Digital inclusive finance is an important policy for promoting rural industrial development in China. Can digital inclusive finance effectively contribute to the development of rural industries? What is its driving mechanism? Clarifying these questions can: (1) Release the value of digital inclusive finance; (2) Strengthen its driving role in rural industrial development; and (3) Implement the concept of inclusive development to give rural industrial subjects a greater sense of access and well-being. Based on the interpretation of the connotation of rural industrial prosperity, this paper constructs a theoretical framework of “digital inclusive finance—alleviating financing constraints—rural industrial prosperity”. Using the panel data of 31 provinces in China from 2011 to 2020, the study adopts the entropy weight method to measure the rural industry prosperity index; at the same time, it constructs a panel regression model to conduct benchmark tests, mediating effect tests and heterogeneity tests on the mechanisms and effects of digital inclusive finance to promote rural industrial prosperity. The article finds that digital inclusive finance effectively drives rural industrial prosperity; the alleviation of financing constraints plays a fully mediating role; the effect is significant in less economically developed regions. Therefore, this article proposes policy recommendations to advance rural digital construction, promote the digital transformation of traditional financial institutions, strengthen the regulation of internet-inclusive finance, and enhance the financial literacy of inclusive groups.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of New Rural Pension Scheme (NRPS) on the private transfer behavior of the non-co-resident adult children to their elderly parents in rural China, and hence address the income redistribution effectiveness of public program for the elderly in rural China. Design/methodology/approach: Pooled data from two waves of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study and the combination of regression discontinuity design and difference in difference method are used to perform the analysis. Findings: No evidence is found that pension payment from NRPS program does significantly crowd out the economic support from the adult children to their elder parents. The heterogeneous effects at different income percentile indicate that pension payment significantly increases the probability of receiving gross transfers and likelihood of the net transfer being positive for those elderly individuals with low income; in particular, the distinctive “family binding” arrangement may dramatically contribute to increasing the probability of receiving private transfers for the pension recipients. Originality/value: The empirical findings would have far-reaching implications for the efficacy of public transfer or re-distributive programs such as NRPS; for the rural elderly, in particular, the unique “family binding” mechanism under the NRPS program may have positive welfare effects on the intended beneficiaries. Furthermore, an understanding of the inter-linkage between informal arrangements of elderly support and social re-distributive program provides further insight into the design of social security systems targeted to the vulnerable group in developing countries.

Can the backward endowments of rural areas support digital village construction to attain the expected results? If the answer is yes, what are the mechanisms involved? Answering these questions is related to common prosperity. Counties are China’s frontline commanders, and the urban–rural income gap is a suitable entry point for observing the urban–rural digital divide; however, there is limited research assessing the effectiveness of digital village construction from the perspective of the urban–rural income gap at the county level. In addition, counties lifted out of poverty, as counties with worse initial endowments and as counties that should be most concerned with common wealth, are more typical for examining the effectiveness of digital rural construction; however, there are few studies on counties lifted out of poverty. Based on cross-sectional data from 865 counties in China in 2020, this study empirically analyzes the impact of digital village construction on the urban–rural income gap using an OLS model. This study also conducts mechanism tests and poverty benefit tests in addition to heterogeneity and robustness tests. The findings indicate that the development of digital villages lowers the income difference between urban and rural areas, and that the shift in the industrial structure is a key driver of this effect. Different construction dimensions have varying degrees of impact, with digital infrastructure and the digitalization of the economy having the most significant impact, the digitalization of countryside governance coming second, and the digitalization of countryside life having the most negligible impact. The impact is more pronounced in the central-eastern region of China and counties that have just been lifted out of poverty than in the western region and counties that have never been in poverty. The government will benefit greatly from this study’s understanding of the main themes, areas, and scope of digital rural construction, which will help to expand and further integrate the outcomes of reducing poverty and fostering shared prosperity.

As agriculture is becoming a less reliable source of income, many farmers are turning to other industries to supplement their lackluster profits from farming in a process known as farmers’ livelihood differentiation. Despite the existence of a voluminous literature on farmers’ livelihood differentiation, little is known about its effect on agricultural production behavior. To fill this knowledge gap, this study uses rice planting data from 537 Chinese farm households to analyze how farmers’ livelihood differentiation affects pesticide application among rural farmers in China. This study not only examines the effects of farmers’ livelihood differentiation on farmers’ pesticide application, but also underscores the potential pathways behind the effects of farmers’ livelihood differentiation according to land resource endowment via a causal mediation analysis. The results showed that (1) farmers’ livelihood differentiation had a direct effect on the amount of pesticide use. Compared to the full-time agricultural households, regular part-time farmers and ir-regular part-time farmers generally tend to use lower levels of pesticides. (2) The mediating effect of farmers’ livelihood differentiation on pesticide use was through land resource endowment. Compared to the full-time agricultural households, ir-regular part-time farmers reduce their pesticide use through maintaining better land resource endowment, while regular part-time farmers increase their pesticide application by maintaining poor land resource endowment. These results may provide important implications for policymakers to improve cultivated land protection policies and encourage the use of soil testing technology to determine the formulation of the fertilizer used in the agricultural ecological environment.

This paper investigates the impact of air pollution on the labor supply of the middle-aged and elderly in rural China. The results suggest that exposure to high concentrations of PM_2.5 has detrimental effects on working hours of the middle-aged and elderly. We further demonstrate the heterogeneous effects of PM_2.5 by income and geographic regions. In particular, people with vulnerable economic conditions are more likely than others to reduce their labor hours due to PM_2.5 exposure. Moreover, higher PM_2.5 levels affected people in Central and Northeastern China more significantly than those in other regions.