Rural-to-urban migrants in China return home frequently within a
year. This pattern of return implies the pivotal role of the village-level outflow of
migrants in determining their job outcomes at the destination. Using data from
twenty-two provinces in China, this paper assesses whether a migrant’s wage is
positively influenced by the number of fellow villagers who migrated to urban areas.
Heckman’s two-stage method is used to correct for sample selection. Natural
disaster in the village of origin is used as an instrumental variable to deal with
other endogeneity biases. The results presented here verify significant effects of
origin-based networks, and show that network effects are underestimated without
taking the endogeneity into account.