Resumen de Relationships between labor migration and cropland abandonment in rural China from the perspective of village types

Dingde Xu, Xin Deng, Kai Huang, Yi Liu, Zhuolin Yong, Shaoquan Liu

• Cropland abandonment driven by urbanization and the massive outflow of laborers to cities is a widespread phenomenon around the world. However, few studies have used national large-scale sample survey data to quantitatively analyze the relationships between labor migration and cropland abandonment comparing village types. Using 8031 farm households survey data from 27 provinces in rural China, and dividing village types into mountain, hilly and plain villages, Iv-probit and Iv-tobit models were constructed to analyze the relationships between labor migration and cropland abandonment. The distance effect was also verified. The results show: (1) Farm households abandonment of cropland in all types of villages presents the trend: mountain villages> hilly villages> plain villages, where the proportion of farm households with abandoned cropland in these three types of villages is 8%, 13% and 17%, respectively. The cropland abandonment size in all types of villages shows the trend of mountain villages > plain villages > hilly villages. (2) Farm households’ part-time and off-farm labor migration in the three types of villages can significantly promote their cropland abandonment. This marginal effect presents the trend of mountain villages> hilly villages> plain villages, illustrating a certain "distance effect". Finally, this study discusses how to restrain cropland abandonment and puts forward some corresponding countermeasures.