workers. Although these new laws have been in place for ten and seven years, respectively, migrant participation remains low. The 2015 wave of the Rural-Urban Migration in China survey (RUMiC), for example, indicates that only 30 percent of migrant workers were enrolled in urban health insurance or pension programs.

What explains the slow progress in expanding migrant participation in urban social insurance programs? Earlier research has highlighted the following contributing factors: poor incentives for local governments to enforce laws, the possibility that employers try to avoid making contributions to employee social insurance accounts, and the lack of enthusiasm among migrants for participation, which may be due to the fragmented nature of the system and consequent lack of geographic portability of enterprise contributions (Meng and Manning, 2010; Meng, 2012; Giles et al., 2013; Gallagher et al., 2014). Posessing little or no prior experience with urban employee social insurance schemes, China’s migrants may lack full understanding of the potential benefits from enrollment and participation in these programs.<sup>2</sup> More importantly, given the complexity of the social insurance schemes (the costs, benefits, as well as enrollment procedures), which vary across regions and by type of job, migrants may find it difficult to maneuver through these complications and simply decide against participation.<sup>3</sup> Lack of knowledge about the benefits and costs of insurance or inability to figure out how to enroll may then interact with strong employer preferences for avoiding contributions to generate the current low levels of participation.

This paper exploits a field experiment to assess the extent to which lack of information about urban employee health insurance and pension programs contributes to low participation among rural migrants. The study utilizes the existing Rural-Urban Migration in China (RUMiC) longitudinal survey and a random selection of approximately 35% of respondents from the 2015 survey round who were provided detailed information regarding the costs and future benefits of participating in the health insurance and pension programs available in their respective cities. Respondents were also informed as to whether social insurance programs were portable or not in the event that they moved home or to another city, and how to contact the representatives in local social-protection bureaus responsible for enforcing laws and regulations governing employer participation. In the following wave of the RUMiC survey, implemented later in 2016, respondents were then asked about their actual and planned participation in these insurance programs.

Over the full RUMiC sample, the average information intervention effect is not statistically significantly different from zero. Consistent with a pre-specified plan to examine

> 2While many migrants had prior experience with health insurance through China’s New Rural Cooperative Medical System (NRCMS), evaluations have found that this system increased health system participation, but afforded little protection against financial risk (Wagstaff and Lindelow, 2008; Wagstaff et al., 2009).

> 3Gallagher et al. (2014) find that a high share of migrants understand that they are eligible to participate in social insurance, but it is unlikely that migrants understand program details or benefits.

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