Rural Labor Migration and Households' Land Rental Behavior: Evidence from China

Abstract

There has been growing debate about whether the changing demographic composition due to rural labor migration could potentially threaten China's agricultural productivity. The Chinese Government is promoting the “three rights separation system” to consolidate agricultural land through the land rental market with the explicit intention of fostering new agricultural management subjects and improving agricultural productivity. The present paper estimates the effect of rural labor migration on households' participation in land renting in and renting out activities based on a unique dataset from three rounds of nationally representative surveys. Our results indicate that rural labor migration has a significant negative effect on households renting in land and has a positive effect on households renting out land in rural China. Therefore, the government should adopt targeted policies to effectively encourage farmers with higher agricultural capacity to rent in land to alleviate the negative effect of rural migration on households renting in land. Supporting policies should guarantee that rural migrants enjoy the same welfare services as urban residents.

Rural-Urban Migration and its Effect on Land Transfer in Rural China

“…Meanwhile, there are some similarities and differences between this study and similar studies. For example, consistent with the results of Ji et al [34]; Huang et al [35], Kung [60], off-farm employment would significantly affect the direction and the scale of land transfer of farmers, and the results are robust. Specifically, off-farm employment is significantly negatively correlated with whether farmers have rent-in land as well as the rent-in land area of farmers, while it is significantly positively related to whether farmers have rent-out land as well as the rent-out land area of farmers.…”

“…(2) Independent variables Off-farm employment and part-time employment were used to measure the migration of labor force from rural to urban areas. Wherein, off-farm employment are defined in accordance with the research from Ji et al [34]; Huang et al [35], Che [49], Deng et al [50,51], Liu et al [52], Liu et al [53], Ma et al [54], referring to the individual laborers working outside their hometown villages for at least half a year; part-time laborers refers to the labor force engaged in agricultural production and non-agricultural work in a year. Additionally, in order to weaken the influence of missing variables on the estimation of model results, referring to the research from Ji et al [34]; Huang et al [35], Che [49], Shi et al [55], this study selects head education, head age, household labors, land area, agricultural assets and fixed assets as the control variables of this study (Table 1).…”

“…Land transfer involves the transfer direction (whether there is rent-in or rent-out land) and the transfer scale (the rent-in or rent-out land area). Some studies from the academic circles have focused on the correlations between rural-urban migration and land transfer, but the empirical studies of the correlations between rural-urban migration and the direction and the scale of land transfer are fewer [34]. Meanwhile, in the few studies, labor migration (off-farm employment) is defined as laborers' migrant working for six months or more and staying outside of their home villages by scholars, so as to explore the correlations between rural-urban migration and land transfer, and it is generally concluded that rural-urban migration would significantly hinder rent-in land of farmers and remarkably promote rent-out land of farmers (e.g., [34,35]).…”

“…Some studies from the academic circles have focused on the correlations between rural-urban migration and land transfer, but the empirical studies of the correlations between rural-urban migration and the direction and the scale of land transfer are fewer [34]. Meanwhile, in the few studies, labor migration (off-farm employment) is defined as laborers' migrant working for six months or more and staying outside of their home villages by scholars, so as to explore the correlations between rural-urban migration and land transfer, and it is generally concluded that rural-urban migration would significantly hinder rent-in land of farmers and remarkably promote rent-out land of farmers (e.g., [34,35]). For example, Ji et al [34] have found that with every 1% increase in the ratio of off-farm employment, the probability of rent-out land of farmers will increase by 8.4%, while the probability of rent-in land of farmers will decrease by 4.9%; Huang et al [35] have discovered that when there is one more migrant worker, the probability of rent-out land of farmers will increase by 4%, whereas off-farm employment has no significant impact on rent-in land of farmers.…”

Returns to Education in Different Job Locations for Off-Farm Wage Employment: Evidence from China

“…Recent years have borne witness to the large-scale outflow of laborers from rural areas to supplement their local sources of income through migration and wage employment [1][2][3][4][5]. The proportion of the rural labor force entering the labor market rose from around 22 percent in 1988 to more than 60 percent in 2015 [6][7][8].…”