How has the new round of farmland certification in China affected farmers’ economic welfare?

Abstract

It is vital to evaluate the effects of China’s farmland certification programme on farmers’ economic welfare and clarify the impact mechanism. This paper uses the China Labour Dynamics Survey (2014, 2016),1 building endogenous switching regression and endogenous switching probit models to test the impact of the farmland certification programme on farmers’ net agricultural income and poverty status after correcting for endogeneity. A robustness analysis is conducted applying instrumental variable and propensity score matching methods. The results indicate that the farmland certification programme can significantly increase farmer households’ economic welfare, including an 83.10% improvement in agricultural net income and a 3.17% reduction in poverty. Farmland certification also prompts farmers to allocate more resources to agriculture and reduces poverty by increasing farmers’ agricultural income. This study presents a constructive evaluation of the performance of China’s farmland certification policy, providing a strong theoretical and empirical foundation and a useful policy reference for consolidating the achievements of poverty alleviation and effectively linking rural revitalisation.