The impact of social security policies on farmland reallocation in rural China

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 626-646
Author(s):  
Li Huang ◽  
Rong Tan

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the causality between social security policies and farmland reallocation in rural China. Design/methodology/approach It quantitatively analyzes the impact of each ongoing social security policy on farmland reallocation based on a data set from the 2011 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS, 2011). Findings The study finds that the inclination of a village farmers’ collective to reallocate farmland due to changes in the village population increased if social security policies do not effectively cover the village because farmers rely primarily on income from farmland to cover their basic living expenses. However, if social security policies provide adequate coverage, then farmers do not rely entirely on on-farm income and the likelihood of farmland reallocation decreases. Furthermore, the effectiveness of social security policies includes not only coverage but also the sufficiency of the security policies provided. Research limitations/implications First, the authors use only cross-sectional data in this study, which may result in biased estimation and also limit temporal examination of the impact of social security systems, farmland reallocation and related policy variables. This limitation may be especially important in China because the country is undergoing a rapid socioeconomic transition. However, the research is constrained by the available data. Furthermore, there could be endogeneity problems that are difficult to address, given the current data set. These problems could involve the impacts of village-level economic, natural and social variables, the implementation of related public policies (land development and consolidation, land expropriation, etc.) and other economic variables. Practical implications These findings may provide implications for related policy reform in the near future. Originality/value These findings may facilitate a recognition and understanding of the causality between social security policies and farmland reallocation in rural China.

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 647-661 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qiran Zhao ◽  
Stephan Brosig ◽  
Renfu Luo ◽  
Linxiu Zhang ◽  
Ai Yue ◽  
...  

Purpose The need for a universal rural pension system has been heightened by demographic changes in rural China, including the rapid aging of the nation’s rural population and a dramatic decline in fertility. In response to these changes, China’s Government introduced the New Rural Social Pension Program (NRSPP) in 2009, a voluntary and highly subsidized pension scheme. The purpose of this paper is to assess the participation of rural farmers in the NRSPP. Furthermore, the authors examine whether the NRSPP affects the labor supply of the elderly population in China. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses household-level data from a sample of 2,020 households originating from a survey conducted by the authors in five provinces, 25 counties, and 101 villages in rural China. Using a probit model and conducting correlation analysis, the authors demonstrate the factors affecting the participation and the impact of NRSPP on labor supply of the rural elderly. Findings The results show there are several factors that are correlated with participation, such as specific policy variant in force in the respective household's province, the size of the pension payout from government, the age of sample individuals, and the value of household durable assets. Specifically, different characteristics of NRSPP policy implementation increase participation in China’s social pension program. The results suggest that the introduction of the NRSPP has not affected the labor supply of the rural elderly, in general, although it has reduced participation for the elderly who were in poor health. Originality/value Several previous studies have covered the NRSPP. However, all previous studies were based on case studies or just focused on a small region, and for this reason the results cannot reflect the populations and heterogeneity of rural areas. Therefore, a data set with a large sample size is used in this paper to provide a new perspective to fully understand the participation of NRSPP and its impacts on rural households. This paper will make an update contribution to the literature in the area of pension programs in China.


2019 ◽  
Vol 121 (5) ◽  
pp. 1088-1100
Author(s):  
Yuying Liu ◽  
Alan Renwick ◽  
Xinhong Fu

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of off-farm income on food expenditure, using survey data of 493 rural households from Gansu, Henan and Shandong provinces in China. Design/methodology/approach A two-stage least squares estimator is used to jointly estimate the determinants of off-farm income and the direct impact of off-farm income on food expenditure while controlling for the endogeneity issue associated with off-farm income variable. Findings The empirical results show that gender, education of household head, household size, farm size, the presence of children, smartphone use and asset ownership mainly determine off-farm income, and the off-farm income affects food expenditure of rural households significantly. In particular, the results show that a 1,000 yuan increase in per capita off-farm income increases per capita food expenditure by 61 yuan. Further estimations reveal that off-farm income has a larger effect on food expenditure of high-income rural households relative to their low-income counterparts. Originality/value Although poverty implications of off-farm income have been well documented, few studies have analysed the effects of off-farm income on food expenditure of rural households. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there are no studies on this issue that focus on rural China. Therefore, the present study attempts to provide a first insight into the association between off-farm income and food expenditure of rural households in China, with the aim of providing useful evidence for policymakers in their efforts to reduce rural and urban food consumption gap and further increase social welfare.


2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuxin Wang ◽  
Qing Liu ◽  
Yanrui Wu ◽  
Huaqing Wu

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate how different types of the village relationship influence different types of public goods provision in rural China. Design/methodology/approach The three components (clan-based relationship, neighborhood relationship and external relationship) were derived by employing factor analysis. The simultaneous discrete choice model was used to estimate the influence of these components on public goods provision, using the survey data from the China Household Income Project conducted in 2007. Findings The findings indicate that considering different components of village relationship allows for a better understanding of the public good provision. The results indicate that the neighborhood relationship has a significantly positive effect on rural public goods provision, particularly on water conservancy and irrigation, while the external relationship has a significantly positive effect on all types of public goods. Practical implications Local public goods provision is the core of the new rural construction in China. These findings imply that relationship in villages plays a vital role in the provision of public goods and is necessary in the construction of the new harmonious countryside in China. The results also have implications for rural public goods provision in other developing countries. Originality/value To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to quantitatively model the impact of different relationships on public goods provision at the rural level. A consideration of the different components in village relationship allows for a more precise understanding of the pubic goods provision in the village.


