How Do Climate Shocks Affect Farmers’ Welfare? Off-Farm Employment as an Adaptive Strategy in Rural China

Climate change has increased the frequency of extreme weather events, posing a major threat to the sustainable development of agriculture and farmers’ welfare. Based on provincial meteorological data and China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) data from 2014 to 2022, this study systematically investigates the impact of climate shocks on farmers’ welfare, heterogeneity characteristics, and the buffering role of off-farm employment, using a two-way fixed-effect model. The results show that climate shocks significantly reduce farmers’ welfare, with greater welfare losses in northern regions, major grain-producing areas, and plain areas. Extreme low temperatures, extreme high temperatures, and drought are the three dominant climate hazards. In response to climate shocks, off-farm employment effectively buffers welfare losses. This study clarifies the logic of changes in farmers’ welfare and livelihood adaptation mechanisms under climate change, providing micro-empirical support for improving differentiated climate adaptation policies, strengthening agricultural risk management systems, enhancing agricultural system resilience, and promoting high-quality and sustainable agricultural development. However, constrained by the matching precision between micro-level data and meteorological indicators, future research should further refine the measurement of climate shock exposure at the individual farmer level.