Employment Strategy And Labor Flow Of Chinese Peasant Household: A New Explanation

Since the reform and opening to the outside world, great changes have taken place in rural China and the concerning problems have been increasingly paid attention to. Among them, issues like "three dimensions of agriculture-relation" (sannong wenti) - the "issue of farmers' income", the "issue of rural development", and the "issue of agricultural development" have become the heated topics in the policy study and academic research. Since the issues of "sannong wenti" are closely connected with the fanners, the author of the thesis argues 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. The issue of farmers' income is much related to the source of income. The empirical material shows that most farmers' income is from labor. Therefore, labor employment has become the key factor of increasing farmers' income. A proper perspective should be taken to explore the farmers' behavior in labor employment when the studies of such issues are carried out.The household contract responsibility system with remuneration linked to output being the basic economic system of rural areas, peasant household is the important basic economic organization in rural areas. In fact, the peasant household has become the basic decision-making unit in rural China. Therefore, this research is based on the examination of the decision made by peasant household. This research starts with the income flux and its source, and analyzes them according to the logic order of peasant household—income flux—employment decision-making— development of new income flux. And the focus is on the employment decision-making and labor flow behavior.The thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One is the introduction. On the basis of reality and theoretical research the fundamental reasons for the present lowincome of the farmers are illustrated as the insufficient employment and labor resources leaving unused or low-efficiently used. Therefore, the central issue of this thesis is the behavioral analysis on the basis of peasant household's income flux pursuit, strategy of employment and the labor flow. Then a literature review is made. In Chapter Two, the approaches to the research are put forward and basic terms concerned in this thesis are defined before the research methods and empirical data are introduced. Chapter Three is to study on the peasant household's income flux and the employment decision-making. Firstly, the peasant household's income flux and the employment decision-making are described and their features are made. Secondly, based on the data of peasant household collected in Hubei Province, the factors influencing the increase of the income flux and the employment decision-making of peasant household are analyzed from the perspective of micro level. Thirdly, from the perspective of dynamism, the theoretical model explaining the relationship between the income flux and labor decision-making of the peasant household is proposed and then tested with the data collected. In Chapter Four the employment choice and labor decision-making of peasant household are studied. By analyzing the present condition of the labor flow in the rural areas, the chapter focuses on the factors influencing the decision-making and the labor flow of the peasant household in employment. Then the model that governs the labor flow act of peasant household is proposed. And finally the model is tested with the time series data and case studies. Chapter Five is the conclusion of this thesis.Great sum of data colleted from the families of the farmers is applied to the analysis of the employment decision and labor flow of peasant household. The innovation of the thesis can be presented as the following:New perspective. With its focus on the employment decision act and labor flow act of the peasant household, this research is carried out from the perspective of peasant household, different from that of individual labor or an overall description in the previous studies.New research method. In the process of the field survey, detailed interviews,...