Land Retirement and Nonfarm Labor Market Participation: An Analysis of China’s Sloping Land Conversion Program

Peter Kelly and Xuexi Huo

World Development, 2013, vol. 48, issue C, 156-169

Abstract: China’s Sloping Land Conversion Program pays more than 32 million households to plant trees on highly erodible cropland, and has effected major land-use changes. Farmers retire land indefinitely but receive time-limited subsidies, after which they, in principle, enter nonfarm employment. We analyze annual data we collected on over 3,000 individuals and plots from 1998–2006, which contain variation in enrollment timing and alternative measures of enrollment, and conclude enrollment has a small but significant and robust positive effect on nonfarm employment. It arises not from alleviating constraints, as recent papers have suggested, but rather from simple farm to nonfarm labor substitution.

Keywords: payments for environmental services; off-farm employment; Sloping Land Conversion Program; China; East Asia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:48:y:2013:i:c:p:156-169

DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2013.04.002

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