Research On Rural Labor Force Allocation In The Regions Of Sloping Land Conversion Program

The harmonious co-existence between human and nature is an important issue of economic and social development in China.The Sloping Land Conversion Program is the deepest and widest range in the influence degree of our country's ecological restoration program.The farmers' survival and development in its implementation region is the key focus of people from all walks of life and the key part of the issue to be solved in.In the face of the urban and rural dual structure,and the pressure of ecological environment destruction,this research perspective focus on the labor force which is the most dynamic in the three elements of production,in order to discuss the reasonable distribution of the macro labor population and the micro farmers work time combined with the ecological problem in this region.In turn,on the one hand,the corresponding path and policy suggestions would be provided for our country forest rational allocation of rural labor force,and on the other hand,the new idea to evaluate the effect of the Sloping Land Conversion Program would be offered.In the whole process of this research,firstly we gave a review of the scientific inquiry literature,and the implementation of the Sloping Land Conversion Program.In addition,rural labor force allocation status in quo between subsistence sector(agricultural sector)and capitalist sector(non-agricultural sector)was analyzed statistically and calculated by econometric model through the micro and macro statistics field survey data.We analyzed the labor utilization in agricultural sector quantitatively to clear about the existence of the agricultural labor time redundancy and labor force surplus by Stochastic Frontier Approach(SFA).Then,we analyzed the configuration efficiency.From that,we could guarantee the rationality of labor force transferring to non-agricultural sector.On the basis of the above,the influence factors of rural labor time,the Sloping Land Conversion Program especially,were measured in both depth and detail by Panel Probit Model and Panel Fixed Model with cluster effect.Finally,under the premise of considering the food security problem,we used Panel Simultaneous Equations and Panel Threshold Regression Model to combine the rural labor force allocation in the non-agricultural sector and food production.According to this,more specific and reasonable allocation schemes were given and the distribution path was optimized.The main conclusions in this paper are as follows:Firstly,the degree of agricultural labor time using in the regions of the Sloping Land Conversion Program is low and there is still a large number of labor force surplus.Therefore,it is necessary for labor time to tilt to the non-agricultural sector.The utilization of rural labor time in agricultural sector is only 30.12%,which is above the national average.This shows that there is still a lot of labor surplus in agricultural sector in the regions of the Sloping Land Conversion Program.Furthermore,the conclusion of the Stochastic Frontier Model has been fixed according to the reference data in working days in available literatures to get the proportion of labor surplus,which is in the range of 59.28% and 31.83%.Secondly,improving the proportion of labor force in non-agricultural could effecitively achieve the efficiency of allocation,regardless of the farmers participating in the SLCP or not in the SLCP.And that was an important way to improve the configuration efficiency.The proportion of the input of labor time in the non-agricultural sector to the total labor input could play a siginificant role in promoting the efficiency at the siginificant level of 1%.Thirdly,the influences of family character factors,labor marketing factors,external environment factors are different for labor force participation and labor time supply in non-agricultural sector.From 1995 to 2014,the main reasons for farmers to choose whether getting into off-farm labor market and changing off-farm labor time supply are the head of the household's education,family population,familially per capita average agrarian area.The effects of agricultural subsidy per unit area,agricultural taxes per unit area and road hardening degree on labor force off-farm participation are significant,but on the contrary they affect labor off-farm time supply slightly.The age of the head of the household has the opposite effect,which is only positive on labor time supply significantly.Fourthly,there are different effects of the Sloping Land Conversion Program on rural labor off-farm allocation in the aspects of different areas,different participation years and different policy implementation stages.For our sample provinces,whether participating in the program or the area of participation both has significantly positive effect on off-farm employment in Sichuan,Jiangxi and Shaanxi province;it is contrary in Hebei province;it is not significant in Guangxi province.Moreover,the sustainability of the program's effect on off-farm labor time supply is not strong.To be specific,the effect is most obvious in first 4 years,especially in the fourth year.But there have been negative impacts since the ninth year.In the same way to the policy implementation stages,it is positive significantly at the first phase,negative at the third one,positive but not significant at the fourth one.Besides,the subsidies of the program are the coupling subsidies,of which the substitution effect is greater than the income effect.This kind of subsidy could improve the configuration of the labor force in the non-agricultural sector.Fifthly,there are differences on off-farm labor time distribution among the households with different grain planting areas.The conclusions of the Threshold regression show that if planting area is small,we should promote the transfer of the fragmented land or cover it into forest land to free the labor force and increase the off-farm labor time supply.And if planting area is large,we should ensure the labor supply in the agricultural sector,improvement of the agricultural labor productivity and then encourage the part-time work for farmers.Finally,rural labor force allocation should be different in different program areas.Through the classification regression results of different regions-east,middle and west,we find that the effects of off-farm employment on the grain output per acre area more negative in the east and the middle,in which the quality of the abandoned land is higher than that in west.For this reason,the labor force allocation path has been tended to improve the labor production efficiency in the agricultural sector in the east and the middle areas under the premise of enough grain production.However,for the west areas,which are ecologically fragile,labor transfer and ecological migration have to be considered mainly.Moreover,off-farm employment and off-farm labor time supply are also important to reduce the pressure of population on land,protect the ecological environment and raise peasants' income.