The Impact Of Health On Non-Agriculrural Employment

The transfer of agricultural labor to non-agricultural industries will be an important economic phenomenon in a long period of time in China. Non-agricultural employment plays a very important role in improving the income of the farmers, reducing rural-urban gap, promoting the urbanization process and improving the country’s comprehensive economic strength. To individual farmers, the behavior of non-agricultural employment is the competitive selection of human capital. Human capital includes health and education, training and migration as health is the basis for the other three parts. If people lose their health, their access to other kinds of human capital will be restricted. Besides, this restriction can not be make up alternatively by other means. Because one’s freedom and ability to choose has been destroyed from the bottom.Based on this, the study of health effects on non-agricultural employment has important practical significance. In the perspective of human capital, this paper describes the basic characteristics, the health status and the non-agricultural employment situation of the rural labor force in nine provinces of China, using China Health and Nutrition Survey Data in2006. Statistics found that the proportion of non-agricultural employment has increased. But there is a big gap between male and female non-farm employment levels. Male’s non-agricultural employment rate is almost double that of women. Then, the article explores the simple correlation between health status and the non-agricultural employment with indicators of different health dimensions. Preliminary analysis shows that non-agricultural labor force has a higher average height, a bigger average BMI value in male sample only, a lighter illness situation and a more optimistic self-reported health status than the agricultural labor force.In order to analyze the impacts of health on non-agricultural employment, Binary Probit Mode was used separately in three kinds of samples:total sample, male sample and female sample. The empirical result suggest that almost every aspect of health had significant impacts on non-agricultural employment:height has a positive impact for total sample especially for male sample to choose non-agricultural employment; BMI does not have notable impact for female sample to choose non-agricultural employment but has a positive impact for male; illness in a short term has a negative impact for total sample especially for female sample to choose non-agricultural employment; self-reported health has a positive impact for both male and female sample on non-agricultural employment.According to the findings of this research, the author advises that the government should not only improve the rural medical services and security system but also implement measures of rural children’s nutrition improvement to increase rural labor’s health human capital comprehensively.