An Empirical Study On The Impact Of Non-Agricultural Employment On Poverty Vulnerability Of Rural Households In China

In recent years,China’s poverty alleviation work has made great achievements,2020 to achieve the goal of "all the rural absolute poor people out of poverty under the current standard" is a high probability event.However,the elimination of absolute poverty does not mean the end of poverty alleviation.Prevention of poverty return and poverty prevention should be the focus of poverty alleviation work in the future.At present,China’s poverty alleviation work is more based on the evaluation results of the current poverty status,which belongs to post help.But in the long run,we should not only know who is poor now,but also know who is more likely to fall into or maintain poverty status in the future,so as to prevent the occurrence of poverty well,which is the poverty vulnerability discussed in this paper.The key to poverty alleviation of rural residents is to solve the employment problem of farmers.Most of the previous studies have revealed the positive effect of non-agricultural employment on poverty reduction,but the literature on the relationship between non-agricultural employment and poverty vulnerability is relatively rare.Therefore,this paper takes rural families as the research object,focusing on the impact of non-agricultural employment on poverty vulnerability.In this paper,we use China Family Panel Study(CFPS)for empirical analysis.China Family Panel Study is a national and large-scale social tracking survey.Based on the data of CFPS in 2012,2014 and 2016,this paper establishes a three-year balanced panel data of 4983 rural households.Poverty vulnerability is defined as the probability of families falling into poverty in the future.Firstly,the vulnerability of rural families in China is measured by different poverty standards and vulnerability lines,using the commonly used vulnerability measurement method of “Vulnerability as Expected Poverty”.Then,based on the results of poverty vulnerability measurement,this paper analyzes the differences and connections between poverty vulnerability and poverty,the dynamic changes of poverty vulnerability,and the relationship between nonagricultural employment and poverty vulnerability.Finally,we use panel fixed effect model and panel logit model to empirically analyze the impact of non-agricultural employment on poverty vulnerability,and analyze the heterogeneity of the impact.The main conclusions of this paper are as follows: first,no matter what kind of poverty standard is used,from 2012 to 2016,the poverty vulnerability of rural families in China shows a decreasing trend,and the decreasing range increases year by year.This shows that China’s poverty alleviation work has achieved good results in recent years,and the "targeted poverty alleviation" strategy implemented in early 2014 effectively reduces the probability of rural families falling into poverty in the future.At the same time,there are still relatively "high" poverty vulnerable families every year,indicating that there is a gap in poverty vulnerability of different families.Second,analyze the relationship between poverty and poverty vulnerability.On the one hand,no matter in which year,the number of vulnerable families is greater than that of poor families.However,with the increase of time,the gap has gradually narrowed,which reflects the continuous improvement of the sustainability of poverty alleviation achievements in China.On the other hand,poverty vulnerability predicts the possibility of families falling into poverty in the future.According to the calculation,the accuracy of poverty vulnerability to predict the actual poverty of rural families is more than 70%.Third,the vulnerability of families in poverty in the future has a lot to do with the status of the base period.Non-vulnerable families have strong stability and can still maintain the non-vulnerable status in the future.For vulnerable families,temporary poor vulnerable families are more likely to be out of vulnerability in the following years;those chronic vulnerable families,who are in poverty vulnerability all the time,are prone to fall into vulnerability trap in the future.Fourth,descriptive statistics shows that the proportion of non-agricultural employment of rural families in China is increasing year by year,and most of the families participating in non-agricultural employment will maintain the status of non-agricultural employment in the future.The preliminary analysis of the relationship between non-agricultural employment and poverty vulnerability shows that the poverty vulnerability of non-agricultural employment families is lower and the annual reduction is larger.The change of employment type will make the family vulnerability change.Fifth,empirical analysis further found that non-agricultural employment can significantly reduce the vulnerability of rural households to poverty.The results of the benchmark model show that household participation in non-agricultural employment can significantly reduce poverty vulnerability by 1.1 and 1.5 percentage points under the standard of $3.1 and relative poverty,respectively.At the same time,under 29% of the vulnerable line,no matter what poverty standard is used,participation in non-agricultural employment can significantly reduce the probability of families becoming vulnerable families.The above results passed the robustness test.Further analysis of the heterogeneity of the role of non-agricultural employment shows that the effect of non-agricultural employment on reducing the poverty vulnerability of vulnerable families in temporary poverty is obvious.Under the poverty standard of $3.1 and the vulnerability line of 29%,the poverty vulnerability of vulnerable families in short-term and medium-term poverty can be reduced by 1.0 and 1.6 percentage points respectively,while the effect on vulnerable families in chronic poverty is not significant.At the same time,“working away from hometown” can significantly reduce the vulnerability of rural households by 1.0 and 1.3 percentage points under the standard of $3.1 and relative poverty,but the role of non-agricultural management is not obvious,which may because the nonagricultural management of rural households belongs to the category of "survival entrepreneurship",it is difficult to obtain higher returns,and the degree of operation instability is high.Based on the above analysis,the policy recommendations of this paper are as follows: first,when the government makes the poverty alleviation strategy after 2020,it is still necessary to continue to take poverty alleviation measures for the already out of poverty population,and pay attention to prevent the out of poverty population from returning to poverty.Second,when formulating the poverty alleviation strategy after 2020,the government should make efforts from the perspective of poverty vulnerability and prevent the occurrence of poverty before,rather than only after the occurrence of poverty.Third,when formulating the post-2020 poverty alleviation policy,the government should "give fish to the vulnerable groups of chronic poverty" according to people’s conditions,establish a stable "bottom line guarantee" for these groups,and pay attention to "give fish to the vulnerable groups of temporary poverty",promote their participation in non-agricultural employment,and provide them with more employment opportunities and equal institutional environment.Fourth,when formulating the post-2020 employment poverty alleviation policy,the government should provide various employment channels and perfect employment security system for migrant workers according to the type of employment,provide more financing services for non-agricultural operators,and establish risk sharing mechanism.