本文主要研究了居住在城市中的中國鄉城流動人口能否通過從事自我經營活動提高自身收入水平。在研究方法上，本文將流動人口離開家鄉的動機和五個中國市場化指數作為自我經營的工具變量來進行二階段最小二乘法回歸來估計自我經營活動對收入的影響。遷移到城市中的流動人口比城市本地居民更傾向成為自我經營者，本文實證結果表明這類以低教育水平和低技能為特徵的勞動者從事自我經營活動是一種負向選擇，但成為自我經營者後他們獲得了比工資性收入者更高的收入，並以此提高了生活水平和社會經濟地位。

This paper discusses whether rural-urban migrants who live in cities can raise their earnings by engaging in self-employment activities. I construct instruments based on migrants’ motivation for leaving home and five China marketization index to identify the effect of self-employment on earning. Using two-stage least squares models, I find that rural-urban migrants who move to cities are more likely to be self-employed than local urban residents. The empirical result shows that workers with low education and low skills negatively select into self-employment, but they can earn more relative to their wage-earning counterparts. In addition, self-employment is found to improve migrants’ living standard and socioeconomic status.

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