Stay, leave late, leave early, return, or move onward? Interprovincial migration decisions of older adults in China, 2000–2005 and 2010–2015

Abstract Existing studies on the migration of older adults in China have tended to treat older migration as a one‐off activity and have failed to investigate the multiple processes involved. Based on the microdata samples of the 1% national population sample surveys in 2005 and 2015, this study examines the effect of regional and personal attributes on older adults' two‐phase migration decisions. In the first phase, older adults decide whether to leave the province of household registration, while in the second phase, they decide to stay in the same province, return to the province of household registration, or move onward to a new province. In the first phase of migration, older adults' decisions were affected by several regional amenities, including medical services, public green areas, air pollution, and temperature differences. In the second phase of migration, older adults who had decided to remain in the first phase tended to leave provinces with a lower cost of living, fewer public green areas, and more extreme temperature differences. Older adults who, in the first phase, had moved to a new province with fewer medical services, more severe air pollution, and larger temperature differences were more likely to return to their province of household registration in the second phase in 2000‐2005, while those residing in provinces with more extreme temperature differences tended to move onward to a new province in 2010‐2015. This study enhances our understanding of the heterogeneity of older migration in China by disentangling the complexity of multiple migration processes.