Population Preference Structure Change, Population Quality Dividend And China's Agricultural Development

Different from the traditional concept of demographic transition, the populationpreference structure transformation is a process in which the preference degree of future generations's quantity and quality is adjusted by economically rational decision-makers in order to get the utility maximization in a family.As the structure transition of population preference is a function of the degree of industrialization, industrialization makes the population quality preference has been strengthened, while the population quantity preference is weakened. Structure transition of population preference discussed in this paper in an industrial environment refers to the transition from quantity preference to quality preference.Intensity index of population-preference-structure-transition is invited to measure the degree of the demographic transition. In the process of population-preference-structure-transition, fertility rate is falling, which affects the inputting amount of traditional productive factors such as labor force, physical capital and land. At the same time, quality preference increases the investment in children's education and health care, improving the labor force quality, and human capital becomes the productive element replacing the traditional elements. Then this demographic change leads to the change of productive elements inputting structure. If we define the agricultural development as the change of agricultural production function by the change of inputting structure of productive elements, then new opportunity of agricultural development will be generated in the process of the structure transition of population preference. Under the background that China has entered the second half of the industrialization metaphase while the agricultural labor force is weakening, if we can excavate new ideas from the structure transition of population preference, making full use of population quality bonus to accelerate agricultural modernization will serve as a new thought on the development of agriculture.Classical agriculture refers to the pre-industrialization and the early stage industrialization, whose productive growth relies mainly on traditional elements such as the inputting increasing of land and labor. However, the inherent nature of land makes its increasing extremely difficult, and the increasing of labor input is relatively easy. At this point, peasants seeking to maximize their income prefer the expansion of population. The abundant labor force is a major driver of classical agricultural growth. Therefore, agricultural growth depending on the number of labor force is called population-dividend-dominant agriculture. At the mid-term stage of industrialization, due to agricultural labor force prefer non-agricultural transfer and the increasing of the raising children cost, rural population preference structure began changing from quantity to quality preference. Fertility decline caused the labor supply falling in agricultural sector, then large-scale physical capital was introduced into agricultural productive field. Relying on its strong productive capacity, physical capital gradually replaced land and labor force as the main driver of the growth of new classical agricultural, and the so called population-dividend-dominant agriculture was finally replaced by physical-capital-bonus-dominant agriculture. When industrialization entered into the later period, high rate of return of human capital further strengthened the preference of population quality, and the quantity preference nearly disappeared. On the basis of sizable stock and accelerated growth in the department of agriculture, human capital had become an increasingly important role in driving the growth of outputting, gradually replaced the physical capital and became the main engine of agricultural growth. Agricultural material capital bonus had lost its dominant position, and agricultural form eventually transited to the population quality dividend dominant stage, thereby completed an agricultural development. In order to verify the conclusion of theoretical analysis, the author makes empirical test on developed countries having finished industrial revolution, developing countries in the process of industrialization and the panel data model of China on agricultural inputting and outputting. The results show that agricultural growth of developed countries mainly depends on the human capital, and the population quality dividend dominant agriculture has already appeared. Agricultural growth in developing countries including China mainly depends on physical capital, and agriculture is still at the physical-capital-bonus-dominant stage, while human capital has made certain contribution to agricultural output, which heralds the agricultural form will develop to population quality dividend dominant stage.In the wake of the deepening of China's industrialization, urbanization and marketization, structure transition of population preference will further have a significant impact on the change of inputting structure of agricultural productive elements. Agricultural sector will present the following features:modernization of structure and factors, skewness of technological progress and human capital, large scale land management, enterprization of productive organization form, assimilation of agricultural income and non-agricultural income, agricultural community diversity, etc. Agricultural sector will finally develop into a small but strong modern stage, correspondingly, agricultural development form will also transit form the current material-capital-dominant style to a population quality dividend dominant style. By theoretical deduction and empirical analysis, we can expound a series of policy suggestions to promote the development of agriculture:the relevant government departments should speed up to unveil supporting policies of rural surplus labor force, to provide compensatory education policy for rural areas, to establish the policy platform benefit to large-scale land management, to strengthen the rural infrastructure construction, etc, in order to accelerate the structure transition of population preference and the agricultural modernization.