Access to social welfare and migrants' intercity location choices in the case of China: Do latent preferences matter?

Access to social welfare has been downplayed in understanding migrants’ decisions about destinations and settlements. Moreover, how migrants’ latent mobility preferences affect their preferences for migration drivers remains underexplored. This study uses latent class logit models to identify three types of internal migrants with distinctive latent mobility preferences in China. The findings suggest that access to social welfare is the most important predictor of decisions about destination cities for all types of migrants, particularly those with low mobility preference. For highly mobile migrants, access to social welfare is an important consideration but expected wages and urban amenities also play important roles in their location choices and settlement. The findings highlight the crucial role of social welfare in the relocation and settlement of internal migrants in China. The heterogeneous preferences regarding migration drivers among migrants with different latent mobility preferences also call for tailor-made local labor policymaking. © 2023 Urban Affairs Association