VET development is not rural-specific, the lower fees made possible by financial aid and tuition reductions is particularly attractive to rural students. One study, based on a survey of 132 VET schools in Henan, a designated pilot province for VET expansion, finds that 87% of the students came from rural areas (Yi et al. 2018). Despite the improvement in education attendance of rural youths, as reflected in their decreased migration rate, it is important to note that the rural-urban education divide in both quantity and quality remains a key feature in China’s education sector, posing a challenge for China’s future growth (Chen et al. 2019; Rozelle and Hell 2022).

Another evident change in long-term migration trends is that the median age of migrants has been increasing over time (Figure 4), and the share of migrants over 45 has increased sharply. The migrant shares of men and women over 45 were 16.8% and 4.5%, respectively, in 2003, and increased to 19% and 7% by 2013. As the migrant share declines among younger cohorts and increases for older cohorts, the share of the registered population working as migrants is getting older: the median age has increased from 26 to 32 for women during the 2003 and 2013 period, and from 31 to 35 for men.<sup>1112</sup> This is consistent with the prediction by Li et al. (2012) that as fewer young rural laborers are available, the marginal migrant worker will become older.

The third feature observable in long-term migration trends is that conditional on out-migration, the average labor supply of migrants has increased over time.<sup>13</sup> As shown in Figure 5, the average days per year that an individual from a rural area spends working as a migrant increased during the period from 2003 to 2013. Interestingly, rural women, once engaging in rural-to-urban migration, spend more days working as migrants than men. The gender difference seems to exist at all ages before 2010 (Figure 6) but has shown signs of closing in more recent years. One explanation may be that men are more likely to work on construction and infrastructure projects, which tend to have greater seasonality in north China, and lead to fewer days employed over the year.

Fourth, the distributions of migrant occupation types and the industries of employment have undergone little change in the more recent period from 2009 to 2013, even though both migration rates and the migrant labor supply have increased over this period. As seen in Figures 7 and 8, about 10% of

> 11 This is not simply a panel data effect driven by the relatively long RCRE panel. From the CFPS panel, which is of relatively short duration, the 2018 CFPS data suggest the median ages of migrant men and women are 38 and 35, respectively.

> 12 The RCRE data suggest that the migrant population has also become more educated. The average years of schooling has increased from 7.68 to 8.42 for women and from 7.82 to 8.48 for men during the 2003 to 2013 period. However, according to the 2018 CFPS data, the average years of schooling in the migrant population are 7.38 for women and 7.97 for men.

> 13 Because the migrant share is low for the old age cohort, we focus on people ages 16-60 when examining migrant labor supply.

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