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Migration, Local Off-farm Employment and Agricultural Production Efficiency: Evidence from China

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  • Yang, Jin
  • Wang, Hui
  • Jin, Songqing
  • Chen, Kevin
  • Riedinger, Jeffrey
  • Peng, Chao

Abstract

This paper studies the effect of local off-farm employment and migration on rural households’ technical efficiency of crop production using a five-year panel dataset from more than 2,000 households in five Chinese provinces. While there is not much debate about the positive contribution of migration and local off-farm employment to China’s economy, there is an increasing concern about the potential negative effects of moving labor away from agriculture on China’s future food security. This is a critical issue as maintaining self-sufficiency in grain production will be critical for China to feed its huge population in the future. Several papers have studied the impact of migration on production and yield with mixed results. But the impact of migration on technical efficiency is rarely studied. Methodologically, we incorporate the correlated randomeffects approach into the standard stochastic production frontier model to control for unobservable that are correlated with migration and off-farm employment decisions and technical efficiency. The most consistent result that emerged from our econometric analysis is that neither migration nor local off-farm employment has a negative effect on the technical efficiency of grain production, which does not support the widespread notion that vast-scale labor migration could negatively affect China’s future food security.

Suggested Citation

  • Yang, Jin & Wang, Hui & Jin, Songqing & Chen, Kevin & Riedinger, Jeffrey & Peng, Chao, 2014. "Migration, Local Off-farm Employment and Agricultural Production Efficiency: Evidence from China," 2014 Annual Meeting, July 27-29, 2014, Minneapolis, Minnesota 177591, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:aaea14:177591
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.177591
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Community/Rural/Urban Development; Food Security and Poverty; Productivity Analysis;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D24 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Production; Cost; Capital; Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity; Capacity
    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • O13 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Agriculture; Natural Resources; Environment; Other Primary Products

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