Does household laborer migration promote farmland abandonment in China?

Abstract

This paper investigates the effects of household labor migration on rural household decision making over on the abandonment of farmland using 11,413 rural households' data from 2012 to 2016 in China. The results demonstrate that with every 1% increase in the number of 1, 2, 3, or more household migrant laborers, the average probability of rural households' farmland abandonment increases by 2.9%, 5.0%, and 7.8%, respectively. There is an inverted U‐shaped relationship between the average age of household migrant laborers and farmland abandonment. Both off‐farm employment and part‐time employment have positive impacts on farmland abandonment. If the age of the household head is younger, the number of household members is smaller, the village has suffered natural disasters, and village elevation is higher, rural households with laborers migrating are most likely to abandon farmland. As the rural household laborer migrates, the wage earning of rural household increases, which leads to the households gradually giving up management of farmland, which may be an important mechanism for Chinese households abandoning farmland. The establishment of a paid transfer system may be an effective way to solve the issue of farmland abandonment.

Cropland abandonment in the context of drought, economic restructuring, and migration in northeast Syria

“…Research has shown that migration is associated with land abandonment in other contexts, for example, in rural China where labour migration has been identified as an important determinant of farmland abandonment [2,8,9,48]. This suggests that land abandonment information could be used in studies of e.g.…”

“…Land abandonment describes the discontinuing of agricultural activities, which often leads to subsequent recovery of natural vegetation [3]. The causes behind land abandonment are complex and include biophysical as well as political and socioeconomic drivers, such as unsuitable climate conditions, drought, small field sizes, government policies, and migration [2,3,[5][6][7][8][9]. Migration caused by armed conflict may also lead to land abandonment [10,11], but in some cases cultivation may continue as the land becomes occupied by new groups [12].…”

The impact of metropolises’ characteristics on provincial economic structure transformation: evidence from Vietnam

“…Urban expansion encroaches on extensive farmland areas and negatively impacts agricultural landscape patterns, a decline in agricultural land-use intensity (Jiang et al, 2013;Su et al, 2014;Yu et al, 2019). Combining with remittance effects, rural-urban migration promotes their cropland abandonment (C. Lu, 2020;Lorenzen et al, 2020). The conversion of agricultural land to urban uses leads to rapid transformations in rural areas' agricultural production (Thuo, 2013).…”

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“…Rapid urbanization and industrialization have led to significant rural degradation in China, which manifests in a large reduction of the rural population, aggravation of aging population, marginalization of land, abandonment of housing, and low‐quality infrastructure (Bai et al., 2014; Li et al, 2014; Liu et al., 2013; Long et al., 2012; Lu, 2020). Meanwhile, a large proportion of rural construction land remains idle, further constraining rural development.…”