Land arrangements for rural–urban migrant workers in China: Findings from Jiangsu Province
Introduction
China has always been characterized by a large population with a relatively constrained availability of land. The conflict between population size and land availability has been a major focus of the Chinese government. Prior to the Reform and Opening policies, land belonged to the state as well as to collectives; farmers could solely engage in collective work in the countryside and were banned from migrating freely. The Reform and Opening policy that began in 1978 resulted in the government gradually relaxing its control over economic and social institutions and being open to the outside world (Knight and Song, 2005). In rural areas, with the introduction of the household contract responsibility system in 1978, farmers in China obtained long-term land use rights. However, agricultural incomes remained low due to the large farming population relative to the available arable land per capita (Rozelle et al., 1997). Since the mid-1980s, as the economy developed rapidly and as Reform and Opening policy went into effect, policies that restricted the free migration of rural labor have been relaxed (Fan, 2008). In addition, a large number of rural laborers migrated to cities and entered non-agricultural employment (Lu and Song, 2006). According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS, 2013) data, the total number of rural–urban migrants working in Chinese cities reached 163 million in 2012, representing 25.44% of the total rural population and 36.08% of the rural working-age population. On average, one of less than three working-aged residents left their rural hometowns to work in cities.
Several empirical studies have found a significant negative correlation between land per capita and out-migration trends and have found that labor migration has increased the incomes of the rural population in China while reducing rural poverty levels (Rozelle et al., 1999, Zhao, 1999, Du et al., 2005). However, out-migration directly decreases available farming labor while altering the ratio of household available labor and land components, thus conflicting with existing labor division models for families. To maximize family incomes, rural households must reallocate land components to internal and external family members (Carter and Yao, 2002).
Under the traditional agricultural production model, families consistently act as basic units. Accordingly, the land of migrant workers is generally managed by other family members, primarily women and the elderly (Zhang et al., 2001). Because of various factors such as family planning policies, family size has shown a decreasing trend, i.e., the average number of individuals per family in rural China decreased from 5.58 in 1978 to 3.19 in 2012. In addition, the income gap between agricultural and non-agricultural employment continued to widen over the past 30 years, spurring the out-migration of rural labor, leading to a decrease in available agricultural labor, particularly among young adults. Thus, the traditional family-farming model is encountering serious challenges (Long and Zou, 2010). Previous literature has shown that greater numbers of migrant workers in rural households correspond to lower production and farming income levels per capita of land (Li and Tonts, 2014). Certain rural households with migrant workers have begun to transfer their land in recent years (Jin and Deininger, 2009, Feng et al., 2010). However, the quantity of land transfers remains small due to factors such as inadequate land rental markets, a lack of relevant policies, and high transaction costs (Ding, 2007).
Actually, many migrant workers are not willing to abandon their right to contract land because it is very difficult for them to completely integrate into urban society due to household registration system (hukou) restrictions and their relatively low incomes in urban areas (Yang, 1997, Zhao, 2005, Meng, 2012). However, the deficient land rental market prevents farmers from renting their contracted land (Deininger and Jin, 2005). Consequently, a large number of out-migration workers in certain areas have needed to abandon their land in recent years (Xin et al., 2009, Gao, 2011), causing land to become idle and underutilized while also negatively affecting the stability of agricultural production (Liu et al., 2009).
Currently available studies have primarily examined farmland conditions and the effects of China’s land system on rural labor out-migration (Mullan et al., 2011, Yan et al., 2014). Although out-migration also has significant effects on land use in China, previous studies have rarely examined how migrant workers arrange contracted land (Carr, 2009, Chen et al., 2014). Existing studies have found that rural labor out-migration directly conflicts with the traditional family-farming model and has found that it has become the primary force behind land transfer and abandonment. How do rural–urban migrant workers who are already employed in cities arrange contracted land? What are important correlates of such arrangements? We have not yet identified any relevant studies that examine these issues.
In this study, we categorize land arrangement methods into three forms, including family farming, land transfer, and abandonment, and discuss the costs and benefits of each method. Using survey data from Jiangsu Province in China and the Multinomial Logit model, we examine the relation between the relevant factors with migrant workers’ land arrangements. The remainder of this article is arranged as follows. The second section analyses the costs and benefits of each land arrangement method and constructs an econometric model. The third section introduces the data sources as well as the descriptive statistics and variable definition. The fourth section presents the results. The final section provides a conclusion and discusses the policy implications of land arrangement.
