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Education the key to breaking poverty cycle

Millions of rural migrants flood China's cities each year and the move involves the toughest of economic bargains. They leave behind poverty and stagnation for factory, construction and service jobs in the relatively more prosperous parts of the country; they also leave behind many of their social rights. Without official permission to live in the cities, the migrants are not entitled to housing, medical care or schooling for their children. Repatriation centres set up to help them are, in many places, more like detention cells where abuse has gone unchecked, made all the easier by the migrants' lack of official status.

This has been the reality until earlier this year, when the mainland speeded up the dismantling some of the institutions that contributed to this inequality - including the repatriation centres - and restoring to the migrants many of the rights they have lost as a result of leaving their home areas.

Recent experiments in reform include medical insurance and labour unions based around neighbourhoods rather than enterprises, as migrant workers often engage in informal or part-time work. In January, the State Council issued a national law making it illegal to discriminate against job applicants based on residency status. Such changes, pushed by a new leadership that is keenly aware of the need to spread the country's recent prosperity to rural areas and to enfranchise the migrant labourers who have played a crucial role in China's urban growth, should be welcomed.

With the release this week of a comprehensive report on migrant children living in the cities, it seems clear that the government intends to expand these rights even further. The report, which surveyed more than 20,000 migrant labourers and their children, is also a sign that child welfare will become a focus of the changes. The survey indicates that large numbers of migrant children drop out of school, often to join the workforce. If migrant labourers are trapped in a cycle of poverty made worse by their murky residence status, their children are similarly trapped by their lack of equal access to education.

The report points to the household registration, or hukou, system as a roadblock in this regard. Under the system, only children who are registered to live within an area are entitled to schooling there. Those without such permits may enrol, but the fees involved are too expensive for most migrant families. Until China moves to abolish the hukou system completely - something that has been under consideration - the next best solution could be one suggested in the report: issuing temporary residence permits to children under 16. The intention is to improve the welfare of China's migrant children; if they are to have a chance to lead decent lives, schooling is the best place to start.

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