Developmental balance and youth migration attraction: Structural effects of urban system coordination in Chinese cities

Abstract

Youth migration has become an important force shaping urban population structures and development trajectories in developing countries. Drawing on 2023 data from eleven selected Chinese cities, this study develops a dual-subsystem framework to examine a city’s attractiveness to young immigrants through two key dimensions: a material-economic subsystem and an institutional support subsystem. Using the entropy weighting method, we construct development scores for multiple indicators in both dimensions. We then apply these development scores to the Coupling Coordination Degree Model to assess the balance or coordination between the two subsystems. We then use Pearson and Spearman correlation analyses to explore the associations between overall development, subsystem coordination, and population inflows. The results show that both composite development scores and coordination degrees are positively associated with population inflows. However, these relatively modest associations must be interpreted with caution given the small sample size. Overall, the findings suggest that youth migration depends not only on economic opportunities, but also on the coordinated provision of institutional support such as education, healthcare, and public services. Our study provides preliminary, exploratory, yet useful evidence that a balanced or well-coordinated urban system plays a role in attracting immigration to Chinese cities.