Section snippets
Theoretical analysis
Under the household contract responsibility system that was first introduced in 1978, village collectives allocate land based on family size, and farmers obtain land use rights, whereas village collectives maintain land ownership. To stabilize agriculture production and encourage farmers to invest in land, the Chinese government strives to maximize the land contracting relation stability (Kong and Unger, 2013). Since the first series of farmland contracts were allocated in 1978, the contracting
Data source
The data we used are from a January 2010 survey in four cities within Jiangsu province, including Nanjing, Suzhou, Wuxi, and Yangzhou. Jiangsu province is located in eastern China. The annual gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in 2010 in Jiangsu province was approximately $7,808, which was 1.65 times the national average and ranked fourth among the 31 provinces of mainland China. Because its provincial economy is relatively developed, Jiangsu has traditionally been a major migrant worker
Results
Among the three land arrangement methods, family farming was chosen as the reference in Eq. (5). The odds ratio was used to determine the degree of change in land arrangement methods in response to changes in one independent variable unit or relative to the control group (i.e., marginal effects). The detailed estimated results are presented in Table 3.
Log likelihood, Chi-square, and pseudo R2 values of the model all show good regression effects. In addition, the Hausman-McFadden test was
Conclusions
With 163 million rural–urban migrants working in Chinese cities, numerous farmers have migrated to cities for work, directly conflicting with the family-based land utilization model. China’s household contract responsibility system, which contracted the use rights of land to farmers, is now encountering challenges. In this study, we categorize the land arrangements of rural–urban migrant workers into three categories and obtain the following results.
Our study indicates that the majority of
References (30)
- et al.
The impact of rural out-migration on land use transition in China: past, present and trend
Land Use Policy
(2014) - et al.
The potential of land rental markets in the process of economic development: evidence from China
J. Dev. Econ.
(2005) Policy and praxis of land acquisition in China
Land Use Policy
(2007)- et al.
Migration and rural poverty in China
J. Comp. Econ.
(2005) - et al.
Land rental market, off-farm employment and agricultural production in Southeast China: a plot-level case study
Chin. Econ. Rev.
(2010) - et al.
Land rental markets in the process of rural structural transformation: productivity and equity impacts from China
J. Comp. Econ.
(2009) - et al.
Rural–urban migration and wage determination: the case of Tianjin, China
Chin. Econ. Rev.
(2006) - et al.
Gender wage differentials among rural–urban migrants in China
Reg. Sci. Urban Econ.
(2012) - et al.
Land tenure arrangements and rural–urban migration in China
World Dev.
(2011) - et al.
Off-farm jobs and on-farm work in periods of boom and bust in rural China
J. Comp. Econ.
(2001)
Population and deforestation: why rural migration matters
Prog. Hum. Geogr.
Local versus global separability in agricultural household models: the factor price equalization effect of land transfer rights
Am. J. Agric. Econ.
China on the Move: Migration, The State and The Household
Specification test for multinational logit model
Econometrica
Cited by (86)
Does early disaster exposure affect household agricultural income? Evidence from China
2023, International Journal of Disaster Risk ReductionInnovative incentives can sustainably enhance the achievement of straw burning control in China
2023, Science of the Total EnvironmentDoes labour migration necessarily promote farmers' land transfer-in?—Empirical evidence from China's rural panel data
2023, Journal of Rural StudiesHometown landholdings and rural migrants’ integration intention: The case of urban China
2022, Land Use PolicyCitation Excerpt :It is also shown that the possession of both farmland and homestead land reduces rural migrants’ willingness to convert their hukou status from rural to urban (Gu et al., 2020; Hao and Tang, 2015) and their intention to settle in cities (Tang et al., 2016). This is because many migrants are not willing to abandon their rights to land as they may encounter difficulties in settling down in the destination city due to hukou restrictions and their relatively low income (Meng, 2012; Xie and Jiang, 2016). So far existing research on migrants’ integration mainly focuses on individual and household characteristics, and ignores the important role of rural land.