2019 ◽  
Vol 79 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdul-Hanan Abdallah ◽  
Micheal Ayamga ◽  
Joseph A. Awuni

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is twofold: to determine the factors contributing to farm income in the Transitional and Savanna zones of Ghana and to ascertain variations between in the same and across the two locations; and to determine the impact of credit on farm income in each of the two zones and to ascertain the variation in impact of credit across the two locations.Design/methodology/approachIn order to address endogeneity and sample selection bias, the authors draw from the theory of impact evaluation in nonrandom experiment, employing the endogenous switching regression (ESR) while using the propensity score matching (PSM) to check for robustness of the results.FindingsThe results show significant mean differences between some characteristics of households that have access to credit and those that did not have access. Further, the results revealed farm size, labor; gender, age, literacy, wealth and group membership as the significant determinants of both credit access and income in the two zones. With the ESR, credit access increases households farm income by GH¢206.56/ha and GH¢39.74/ha in the Transitional and Savanna zones, respectively, but with the PSM, credit increases farm income by GH¢201.50 and GH¢45.69 and in the Transitional and Savanna, respectively.Research limitations/implicationsThe mean differences in characteristics of the households revealed the presence of selection bias in the distribution of household’s covariates in the two zones. The results further indicate the importance of productive resources, information and household characteristics in improved access to credit and farm income. Also, the results from both methods indicate that credit access leads to significant gains in farm income for households in both zones. However, differences exist in the results of PSM and that of the ESR results.Practical implicationsThe presence of selection bias in the samples suggests that the use of ESR and PSM techniques is appropriate. Further, the results suggesting that enhanced credit access and farm income could be attained through improved access to household resources and information. The results also suggest the need for establishing and expanding credit programs to cover more households in both zones. The differential impact of credit between the two methods employed in each zone revealed the weakness of each model. The low values from PSM could indicate the presence of selection bias resulting from unobservable factors whiles the high values from the ESR could stem from the restrictive assumption of the model. This reinforces the importance of combining mixed methods to check robustness of results and to explore the weakness of each method employed.Originality/valueThe novelty of this study lies in the use of a very extensive and unique data set to decompose the determinants of credit access and farm income and as well as the impacts of credit into zones.


2015 ◽  
Vol 42 (12) ◽  
pp. 1071-1089
Author(s):  
Alan Chan ◽  
Bruce G. Fawcett ◽  
Shu-Kam Lee

Purpose – Church giving and attendance are two important indicators of church health and performance. In the literature, they are usually understood to be simultaneously determined. The purpose of this paper is to estimate if there a sustainable church congregation size using Wintrobe’s (1998) dictatorship model. The authors want to examine the impact of youth and adult ministry as well. Design/methodology/approach – Using the data collected from among Canadian Baptist churches in Eastern Canada, this study investigates the factors affecting the level of the two indicators by the panel-instrumental variable technique. Applying Wintrobe’s (1998) political economy model on dictatorship, the equilibrium level of worship attendance and giving is predicted. Findings – Through various simulation exercises, the actual church congregation sizes is approximately 50 percent of the predicted value, implying inefficiency and misallocation of church resources. The paper concludes with insights on effective ways church leaders can allocate scarce resources to promote growth within churches. Originality/value – The authors are the only researchers getting the permission from the Atlantic Canada Baptist Convention to use their mega data set on church giving and congregation sizes as per the authors’ knowledge. The authors are also applying a theoretical model on dictatorship to religious/not for profits organizations.


2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaoying Yu ◽  
Qi Liao

Purpose – Passwords have been designed to protect individual privacy and security and widely used in almost every area of our life. The strength of passwords is therefore critical to the security of our systems. However, due to the explosion of user accounts and increasing complexity of password rules, users are struggling to find ways to make up sufficiently secure yet easy-to-remember passwords. This paper aims to investigate whether there are repetitive patterns when users choose passwords and how such behaviors may affect us to rethink password security policy. Design/methodology/approach – The authors develop a model to formalize the password repetitive problem and design efficient algorithms to analyze the repeat patterns. To help security practitioners to analyze patterns, the authors design and implement a lightweight, Web-based visualization tool for interactive exploration of password data. Findings – Through case studies on a real-world leaked password data set, the authors demonstrate how the tool can be used to identify various interesting patterns, e.g. shorter substrings of the same type used to make up longer strings, which are then repeated to make up the final passwords, suggesting that the length requirement of password policy does not necessarily increase security. Originality/value – The contributions of this study are two-fold. First, the authors formalize the problem of password repetitive patterns by considering both short and long substrings and in both directions, which have not yet been considered in past. Efficient algorithms are developed and implemented that can analyze various repeat patterns quickly even in large data set. Second, the authors design and implement four novel visualization views that are particularly useful for exploration of password repeat patterns, i.e. the character frequency charts view, the short repeat heatmap view, the long repeat parallel coordinates view and the repeat word cloud view.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ata Al Shraah ◽  
Ayman Abu-Rumman ◽  
Faisal Al Madi ◽  
Fawwaz Ali Farhan Alhammad ◽  
Ayah Ahmad AlJboor

PurposeThis study aimed to investigate the impact of total quality practices on knowledge management (KM) processes across a Social Security Corporation (SSC) in Jordan and explore the best approach to improve KM processes using quality management.Design/methodology/approachThis study followed a quantitative methodology: a conceptual model was developed based on an extensive review of the related literature; an online survey was developed and distributed using the SSC's intranet; and 384 surveys were completed and used in the statistical analysis. The two-stage approach of structural equation modeling (SEM) was employed to analyze and interpret the data, and was used to validate the conceptual model of this research.FindingsBased on the statistical analysis it was found that six out of seven independent factors relating to quality management practices were confirmed to have a significant impact on the knowledge management processes (KMPs). Building upon the findings an agenda for improving KM processes using quality management is proposed.Originality/valueThis study was conducted in one organization namely the SSC because it is the largest public service organization in Jordan and offers compulsory services. The inclusion of other public organizations and companies may reflect different findings. Future research may collect data from other service industries to get a more comprehensive perspective from developing countries such as Jordan. Moreover, the population of this study included only the General Director, General Director Assistants, and Administrative Managers. Front-line employees were excluded from the data collection because the study was conducted solely from a managerial perspective.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lishuang Wang ◽  
Fan Zhang ◽  
Zehao Wang ◽  
Qiu Tan

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to propose and verify the influence mechanism of various kinds of infrastructure investment on farmers' income in rural China. It further analyzes the effect of rural infrastructure investment on rural economic transformation.Design/methodology/approachThis research is used to GMM model to verify the relationship between infrastructure investment and farmers' income; furthermore, the mediating effect model is used to verify the linear conduction mechanism, and panel threshold model is used to verify the nonlinear conduction mechanism.FindingsThe results show that: (1) Rural infrastructure investment can indirectly affect farmers' income by changing land efficiency and land use structure; (2) The impact of infrastructure investment on farmers' income is nonlinear; (3) Increasing infrastructural investment of productivity and transportation will contribute to accelerating the transformation of rural economy.Originality/valueThis paper expands the research on the impact of rural infrastructure investment on farmers' income; it analyzes the inner mechanism and enriches the research contents in this field; the influence of various infrastructure investment on rural economic transformation is further discussed; it provides policy suggestions and theoretical basis for accelerating the transformation of China's rural economy.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ying Zhang ◽  
Yuran Li ◽  
Mark Frost ◽  
Shiyu Rong ◽  
Rong Jiang ◽  
...  

PurposeThis paper aims to examine the critical role played by cultural flow in fostering successful expatriate cross-border transitions.Design/methodology/approachThe authors develop and test a model on the interplay among cultural intelligence, organizational position level, cultural flow direction and expatriate adaptation, using a data set of 387 expatriate on cross-border transitions along the Belt & Road area.FindingsThe authors find that both organizational position level and cultural flow moderate the relationship between cultural intelligence and expatriate adaptation, whereby the relationship is contingent on the interaction of organizational position status and assignment directions between high power distance and low power distance host environments.Originality/valuePrevious research has shown that higher levels of cultural intelligence are positively related to better expatriate adaptation. However, there is a lack of research on the effect of position difference and cultural flow on such relationship. Our study is among the first to examine how the interaction between cultural flow and organizational position level influences the cultural intelligence (CI) and cultural adjustment relationship in cross-cultural transitions.


2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (5) ◽  
pp. 915-934 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gianluca Ginesti ◽  
Adele Caldarelli ◽  
Annamaria Zampella

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyse the impact of intellectual capital (IC) on the reputation and performance of Italian companies. Design/methodology/approach The paper exploits a unique data set of 452 non-listed companies that obtained a reputational assessment from the Italian Competition Authority (ICA). To test the hypotheses, this study implemented several regression analyses. Findings Results support the argument that human capital efficiency is a key driver of corporate reputation. Findings also reveal that companies, which obtained reputational rating under ICA scrutiny, show a positive relationship between IC elements and various measures of financial performance. Research limitations/implications The study focuses on a single country; it is not free from the imprecisions of Pulic’s VAIC model. Practical implications This paper recommends companies that are interested to achieve a robust reputation should consider the human capital as a strategic intangible asset. Second, the results suggest that companies with an ICA reputational rating are able to leverage their intangibles to potentiate performance and competitiveness. Originality/value This is the first empirical investigation on the contribution of IC in generating value for corporate reputation. Additionally, the study contributes to the literature on the link between IC and performance by examining a sample of firms not yet explored in prior research.


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