Does Institutional Social Insurance Cause the Abandonment of Cultivated Land? Evidence from Rural China

Abstract

At present, the world’s countryside needs to be revitalized urgently, and cultivated land is the critical factor in promoting the countryside’s revitalization. The reduction of uncultivated land contributes to the efficient use of rural land resources, contributing to global rural revitalization. This study uses data from 3938 Chinese peasant households conducted in 2014 and the OLS method to investigate the quantitative impact of institutional social insurance on cultivated land abandonment. The empirical results point to the following conclusions: (1) Institutional social insurance will weaken the social insurance function of land, which will lead to the generation of peasant households’ cultivated land abandonment. More specifically, for every 1% increase in the level of institutional social insurance of peasant households, the area of cultivated land abandoned increased by 0.002 mu; (2) The influence of institutional social insurance on peasant households’ cultivated land abandonment is heterogeneous, that is, endowment insurance can weaken the social insurance function of land more than medical insurance, and households with a higher proportion of pensioners are more likely to abandon cultivated land. This study’s conclusions may help understand the relationship between institutional and non-institutional social insurance and provide a reference for the effective use of cultivated land resources in the global rural revitalization.

Do agricultural productive services alleviate farmland abandonment? Evidence from China rural household panel survey data

“…The substitution effect of APS on the labour force has been enhanced. Farmers usually outsource some difficult production links to professional service organizations, which can alleviate the labour pressure (Li et al, 2021;Min et al, 2022). With the rapid development of urbanization, APS could optimize household labour allocation and promote part of labour to engage in non-agricultural industries, which not only improves family welfare but also reduce land abandonment.…”

“…The second category was the other control variables. This study drew on the existing literature on land abandonment and agricultural services and selected other exogenous explanatory variables (Min et al, 2022). As presented in Table 1, these variables include individual, family, and village characteristics.…”

“…Older farmers close to retirement are more likely to make decisions on land abandonment due to physical exhaustion (He et al, 2020). The New Rural Pension Scheme replaces the endowment insurance function of the land, which increases the probability of the elderly abandoning their farmland (Min et al, 2022). Internet use can reduce farm households' cropland abandonment by 43.20% (Deng et al, 2019).…”

The Influence of Land Attachment on Land Abandonment from the Perspective of Generational Difference: Evidence from Sichuan Province, China

“…From the perspective of the “rational man” in economics, most scholars believe that the main reasons for land abandonment lie in the low comparative income of agriculture, the high opportunity cost of rural labor and a large number of farmers voluntarily or forced to give up agricultural activities and migrate to cities [ 8 ]. At the level of the social system, the policy implementation level is low [ 9 ], the land transfer market is immature [ 10 ] and the transportation convenience degree is low [ 11 ], and the inadequate replacement function of institutional social insurance for land social insurance [ 12 ] and local ethnic conflicts [ 13 ] are also important reasons for the frequent occurrence of land abandonment in recent years. However, rural agricultural credit, especially informal agricultural credit [ 14 ], and the distribution of household Internet use in space and quantity [ 15 ] have an opposite aggregation trend with land abandonment.…”

Change detection in a rural landscape: A case study of processes and main driving factors along with its response to thermal environment in Farim, Iran

“…Based on Winoto & Schultink (1996), the urbanization process can lead rural areas to change from agricultural lifestyles and activities to non-agricultural ones and increase rural-urban migrations. Consequently, rural-urban migration or rural abandonment can cause soil erosion and different effects on land use/cover (LULC) patterns (Min, 2022), (Alibaygi & Karamidehkordi, 2009), (Gabriel, 2002) and the rural ecosystem, which can cause biological misbalance (Pineda, 2000). As Stockdale (2004) demonstrates, these migrations are more traceable in developing countries.…”