China started to implement a series of“new policies on rural migrants”or“rural － urban unified welfare and social protection reform”in early 2000. This paper，based on a study in four large Chinese cities，examines the impacts of these new policies on migrants’participation in a range of social insurance schemes，such as health care，old age pension，unemployment，and work － related injury．The results strongly suggest that after one decade of social policy reform，rural migrant workers’ likelihood of participating in social insurance and protection program is still much lower than that of urban migrants and urban local residents，which indicates the legacy of China’s rural /urban dualistic social welfare system is still in place．Migrant workers’participation in these social insurance and protection schemes is closely related to their employment status，especially to formal employment contract．This study indicates that China has started to integrate its migration policies into its overall economic development strategies．With China’s approaching so － called“Lewis Turning Point”，it is inevitable that labour cost will increase．The increase will not only include higher wages，but also should include the
cost in servicing and maintaining the labour force，including migrant workers，such as the social protection /insurance programs that are jointly contributed by the state，employers and workers．

Past research on the status of floating population in the urban labor market in China tended to focus on migrants from rural areas to cities.This paper takes consideration of both migrants from rural areas and migrants from other cities and analyzes factors affecting wage income distribution and social insurance participation among three groups of population in urban China,namely rural migrants,urban migrants and urban local workers.The study is based on data from a 2008 survey in four large Chinese cities.The results of this study confirm that if demographic and human capital related factors are controlled there are no significant wage differentials among local urban workers,urban migrants and rural migrants,but the likelihoods of social insurance participation for the three groups with different household registration status are significantly different with the lowest among rural migrants and highest among urban local workers.It implies that wage income has been largely determined by non-institutional labor market mechanisms,but social insurance participation is still associated with one’s hukou status,an institutional mechanism that played a determining role of one’s life chance and economic wellbeing in the pre-reform China.It confirms that rural/urban divide in the household registration system has become less important than the divide between migrants and local residents in Chinese cities.