Study On The Changes Of Farmers’ Welfare In The Rural Homestead Replacement

The policy that links the increase in land used for urban construction with the decrease in land used for rural construction brings us a new way, which can utilize collective construction land intensively and ease the intense situation of urban construction land shortage by the replacement and consolidation of rural homestead. As an important way to improve the degree of collective construction land intensive utilization, the rural homestead replacement project has been widely piloted in various places. The rural homestead replacement can encourage farmers to live together and improve their living environment, and it has already been a new direction for development of China’s rural areas in the future. However, the rural homestead replacement project is a double-edged sword, it can improve the living environment in rural areas and promote the integration of urban and rural development, but it also increases farmers’economic burden, limits the future development space of rural areas and hurts farmers’long-term interests. The thesis tries to use welfare to measure the impacts of homestead replacement on farmers’life. In order to find a reasonable way to protect farmers’rights and improve their welfare in the process of rural homestead replacement, this thesis quantitatively analyzes the changes of farmers’welfare before and after the replacement project and compares the impacts on farmers’welfare among different homestead replacement modes. The paper is aimed to provide reference for the government to develop a reasonable homestead replacement policy which can solve the problems that exist in current homestead replacements and protect farmers’interests of homestead.This paper mainly includes four components:(1)The current situation and problems of rural homestead replacement in Hubei Province are summarized after field research in nearly20counties where the replacement projects have taken place. First, depending on different organizational forms, it is divided into three types such as homestead replacement as government-oriented homestead replacement, enterprise-oriented homestead replacement and farmers-sponsored homestead replacement. Then some problems existing in most homestead replacement projects are found, such as the lack of unified policies which leads to large differences between different countries and a loss of farmers’interests, the difficulty to guarantee the quality of arable land reclaimed, the increase of farmers’economic burden, the lack of value-added revenue distribution mechanism etc.(2) On the basis of summarizing the basic theory of welfare economics and some previous studies, the thesis chooses Amartya Sen’s Capability approach as the basic of welfare measurement, and builds a welfare evaluation index system, then applies multi-factor comprehensive evaluation model and use objective and subjective method to determine the index weight (3)After a random survey of four counties in Hubei Province,101valid questionnaires are got. By using the welfare calculation method previously proposed, this thesis comes up with the following conclusions:the rural homestead replacement hurts farmers’ economic welfare, farmers rarely have the opportunity to decide whether to participate in the replacement subject, the changes of farmers’welfare are various among different replacement modes, and the enterprise-oriented homestead replacement does better in protecting farmers’welfare.(4)In the end, this thesis gives several suggestions:firstly, the government should respect farmers’ wishes and give the decision-making power back to them; secondly, open the details of the homestead replacement procedures to increase public confidence; thirdly intensify the promotion of enterprise-oriented homestead replacement. At last, the government should increase public investment in rural areas to compensate farmers’welfare losses in some other places.