this mechanism. Therefore, city managers should formulate public service policies in line with the characteristics of self-employed migrant workers.
2023, Vol. 40 
