How Rural Land Arrangements Affect Rural‐Urban Migrants' Settlement Intentions: A Family Life Cycle Perspective

ABSTRACT Emerging evidence highlights a global shift toward household migration, where migrants' settlement intentions increasingly function as a household strategy rather than an individual choice. In China and similar developing contexts, rural land serves as both a critical resource and vital family asset, profoundly shaping settlement intentions. Against this backdrop, this research employs the China Migrants Dynamic Survey (CMDS) database and binary logistic regression models to re‐examine how rural land arrangements influence the settlement intentions of rural‐to‐urban migrants in China, with a focus on variations across different stages of the family life cycle. An important novel finding is the identification of systematic heterogeneity in the effects of rural land arrangements on migrants' settlement intentions before and after the stable period of the family life cycle, which is marked by the end of the child‐rearing cycle and a fundamental reconfiguration of household core priorities. Specifically, in the pre‐stable period, rural land‐use effects correlated strongly with children's urban educational trajectories, underscoring the role of intergenerational support, while in the post‐stable period, these effects diverged, reflecting a diversification of household priorities. Furthermore, the study confirms that across all stages of the family life cycle, arable land generally promotes settlement intentions, while rural housing land consistently inhibits them. These findings deepen the theoretical understanding of migrant settlement intentions in China by integrating family life cycle dynamics with rural land arrangements. They provide actionable insights for urbanization policies in developing countries facing large‐scale rural‐urban migration and institutional segmentation of urban‐rural land systems.