The Impact Of Social Capital On Non-agricultural Employment And Wage Decisions Of The Rural Labor Force

According to the forms of capital, the scholars put forward another concept of capital, the social capital, besides physical capital and human capital. The social capital is a more abstract concept to understand, it is existing in the invisible social network among people, so it doesn't have the materialized carrier. Social capita could regulate people's social activities. For example, in the process of job hunting and job choosing, the job seekers will use their social capital intentionally or unintentionally in order to make others'actions beneficial for themselves.Promoting the non-farm employment of rural labor force and increasing the farmers'income, are the keys to solve the"San Nong"problem and transform the dual economic structure in China. China's labor resource is abundant, so promoting farmers into non-farm employment could also bring out China's comparison superiority on labor force. In fact there are a lot of difficulties to improve the two aspects, so it's a significant study issue in economics that analyzing the determinative mechanism of non-farm employment and its income.The influence of social capital on non-farm employment and its income was explored in this paper. The study intends to uncover the determinative mechanism of non-farm employment and its income in micro-level. The content framework of this paper is as follows:A basic introduction of the research background and goals was given in Chapter One, then coming with the literature review in following chapter. The historical process of rural labor employment, especially the process of non-farm employment, after the founding of New China, was investigated in Chapter Three. In Chapter Four, the concept of social capital was defined, the basal theories for this research was explained, then two theoretical models to analyze the impact of social capital, the non-farm employment participation model and the non-farm wage model, were founded. In Chapter Five, the idea of the two theoretical models was tested by using the survey data, the idea was confirmed by the evidence from China's farmer. Finally, the conclusion of the study and the policy suggestions were reached in the last chapter.This paper relied mainly on constructing model, using empirical analysis to conduct studies. The main finding of the paper is that the social capital has positive effects on the time and wage of rural laborer's non-farm employment. It is due to the other members in the social network could offer lots of supports on the rural laborer's non-farm employment.