This article analyzed the influence of increasing wages on cropping patterns from theoretical and empirical perspectives.The results showed that the increasing labor cost provided a significant incentive to adjust the...This article analyzed the influence of increasing wages on cropping patterns from theoretical and empirical perspectives.The results showed that the increasing labor cost provided a significant incentive to adjust the grain cropping pattern,which increased the production of the three major cereal grains but reduced the production of other grain crops.Increasing wages had a significant negative impact on cash crops.More laborintensive cash crops experienced a larger negative impact in the context of increasing wages.The increase in labor costs also had a negative impact on the proportion of vegetables produced,which was more evident in northern China.A further mechanism test indicated that factor substitution was a significant reason for cropping pattern changes;this illustrated the substitution of labor by machinery not only between grain crops and cash crops but also among different cash crops.展开更多
On the basis of Becker＇s family economics and the theory of time allocation, it can be shown that labor supply under labor surplus conditions is not unlimited. Under the constraints of intra-household labor division,...On the basis of Becker＇s family economics and the theory of time allocation, it can be shown that labor supply under labor surplus conditions is not unlimited. Under the constraints of intra-household labor division, the supply curve takes on a special staircase form： as labor supply increases, the reservation wage of rural labor rises by an ever larger margin. The response of labor supply to wages is discontinuous. Labor supply will increase only when wages reach the new level of the reservation wage; otherwise, wage increases do not lead to an increase in labor supply. Corresponding to this special form of supply, the major driving force behind wage increases becomes industrial labor demand rather than agricultural income. The data from a survey of about 1,500 rural households in Gansu and Inner Mongolia bear out the above proposition. When labor demand rises, slight wage adjustments will not bring a corresponding increase in labor supply and labor market clearing will not occur for a long time. This reminds us that the present coexistence of a shortage of labor with wage rises for migrant workers may well derive from insufficient labor supply under labor surplus conditions. It does not necessarily imply the exhaustion of the labor surplus and cannot serve to prove the arrival of the Lewis turning point.展开更多
基金the Major Program of National Fund of Philosophy and Social Science of China(No.21&ZD092)the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Nos.72161147001 and 72103134)the Research Program for Humanities and Social Science of the Chinese Ministry of Education(No.21YJC790139).
文摘This article analyzed the influence of increasing wages on cropping patterns from theoretical and empirical perspectives.The results showed that the increasing labor cost provided a significant incentive to adjust the grain cropping pattern,which increased the production of the three major cereal grains but reduced the production of other grain crops.Increasing wages had a significant negative impact on cash crops.More laborintensive cash crops experienced a larger negative impact in the context of increasing wages.The increase in labor costs also had a negative impact on the proportion of vegetables produced,which was more evident in northern China.A further mechanism test indicated that factor substitution was a significant reason for cropping pattern changes;this illustrated the substitution of labor by machinery not only between grain crops and cash crops but also among different cash crops.
文摘On the basis of Becker＇s family economics and the theory of time allocation, it can be shown that labor supply under labor surplus conditions is not unlimited. Under the constraints of intra-household labor division, the supply curve takes on a special staircase form： as labor supply increases, the reservation wage of rural labor rises by an ever larger margin. The response of labor supply to wages is discontinuous. Labor supply will increase only when wages reach the new level of the reservation wage; otherwise, wage increases do not lead to an increase in labor supply. Corresponding to this special form of supply, the major driving force behind wage increases becomes industrial labor demand rather than agricultural income. The data from a survey of about 1,500 rural households in Gansu and Inner Mongolia bear out the above proposition. When labor demand rises, slight wage adjustments will not bring a corresponding increase in labor supply and labor market clearing will not occur for a long time. This reminds us that the present coexistence of a shortage of labor with wage rises for migrant workers may well derive from insufficient labor supply under labor surplus conditions. It does not necessarily imply the exhaustion of the labor surplus and cannot serve to prove the arrival of the Lewis turning point.
