Agricultural cooperatives in China, known as “Farmers’ Professional Cooperatives” (FPCs), are becoming popular and have been intensely promoted by the Chinese government to improve the economic welfare of small farmers. However, few studies on FPCs have measured the benefits to gain farmers who participate in FPCs after controlling for observable attributes of farmers. This paper investigates the treatment effect of participation in a rice‐producing cooperative in suburban China using the propensity score matching (PSM) method. Estimated results show that a significant difference is observed between participants and nonparticipants of the cooperative in terms of net income from rice production. In addition, there is significant heterogeneity of the treatment effects between large and small farmers. Therefore, we can conclude that the participation in agricultural cooperatives is more beneficial to relatively small farmers who are subject to suffer from higher transaction costs. [EconLit citations: Q12, Q13, O13]

This chapter examines long-term changes in rural household incomes, inequality, and poverty in China from the late 1980s to 2013, with a focus on changes in public policy and the structure of rural incomes from 2007 to 2013. Implementation of pro-rural (huinong) policies during the first decade of the 2000s marked a historic shift in public policy, which previously was heavily biased toward the urban areas. Rural income growth accelerated between 2007 and 2013 mainly because of an upsurge of wage earnings, asset income, and imputed rent from owner-occupied housing. The share of agricultural income in total income fell to a historic low. These shifts contributed to the increase in rural income inequality from 2007 to 2013. During this period rural poverty continued to decline. The implementation of pro-rural public policies after 2000 led to small but significant improvements in the redistributive impact of public transfers.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract