Employment Strategy And Labor Flow Of Chinese Peasant Household Under The Restriction Of Policy

Since the reform and opening policy was implemented 30 years before,great changes have taken place in rural China and the concerning problems have been increasingly paid attention to.Among them,issues like "three—dimensional rural problems" - the "issue of farmers' income",the "issue of rural development",and the "issue of agricultural development" have become the central issue in the policy study and academic research.Since the issues of "sannong wenti" are closely connected with the farmers,the author of the thesis argues that the key to solve these problems is to increase the farmers' income.Such increase must be considered as the starting point and the objective in rural management of the government.Furthermore,farmers' income is much related to the source of income,and empirical data show that most farmers' income is from labor.Therefore,labor employment has become the key factor in increasing farmers' income.Consequently,a proper perspective should be taken to explore the farmers' behavior in labor employment during the studies.Based on the arguments mentioned above,the analyses of peasant household,and the source and increase of their income stream,this thesis,focusing on the employment decision-making and labor force flow,makes an analysis not only of the behavior evolution since the reform about farmer employment and rural labor flow,but also the evolutionary law and characteristics about the corresponding policy and system.Applying both static and dynamic analytic routes and using the materials of rural fieldwork and the household tracking survey in Hubei,the author does a thorough research on the influential factors of peasant household employment decision-making and the labor force flow and carries out a meticulous analysis of the above behaviors under policy restriction.The research also tries to offer basic information to the in-depth understanding of the farmer employment and government behavior and its policies.From the theoretical level,the thesis gives answers to the following questions:①why could such rational farmer employment behavior take shape since the reform?②what is the decision-making mechanism of obtaining off-farm employment?③how do policy system and other economic social factors influence farmer's employment and flow behavior? And so on.The thesis also provides substantial solutions to farmer employment behavior since the reform,train of thought on policies,and how the future policy can perfect and broaden the peasants' employment means,promote their employment level,and continuously increase their income.The thesis is made up of 6 chapters.According to the description of the research theory and the foundation of the realistic background,Chapter 1 first puts forward the core problem:the impact factor of peasant household employment decision-making and labor flow behavior,and the policy restriction to the decision-making.Then a literature review is made and the train of thought,methods, and substantial data of the research are introduced.Chapter 2 brings up the theoretical analysis framework.First,it defines four pairs of important concepts,that is,peasant household and household family,employment decision-making and employment choosing,labor flow and labor movement, policy restriction and stipulation restriction.Next,this chapter raises the research framework---the Chicago Theory Analysis Frame,which my research is based on this frame but not rigidly adhere to. After that,the research is carded out by using both static and dynamic routes.Finally,the basic hypothesis of the full essay is put forward.Based on the tracking survey in Hubei,Chapter 3 focuses on the Chinese peasant household employment decision-making and its impact factor.Chapter 4 makes a study on labor flow behavior and its impact factor.Chapter 5 makes a detailed analysis on the household employment decision-making and labor flow which both are under the particular policy restriction.At last,Chapter 6 makes a conclusion of the research and provides suggestions on policies.This thesis uses a huge amount of peasant household investigation data to make a detailed analysis of the household family employment decision-making and the labor flow behavior,as well as the functional mechanism from policies.The innovations of this thesis are as follows:(1)The innovation of the study angle:The thesis carries out the analysis of household employment decision-making and the labor flow behavior on the peasant household family level. Adopting the behavior analysis frame of family overall efficiency maximization,the thesis studies the household family internal mechanism of labor employment decision-making.Hence,it carries out a research on interacted society employment decision-making behavior.With a basic angle of household family level,this research which deals with the rural labor employment and flow is thus quite different from the literature which focuses more on the macroscopic angle or the labor force individual angle.(2)The innovation of research method:In the progress of investigation on the spot,the author uses the profound-interview method,individual case investigation method and core problem discussion method.What's more,the author makes a clear investigation of all kinds of household employment decision behavior in the detailed analysis.While doing the individual case analysis,the author uses cross section data,inquisitional peasant household panel data and time sequence data to carry out a static and dynamic calculating analysis on the household employment decision-making and the labor flow behavior.In order to make a special calculating analysis of household dynamic employment decision-making and its various influential factors,the Dynamic Panel Data Multinomial Discrete Choice Model is used,which is also the first time that it is used in launching a thorough investigation of such behavior among domestic scholars.As for the analysis of the policy restriction, comprehensive inductive method is applied to abstract and carry out a classification research on the policies which influence household employment decision-making and labor flow behavior.Generally speaking,this evidential study makes a breakthrough on the present situation of concentrating on static analytical method in this field.(3)The thesis uses the analytical basic frame of family economic behavior.It is the first time that a research has carded out such detailed analysis on peasant household family employment decision-making with different economic conditions and the game theory mechanism of their participation in the village social interaction.It argues that peasant households under different economic conditions differ in external behavior characteristics according to their rational employment decision-making behavior.Based on different economic conditions and feature of acting,the basic types of peasant household are divided as:the survival-pressure type,the benefit-pursuing type,and the economy-developed type.In addition,the thesis also holds that peasant household family not only takes part in the internal division of labor and work,but also participates in the interact game of the village community as a whole.As the improvement of peasant household's relative economy condition in the village,the families' benefit of the interactive game with neighbors(including material and non-material comprehensive benefit)has increased.And as the lower-effect family transforms into a higher one,the mechanism also converts from "adjustment" and "pursuit" into "inertia".(4)Using the dynamic econometrics' analytical method,the thesis raises a new understanding about the characteristic of the Chinese farmer employment behavior.The author believes that peasant household economic organization,which is surrounded by the changing macro-environment,is a complete economic system.My research shows that the employment decision-making system of household family turns out to be stable and "state dependence".Nowadays, a trend of "two-end rigid village employment" has taken shape in Chinese rural areas.To be more specific,at one end of the rural employment mind-set,there is a kind of peasant household that has strong native complex and lives on agricultural production.So far,in spite of the decreasing number, those household families still stably maintain their employment behavior.At the other end,peasant households who have experience in non-agricultural business or off-farm employment,show a stronger and stronger trend of "non-agricultural" employment trend.With a majority of the households at the two ends and a comparative minority in the middle state,a rural labor "rigid" employment characteristic is formed.(5)It is the first time that a thesis has used the social multiple effect to do the research on the transmission mechanism of policy effects on peasant household employment decision-making.Having studied the effect mechanism of the peasant household employment decision-making under particular policy restrains,the author reveals the effect degree of marginal variety on the policy of one peasant household employment decision-making and labor flow behavior. Based on the research of the rural social interactive behavior,a new explaining theory about how policy factors penetrate into the groups of rural communities is carried out by this thesis.The research shows that,because of the impact of social interactive behavior,when the effect of certain peasant household community's group behavior on the employment decision-making grows stronger,the communication between the households will become closer.Consequently,the group's social multiple effect becomes greater,the interactive penetrating strength of the policy's effect on the whole community also becomes stronger and the policy effect more widely known.(6)For the first time a thesis with a dynamic change angle,analyses the interactive relationship between the development law of agricultural labor employment policy,and its change of peasant household employment decision-making behavior since the reform.The research holds a view that since reform,the change of rural labor employment policy manifests three regular patterns.First,although the government's concrete policy measures,which aim at the social economic development and employment situation,has been changing in every period,the policy anyhow at every stage has followed the former one's direction in a certain aspect.Second,as for the trend of overall policy changes,with the passage of time and deepening of the reform,the government shows a more active attitude towards the farmer's choices about "non-agricultural employment inside rural areas" and "rural labor flow to cities".Third,the political system innovation,which has been carrying out since reform,is a process from bottom to top with strong driving force first coming from the farmers.The policy at every stage has made reaction to the farmers' employment behavior, although the reaction has lagged behind a little.During the interactive development of government's policy and farmer's employment behavior,farmers' practice always comes first,and follows the reaction of the government according to their practice as well as other social subjects.Finally,the government may restrict their activities on a macro-policy level.