Development of the Farmland Transfer Market, Farmer Hierarchy Differentiation and Selection of Old-Security Mode: An Empirical Study Based on Farmer Questionnaire Survey in the Eastern Region of China
农地流转市场发育、农民阶层分化与农民养老保障模式选择——基于我国东部地区农户问卷调查的实证研究

Development of the farmland transfer market could be greatly beneficial in market allocation of land resources. However, because of the dual functions of farmland resources, the development of the farmland transfer market and farmer hierarchy differentiation necessarily affect the mode of old-age security for farmers. With the development of the farmland transfer market, the security function of farmland is gradually infirm because of changes in the policy environment and development of market economy, and represents the multiplicity of avail for farmers on the macro-environment. This change affects the intrinsic old-security system, gradually forming the coexisting condition of family old-security, self old- security and social old-security, especially for different hierarchies of farmers. Because of the differentiation of career and income, they have different demands for old-security and ability to pay. This paper puts forward the following hypothesis: the higher the degree of the farmland transfer market, the higher possibility the farmers are inclined to choose the social old-security. There is correlation between the development of the farmland transfer market and the mode of old-security. Because of differences in stratum attribute, different hierarchy separates the old-security mode. Based on the measurement of farmland transfer market development and investigation questionnaire of farmers, the ordered probit model was employed to empirically analyze the influence of farmland transfer market development and farmer hierarchy differentiation on selection of old-age security. Results show that among numerous factors affecting the selection of old-security mode, both the development of the farmland transfer market and farmer hierarchy differentiation pass significant tests at levels of 5% and 1%, respectively. The more deviations from pure agricultural occupation, the higher possibility the farmer hierarchy tends to choose the mode of social old-security. If the development level of the farmland transfer market is increased by one unit, the probability of selecting the social old-age security will increase by 29.6%. Policy implications are given as follows: 1) perfecting evaluation mechanism of the farmland transference price, improving the level of the farmland transfer market, and increasing the income of farmland transference; 2) advancing the level of education and professional technology quality, providing technical safeguard for choosing different occupations, realizing the shift of agricultural surplus labor force, and accelerating the farmland transference; 3) integrating the urban social security system with the rural social security system; and 4) popularizing the policy of social old-security through diversified channels, building up the recognition of farmers for social old-security, and enhancing the consciousness of farmers for participating in social old-security.