In this study we examine whether the gender composition of migrants from rural households affects household economic strategies and agricultural productivity, which is the fundamental economic activity for rural Chinese. Using data from the 2010 and 2012 Chinese Family Panel Studies, this study treats households as the unit of analysis. Our results show that households with migrants are less likely to engage in agricultural activities or operate small businesses than households with no migrants. However, households with female migrants are less likely to engage in agricultural activities to a greater extent than those with male migrants, whereas the latter pose an obstacle to running small family businesses. This suggests that women may have to shoulder the burden of agricultural work when men migrate, whereas having male migrants from the households hampers households from engaging in local nonagricultural activities. Finally, although having male migrants who have left does not significantly discourage households from continuing agricultural activities, it does reduce agricultural productivity.

Spousal separation due to migration is a prevalent phenomenon in the developing world, but its psychological consequences for left-behind partners are largely understudied. Using data from 2010, 2012 and 2014 China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), this paper first examined whether spousal migration causes rural married adults any psychological distress; this finding was then advanced by testing the mechanisms that could potentially explain the linkage between these two variables. Inverse Probability Weighting (IPW) for multivalued treatment effect models and paired Propensity Score Matching (PSM) have been used to correct the potential selection bias of spousal migration. The results show that prolonged spousal separation through migration increases the depressive symptoms of married adults in rural China, and the detrimental effects on left-behind spouses' psychological well-being can be explained by the reduced level of emotional intimacy between husband and wife, and partially by women becoming the master of the household. Considering that being the master of the household is accompanied by elevated stress levels associated with increasing family responsibilities, further examination showed that economic resources can buffer the negative effect associated with being the master of the household when the spouse migrates. However, we did not find that time use is an effective mechanism to link spousal migration and left-behind spouses' well-being.

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Drawing from organizational, organizational ecology, and social network perspectives, we examined how earning differences between coethnic members (i.e., Chinese in Canada) and others (i.e., non-Chinese in Canada) were relatedto whether they participated in ethnic economy and also to the percentage of ethnic economies among related industrial sectors in a larger industry cluster. The study envisages ethnic economy is embedded in larger industry cluster and its operation is shaped by the larger industrial context. Drawing from the 2011 Canadian National Survey, we found thatthe percentage of ethnic economies among all related industrial sectors in an industry cluster was related to lower differences in the earnings of its coethnic members and others working there. The findings further showed that the relationship was significant for coethnic employees, but not for coethnic employers.

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