Policy Briefing
26
AprHousehold registration system is the most important population management system in China, and has been under reform in the last three decades. At the beginning of this century, differences of this system among places enlarged, so we can dig into the motives and barriers behind the reform. This briefing first reviews the process of household registration system reform and accesses the inclusiveness of the system in different places. We have found that the differences are still pre-eminent in mega cities that differ both in inclusiveness and population urbanization. This indicates that there is still a long way to go for household registration reform. There are various reasons behind the differences, such as the government financial pressure, population and resources pressure and also the defective land system. Through the comparison of factors influencing how open is one system, we found that it is difficult to open the registration system in cities with higher financial expenditure and income. Therefore, we need to put forward comprehensive reform of household registration reform, take the differences of economy policies in balanced regions into consideration and enlarge support for central transfer payment. We should also consider selecting capable officials to take charge of the reform and relate the reform to officials’ performance evaluation.