Estimating and mapping the intercensal internal net migration of China, 1990-2000

Spatial shifts in the internal distribution of population are an important aspect of the dynamics of economic and demographic conditions in any country. Migration information is more complex than other place-specific population information, having both a temporal as well as a spatial component with respect to both origin and destination regions; and the collection of these data is less complete than the reporting of population by place in a national census. In this study, GIS and tabulation methods have been developed to estimate age- and sex-specific internal net migration patterns. These methods are applied to a case study of net migration patterns in China between 1990 and 2000 at the county level. Although migration data are reported at a county level there is no breakdown by age or sex. Estimates from the methods developed in this paper show an intra-provincial migration pattern which is creating dependency ratio imbalances between rural and urban areas in Eastern China.