Household Livelihood Strategy Changes and Agricultural Diversification: A Correlation and Mechanism Analysis Based on Data from the China Family Panel

Jiguang Zhu, Yaru Sun and Yunxing Song
Additional contact information
Jiguang Zhu: College of Economics, Henan University of Economics and Law, Zhengzhou 450046, China
Yaru Sun: College of Geography and Environmental Science, Henan University, Kaifeng 475004, China

Land, 2022, vol. 11, issue 5, 1-18

Abstract: Social and economic transformations have a profound impact on farmers’ livelihood strategies, and changes in these strategies, in turn, deeply impact the agricultural system. Based on four waves of China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) tracking data, this paper uses a Markov transfer probability matrix to explore changes in farmers’ livelihood strategies and builds multiple logit and fixed-effect models to empirically analyze the impact and lag effect of these changes on agricultural diversification. The results show that (1) farmers who choose not to shift away from an agricultural livelihood show no significant change in agricultural diversification. Compared with households showing an increase in the agricultural diversification index, households showing a decrease in this index are more inclined to diversify if they choose to maintain an agricultural livelihood either part-time or full-time. For households with an unchanged agricultural diversification index, their index value is more likely to remain unchanged if they choose to maintain a part-time or full-time agriculture-oriented livelihood. Moreover, (2) the impact of livelihood strategy changes on agricultural diversification displays regional heterogeneity. The index value of farmers in the central region shows no statistically significant change over the sample period, while the index value of farmers in the eastern region increases. Farmers in the eastern and central regions with unchanged index values are more inclined to show persistent index values. (3) Changes in farmers’ livelihood strategies have a lag effect on agricultural diversification that becomes significant at two lag periods.

Keywords: household livelihood strategy; agricultural diversification; heterogeneity; lag effect; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/11/5/685/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/11/5/685/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jlands:v:11:y:2022:i:5:p:685-:d:808340

Access Statistics for this article

Land is currently edited by Ms. Carol Ma

More articles in Land from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().