Abstract: Continuously enhancing people’s sense of gain is an important task for the construction of the cause of people’s livelihood of China in the new era. The transfer of agricultural labor to cities has significantly increased the income level of farmers and increased farmers’ sense of gain on the material level, but its impact on farmers’ sense of spiritual gain is unclear. Based on the data collected by China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) in 2016, this paper empirically evaluates the effects of rural-urban migration on farmers’ sense of gain by using the method of propensity score matching (PSM) and the method of counterfactual analysis. The results show that the migrant labors in cities have not only raised farmers’ income, but also improved their subjective perception of income level and their satisfaction with life, which makes farmers feel more confident about the future. However, it does not improve their subjective perception of their social status. For the farmers who do not choose to work in cities, migrant work in cities even could reduce their satisfaction with life and their subjective perception of their social status. While migrant work in cities can play an important role in improving farmers’ sense of gain in general, it is quite obvious that the effects on the farmers with different characteristics are heterogeneous.

Key words: rural workers in cities, farmer, income, sense of gain.