Digital financial inclusion (DFI) plays an increasingly important role in raising residents’ income levels and optimizing income structures. Using data from the 2015–2019 China Household Finance Survey (CHFS), this paper examines the impact of DFI on residents’ income and income structure from a microeconomic perspective using OLS fixed effects models and panel Tobit models. It was found that (1) DFI significantly raises residents’ income, increasing their total annual per capita household income by CNY4200, and increasing their annual per capita household wage income, business income and property income by CNY2430, CNY1030, and CNY450, respectively. In terms of different functions of DFI, the use of digital payment, digital lending and digital financing can raise the annual per capita household income of residents by CNY4250, CNY10,360 and CNY3050, respectively. (2) DFI increases wage income by enhancing residents’ household employment level, increases business income by promoting residents’ entrepreneurship, and increases property income by improving the financial market participation. (3) DFI has a more significant effect on increasing income for higher income groups as well as rural residents. The findings of this paper provide theoretical and practical support for optimizing the design of financial inclusion policies and exploring new drivers of income growth for residents.

The rural social security system is a crucial guarantee for the purpose of transforming agricultural production methods. This research assesses how the new rural pension insurance (NRPI) alters the farmers’ agricultural mechanization service (AMS) inputs. Using the 2016 and 2018 waves of the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), the study observed that NRPI significantly increased farmers’ AMS inputs. Participation in the NRPI could increase AMS inputs by 18.6% and 13.2% for households with and without elderly farmers, respectively. Both grandchild care and labor off-farm transfer were significant in mediating the relationship between NRPI and AMS inputs with elderly farmers, accounting for 13.72% and 9.13% of inputs, respectively. Furthermore, for families without elderly farmers, the mechanism tests suggest that the crowding-out effect of labor off-farm transfer was a fundamental transmission mechanism for the NRPI to contribute to the increase in AMS inputs, with a proportion value of 15.41%. Additionally, the heterogeneity analysis demonstrated that for households with elderly farmers, the NRPI had a more evident effect on the AMS inputs of the farmers with grandchild care, as well as a low proportion of non-agricultural labor transfer and a high level of agricultural income. For households without elderly farmers, the NRPI’s promotion effect on the investment in AMS inputs was more significant when there was a low proportion of non-agricultural labor transfer and for farmers with low levels of agricultural income. The conclusion provides references for improving NRPI and promoting the promotion of AMS and sustainable agricultural development.

As agricultural labor shifted toward non-farm sectors and the farming population aged, innovative production arrangements became essential to sustain land productivity. While partial agricultural production chain management (PAPM) was widespread, the productivity impact of whole-process agricultural production chain management (WAPM)—a comprehensive model integrating all production stages—remained empirically underexplored. Using nationally representative panel data from the China Labor-force Dynamics Survey (CLDS, 2014–2018) for grain-producing households, this study estimates the differential impacts of WAPM and PAPM with a two-way fixed-effects (TWFE) model, supplemented by propensity score matching (PSM) as a robustness check. The results show that WAPM significantly enhanced land productivity. Notably, the effect size of WAPM (coefficient: 0.486) is substantially larger than that of PAPM (coefficient: 0.214), indicating that systematic integration of service chains offers superior efficiency gains over fragmented outsourcing. Mechanism analysis suggests that WAPM improves productivity primarily by alleviating labor constraints and mitigating the disadvantages of small-scale farming. Furthermore, heterogeneity analysis demonstrated that these benefits are amplified in major grain-producing regions and hilly areas. These findings support policies that facilitate a transition from single-link outsourcing toward whole-process integrated service provision.