Research On Household Livelihood Strategies And Livelihood Satisfaction In Collective Forest Area

The collective forest area is a place which not only the distribution of the forest resources is relatively concentrated and its ecological location is very important, but also the economic and social development is comparatively underdeveloped. Since 2003, China began to implement a new round of pilot of collective forest right system reform then applied it nationwide in 2008. So far, the reform of collective forest right system has implemented for several years. How is the forest farmers’ livelihood situation? What does the change of the level and structure of farmers’ income? Are they satisfied with their living conditions? These questions are worthy of being considered. Based on the survey data of household, the paper uses two-step-cluster analysis to group households’ livelihood strategies based on the composition of their net income, taking Zhejiang which participated in the reform early as an example. On the basis of those, it makes an empirical analysis of the effect of livelihood capital on household livelihood strategies selection by using multinomial logit model. Then it builds an ordinal logit model to analyze the influencing factors of household livelihood satisfaction quantitatively so that evaluating the current situation of farmers’ livelihood in the collective forest area objectively. The results show that:(1) Farmers’ livelihood strategies in collective forests are becoming more diverse, non farm income becomes the main source of family income, and income difference is obvious in rural area. From the perspective of livelihood strategy, non-farm workers, crop-based farmers, business-based workers, households with transfer payment and households with diversified strategies take 35%, 25% 15% and 9% respectively in the sample household. The net income per capita of business-based workers is 3.7 times higher than that of households with transfer payment.(2) Human capital and social capital have a significant effect on farmers’ livelihood strategy type, thereby affecting the household livelihood, which is an important determinant of the rural household differentiation.(3) Though natural capital has a significant effect on farmers’ livelihood strategy, while the effect on farmers’ livelihood is not evident, natural capital has not played its role. The forest net income per capita is 856.8 yuan, accounted for only 7.32% of net income. The direct contribution of forestry production on household income is very small, farmers depend weakly on it.(4) In general, rural residents are satisfied with their living conditions in recent years, more than 80% farmers are satisfied with their livelihood condition, while only 19.2% are not satisfied. It shows that the effect of a series of national coordinating urban and rural development and agriculture policy began to appear.(5) Relative income becomes the most important factor in determining household livelihood satisfaction, while the absolute income has no obvious influence on the promotion of satisfaction. While other things remain unchanged, the index of relative poverty decreased by 1 unit, the probability of satisfaction will increase by 29.9%, the probability of unsatisfactory will decline 21.4%. Compared with the income change of farmers themselves, the probability of satisfaction is 14.4% bigger of farmers whose income increase than those of whose income has not changed, also the probability of unsatisfactory is 10.3% smaller.(6) Social capital and financial capital have a significant effect on farmers’ livelihood satisfaction, while the effect of human capita, natural capita and physical capita is not evident. It shows that social, financial capital and other modern livelihood capital has replaced the traditional livelihood capital(such as human, natural and physical capital), become the important factors affecting household livelihood satisfaction.Therefore, suggestions are as follows:(1) Paying attention to the problem of the rural household differentiation and income difference, strengthening and improving the rural medical, pension and other social public service supply, standardizing the management of rural minimum living security system.(2) Playing the role of livelihood capital, improving the structure of livelihood capital, enhancing the level of farmers’ human and social capital, promoting the transition of farmers’ livelihood.(3) Developing the ecological industry, realizing economization of ecological resources, innovating the rural land system, making full use of natural capital in improving famers’ livelihood, promoting the sustainable development of collective forest area.(4) Increasing the support of rural development, especially in central and western rural backward area, accelerating the equalization of the basic public service process between urban and rural, promoting vigorously the construction of small towns.