The Empirical Study On The Impact Of Northeastern State-Owned Forestry Reform On Employees’ Economic

China’s state-owned forestry areas in the northeast have been facing "resource crisis, economic crisis" for a long time. In order to mitigate the dilemma and seek better development, a large number of reforms have been initiated. The reforms have an important impact on the society and economy in the northeastern state-owned forestry areas, and also provide a useful reference for the reform in other state-owned forestry areas in China.Based on the survey data of 1454 households in 24 forestry bureaus of three northeastern provinces, this paper analyzed the impacts of the reform on the households welfare using both the qualitative and quantitative methods. Firstly, this paper made a theoretical and literature review, and analyzed the four reform types of state-owned forestry areas in Northeast:household responsibility system in forestry management and protection, market-oriented forestry production, restructuring of processing enterprises and buy out the length of services; Secondly, this paper estimated the impacts of state-owned forestry reforms on employment, income and income inequality using methods of descriptive statistics analysis, IPW, Probit and Multiple linear regression model. The study found that these reforms in northeastern state-owned forestry areas have achieved some performances and produced a prominent effect on household economic welfare.Based on the descriptive statistics of survey data, it reveals the following trends:Firstly, the employment structure has changed obviously from mainly relying on forestry and state-owned enterprises to diversification of employment; Secondly, household per capita income in state-owned forestry areas has increased remarkably and income inequality of households is further aggravated; Thirdly, the income structure has changed significantly, the degree of reliance on forestry and state-owned enterprises has been decreased. It shows that the proportion of non-state-owned enterprises employment days in total employment days and non-forestry employment days in total employment days has increased obviously.Empirical results showed that the reforms have produced an influence to the different degree on the above changes in state-owned forestry areas. Firstly, household responsibility system in forestry management and protection has promoted the employment of forestry and state-owned enterprises, but also aggravated the households’income inequality; Secondly, market-oriented forestry production has introduced competition, reduced cost, improved efficiency, promoted forestry employment and intensified households’income inequality; Thirdly, restructuring of processing enterprises has changed the nature of enterprises and activated the market economy in forestry areas, promoted the labor force flow from the state-owned sector to the non-state-owned sector, increased households’income, the proportion of non-forestry income and non-state-owned income in total family income, but also increased the income inequality; Fourthly, buy out the length of services has promoted the labor force flow to non-forestry industry, and extended the employment area, which has a significant effect on households’income and income structure.Based on the above conclusions, the paper draws the following implications:Firstly, there are a large number of institutions innovations in the northeast state-owned forestry areas which have played a positive role in increasing the employees’welfare, and these innovations should be taken as the practical basis for the developments of formal reform policy in state-owned forestry areas; Secondly, reforms improve the extent of resources allocation by markets, while they also can widen the income gap and aggravate the polarization in forestry areas. Therefore, the government should provide policy priority to social security in order to balance justice and efficiency.