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Impacts of Rural Labor Force Structure Changes on Approaches to Agricultural Technological Progress:Policy Options (No.259, 2021)
2021-11-09
By Zhou Lingling, Research Institute of Public Administration and Human Resources, DRC & Liu Huang, Guangzhou University
Research Report, No.259, 2021 (Total 6324) 2021-9-10
Abstract: By measuring the biased index of approaches to agricultural technology progress and analyzing the dynamic impacts of rural labor force structure changes on biased approaches to agricultural technology progress, it is found that China’s approaches to agricultural technology advance are generally biased toward the mechanical technological progress mode for saving labor and are featured by relatively high heterogeneity between different regions induced by agricultural technology shifts. The increased number of aging and women laborers has caused the changes in labor supply structure, which has further exerted impacts on such biased approaches. The age and employment structure and the number of farmers with higher education have made agricultural technological innovation approaches shift toward the biased mechanical technological progress mode, while the gender structure of labor force has somewhat slowed down the shift toward the biased mechanical technological progress. To adapt to the structural changes of rural labor force, it is necessary to strive to make breakthroughs in key and core agricultural technologies and advance mechanization based on local conditions. Agricultural technology R&D and application work need to show more concern to elderly and women farmers, and vocational education and skill training in rural areas need to be strengthened, in a bid to enhance rural human capital and provide application-oriented knowledge to farmers in terms of advanced agricultural technologies.
Keywords: rural labor force structure, rural technological progress, biased index
