Impact Assessment of Farmland Lease-Out on Rural Households’ Livelihood Capital and Livelihood Strategy

Abstract

Rapid urbanization and the gradual disappearance of urban and rural barriers have accelerated rural surplus labor migration. This study focused on the rural household’s livelihood from the perspective of farmland lease-out. Using 382 rural households’ data in Jiangxi Province, we used the seemingly unrelated regression and binary logistic models to analyze the impact of farmland lease-out on rural households’ livelihood capital and livelihood strategy. The results indicated that farmland lease-out did not affect rural households’ human capital but had a negative impact on social capital, natural capital and future life expectation, and had a positive impact on financial capital and physical capital. Farmland lease-out had a significant negative impact on agricultural pluriactivity-type livelihood strategies, while having a significant positive impact on off-farm employment livelihood strategies. In addition, the scale of farmland lease-out had a positive impact on the off-farm pluriactivity and off-farm employment livelihood strategies.