Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the determinants and impacts of outsourcing pest and disease management on rice production in China. Design/methodology/approach: A multinomial endogenous treatment effects model which accounts for selection bias was used. Findings: The results show that outsourcing decisions are driven mainly by the size of the farm, the age of the household head and other household characteristics. Further, the authors find that outsourcing labor for pest and disease control has no significant effect on pest control cost and rice yields, though it reduces the number of pesticide applications. Conversely, outsourcing of professional services can increase rice yields by 4.1 percent, and at the same time it increases pest and disease control costs by 50.6 percent. However, it is found that outsourcing of professional services exerts no significant impact on the farm profitability. Practical implications: This study suggests that households with large farm size are more likely to outsource professional services and, therefore, service providers and governments should target those farmers to provide incentives and create greater awareness of the benefits from the outsourcing of professional services. Moreover, the increase in yields along with the government subsidy justifies the outsourcing of professional services by farmers. However, service providers and policy makers have a lot of leeway to come up with cheaper methods for pest and disease management in rice production. Originality/value: This study is the first attempt to simultaneously evaluate the determinants and impacts of outsourcing pest and disease management on rice production in China.

There is growing concern that farmland transfers lead to less agricultural investment, which may adversely affect agricultural productivity growth in China. Prior research has primarily focused on the differences between owned cultivated land and rented plots, but little is known about how farmland transfers between relatives, which are popular in rural China, specifically affect agricultural investment. In this paper, we present a conceptual framework of transaction cost economics to compare different contracting strategies in China's farmland rental markets. As farmland rental markets in China are immature, land transfer between relatives establishes bilateral governance, which has the advantage of addressing the opportunistic activities of both parties and can ultimately increase investment by tenants. Based on data from two waves of household surveys, we empirically examine the impact of bilateral governance on the application of organic fertilizer, an indicator for agricultural investment. Our findings show that apart from economic factors, kinship is important to the functioning of farmland rental markets in rural areas.

This paper evaluates the development impacts of migration and remittances in migrant source communities by applying insights from the New Economics of Labor Migration (NELM) theory to Ethiopia’s migration. Using household survey data, we empirically evaluate how household participation in migration arises and so that the subsequent labor losses and the influx of remittances affect income sources and asset accumulation of smallholder farm households. To account several econometric issues and consistently estimate the impacts of migration and remittances, we adopted three-stage least-squares method complemented with endogeneity and multicollinearity test. Besides, using logistic and multinomial logistic regressions respectively, we estimate the determinants of the household migration decision to have migrants, as well as the probability of the household to send out temporary or permanent migrants. Findings suggest that larger and wealthier households are less likely to have migrant family members, while households living below the poverty line, as well as villages with the highest unemployment rate, are the most likely to have both temporary and permanent migrants. However, a rise in months spent out of agriculture has a significant negative effect on crop income and asset accumulation, but only for permanent migration. By contrast, the influx of remitted income from migrants has led to increased crop income and asset values in the form of land and livestock holdings. Finally, this manuscript provides more comprehensive evidence by showing the net-returns of migration in terms of initial lost-labor effects and the positive developmental impacts that it produces varied for households with different types of migration and production conditions.

Objectives: In this study, the effect of WeChat use on the subjective health of older adults was examined.Methods: Using 2018 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) survey data, we attempted to rule out potential endogeneity bias by employing instrumental variable regression to estimate the effects of WeChat use on the health of older individuals. Mobile phone price was chosen as the instrumental variable, and the health of older adults was measured from two aspects: self-rated health and the Center for Epidemiological Studies of Depression Scale (CES-D10).Results: WeChat use has a significant positive impact on the subjective health of older adults and can significantly improve their self-rated health and mental health status. WeChat use has significant positive effects on the subjective health of both older men and women, but relatively younger older adults obtain more health benefits from WeChat use.Conclusion: The virtual social participation prompted by WeChat use affects the health of older adults. This finding provides a reference for promoting the active integration of older adults into digital life.

This paper, taking the middle-aged and elderly parents in rural families of China as the subject, studies the impact of children’s education on parents’ dietary nutrient intake. After analyzing the data in China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) 2011, this study discovers that China’s rural children’s higher educational level exerts a significant positive impact on the improvement of parents’ food consumption, nutrient intake and diet quality. This indicates that the improvement of rural education can be an effective approach to increase dietary nutrient intake of China’s rural population. The policy implication of this study is to further develop rural basic education, consolidate the coverage of compulsory education, and incorporate nutrition education into national education system.