The Peasant Rational And Rational Changing

The family is the organizational foundation of the peasant economy, the household economy is the material basis of the family reproduction and social production. The peasant household economic behaviour include production, investment, accumulation and consumption. For a long time, the Chinese peasant family form a type of economic attitudes and behaviour, which includes regardless of the cost of labor input, high accumulation, low consumption and less leisure. The economic rationality and objective rationality common influence the family economic decisions and the behavior choice. The economic rationality means the family economic income should include the land income and the work income. In order to ensure the family basic life, the family must maximize use of the family labor. The objective rationality means the family ethics responsibility and the village social structure impact the peasants’living arrangements. When the peasants’ family make tradeoffs between the labor and leisure, between the work hard degree and the demand satisfaction, the economic rationality can not decide the behavior choice. The difference between the objective rationality and the economic rationality is determine the motivation of economic decision-making. The behavor choice under the economic rationality results from the survive pressure and the family economic spending pressure. The behavor choice under objective rationality results from the family ethics, moral rules and the village social structure.The Chinese peasant family economic behavior is impacted by the social and cultural factors, such as the responsibility idea, intergenerational ethics, endowment concept and the social competition and social public opinion within the village. All of this can impact the family economic behavior, then influence the input and output behavior, the way of resource allocation within the family. Under the support of the family ethics, the peasant family can engage in some economic activity which the economic rationality can’t explain, such as labor input regardless of the cost, keep low level of consumption, keep high replacement rate between labor and leisure. Further, the family will keep a high equilibrium between the the work hard degree and the demand satisfaction.The peasant family economic attitudes and behavior exist regional differences. There are two types of the economic behavor, savings type and modern-life consumption pattern. The northern countryside mainly belong to the savings pattern, which means the peasant family should pay more attention to labor production and accumulation of wealth, and through reducing overhead and leisure time to realize sufficient savings, then satisfying the familys’ large consumer demand. The central rural mainly belongs to the modern-life consumption pattern, in which the peasant family has low patience in labor input, the life consumption is important than the family savings. In brief, the life pattern is paying more attention to daily life than the savings. The differences between the economic attitudes and behavior mainly come from the family ethics and the village social structure. Inside the village society, different classes also have different economic attitudes and behavior. On the whole, the pressure of the middle class is higher than other classes, because the middle class keeps a medium level in the village social structure, which means the middle class face the pressure of the weak class and through own efforts to chase the uper class.In the current situation, the family economic attitudes and behavior have changed a lot. In the agricultural production and working in the city,the peasant family began to acculate the cost of labor opportunities, reduce labor input and work hard degree, then paying more attention to the short-term consumption and entertainment. These change are related to the peasants’rational, which means economic rationality prominent and the objective rationality weakening. The economic rationality prominent means the peasant family make behavior selection according to the economic cost accounting, and showing consumerism concept affected by the working in city and the urban consumer culture. The objective rationality weakening means the family ethics is receding, the family are not necessarily do their best to accumulate wealth and complete tasks in life for their children. On the other hand,the family began to pursue the short-time enjoy. In addition, the village social competition pressure weakening can also impact the family’s objective rationality. And, the village competition are changing from the morality competition to the economic competition.