社会保障、信贷获得与农业生产——来自新型农村合作医疗制度的证据

Social Security,Credit Availability and Agricultural Productivity:Evidence from the New Rural Cooperative Medical System

随着中国工业化和城镇化的深入推进,农业劳动力的流失,农业生产中资本替代劳动力过程不断加速,但农民则面临着资本不足尤其是信贷获得困难的境遇。理论上,社会保障有利于提升农民信贷资质,增加其信贷获得,作用于农业生产。目前,鲜有文献探讨社会保障对信贷获得和农业生产的影响。为此,文章以新型农村合作医疗制度(新农合)为例,利用2010年中国家庭追踪调查数据(CFPS),从劳动生产率和土地产出率这两点切入,考察了新农合如何通过信贷获得影响农业生产。结果显示:新农合显著改善了农户的信贷获得,提高了劳动生产率,但对土地产出率的提升作用不明显。这表明,社会保障能够增加信贷获得进行资本替代,维持当前农业生产率不至下降甚至提升;进而,相比于粮食增产,新农合更可能有助于农民增收。文章明确了社会保障服务于信贷获得与农业生产的具体机制,为实现乡村振兴提供了新的视角。

With the deepening of industrialization and urbanization in China,the agricultural labor force loses and the capital-labor substitution in agricultural production accelerates,but farmers still suffer from capital insufficiency.Apart from income or savings,another important source of farmers’capital acquisition comes from the rural credit market.However,the credit availability for farmers has always been at a low level,along with the phenomenon of Credit Exclusion,one of whose explanations is that the limited level of social security,especially medical security,makes it inadequate for farmers to cope with health risks such as illness or work-related injuries leading to a higher risk of credit default.In theory,social security can help farmers cope with family risks,improve their credit qualifications,increase their credit access,and then affect agricultural production.At present,there is little literature discussing the impact of social security on credit availability and agricultural production.Therefore,this paper,taking the New Rural Cooperative Medical System(NRCMS)as an example,using the data of China Family Panel Studies(CFPS)in 2010,explores how the NRCMS changes agricultural production through credit availability from the perspectives of labor productivity and land productivity.The results show that the NRCMS significantly improves the credit availability for farmers and labor productivity,but has no obvious impact on land productivity.This indicates that social security can increase the credit access to capital substitution,and maintain the current agricultural productivity not to decline or even increase.Furthermore,compared with increasing grain production,the NRCMS is more likely to help farmers increase income.This paper clarifies the specific mechanism of social security serving credit availability and agricultural production,and provides a new perspective for rural revitalization.