The Empirical Study On Influences Of Farmers' Qualities On Their Education Decision-making For Family Members

Since the new century, the Party and the government have been attaching great importance to the "Three Rural Issues" (Issues concerning agriculture, rural areas and farmers), for "the No.1 Yearly Document" issued by the Central Commission of CPC for 8 years are meant to focus on the "Three Rural Issues". The "Three Rural Issues" are caused by various complex reasons. Besides the sake of social system and mechanisms caused by the dual economic-structure, farmers' qualities are also among the main reasons as well. But as to the level of farmers'qualities, final analysis in this paper shows that it is mainly determined by the degree of the government's emphasis laid on the education in rural areas.This thesis, through the literature review of rural labor capital theory, labor transfer theory, household behavior theory, education investment theory and incentive theory, conducts surveys of and collects statistics of farmer samples in Jiangxi, Anhui, Shanxi, Zhejiang and Fujian provinces. By using descriptive analysis and correlation analysis, this thesis later analyzes farmers'qualities like education level, health status and skill training, and influences of these qualities on the per capita net income of rural households and on farmers'cognitive characteristics, and then furthers the study on influences of these qualities on the education decision-making for the family members.Results show as follows:relatively speaking, farmers in eastern areas have both higher cultural qualities and per capita net income than those in the central areas; the higher of cultural qualities the household heads in eastern areas have, the more likely way of education they use to improve the education level of their family members, the higher probability of their employment engaged in non-farm industries, the more concerns their have about their physical health status, and the more tendency they conduct regular physical examinations; similarly, the higher the per capita net income of rural households in central areas is, the higher probability of engaging in non-farm employment the farmers have, and the more tendency they have the idea that skill training plays a greater role in their jobs; the greater importance of skill training the farmer household heads in the eastern and central areas attach to their jobs, the higher the per capita family net income they get, and the more actively they would participate in skill training to enhance the qualities of their own; while as for the education of their children, for farmers in eastern areas, there is a significant negative correlation between the cognitive characteristics of their attitudes toward schooling for their children and their own education decisions-making, but for farmers in the central region, a kind of significant positive correlation is showed here.According to the conclusions mentioned above, the paper puts forward three suggestions in the following:firstly, education in rural areas should be further strengthened, and the balanced development of elementary education should be promoted; secondly, the development of vocational education in rural areas should be accelerated, and the skills training for farmers should be enhanced; thirdly, both urban and rural development should be balanced with dual consideration for all concerned, and a kind of fund-safeguarding mechanism should be reconstructed to improve farmers'qualities.