IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/jdevst/v62y2026i7p1189-1206.html

Livelihood Buffer Effect of Agriculture: Evidence from China’s Farm Household Survey During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Author

Listed:
  • Yuqing Yin
  • Jingming Liu
  • Xianhui Hou

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant effect on the production and life of farmers; however, research on farmers’ active responses to minimise losses is lacking. This study examines the buffer effect of agriculture on farm household livelihoods using probit, propensity score matching, entropy balance matching methods. The results show that average health level, farmland area, and number of productive assets facilitated the return to agriculture; whereas, it was inhibited by the number of farmland plots and household deposits. Farmers reduced their income loss approximately 29% by returning to agriculture. Mechanism analysis reveals that when farmers returned to agriculture, they improved agricultural production scale and intensification level to increase agricultural production efficiency, therefore contributed agricultural output and reduced income loss. Agriculture is a shelter and safe haven for vulnerable farmers in development, and fostering rural revitalisation is imperative.

Suggested Citation

  • Yuqing Yin & Jingming Liu & Xianhui Hou, 2026. "Livelihood Buffer Effect of Agriculture: Evidence from China’s Farm Household Survey During the COVID-19 Pandemic," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 62(7), pages 1189-1206, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:jdevst:v:62:y:2026:i:7:p:1189-1206
    DOI: 10.1080/00220388.2025.2604693
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00220388.2025.2604693
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00220388.2025.2604693?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:jdevst:v:62:y:2026:i:7:p:1189-1206. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/FJDS20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.