Research On Farmers’ Behavior Choice In The New Rural Social Endowment Insurance And Influential Factors

Along with the rapid development of social economy and the acceleration of urbanization in recent years, a large number of young people have moved into big cities. The drift of young people has led to a serious problem of aging population in rural areas. Solving the pension problem of the rural population becomes the primary solution to the "three agricultural issues" in China. On September4,2009, after the State Council issued the Guidance on the Pilot Projects of New Rural Social Endowment Insurance, the national experiment sites of new rural social endowment insurance began to launch. The new rural social endowment insurance is characterized by its combination of social pool and individual accounts and its fund raising mechanism of individual payment, collective subsidy and government subsidy. By the end of July2012, the pilot work in Henan Province had reached a full coverage of the province’s159counties (cities). As the target audience of the new rural social endowment insurance, the participation of farmers can be regarded as the essential condition for the functioning and long-term development of the system. The payment levels of farmers are important indicators of the effect and depth of system implementation under this context. In order to guide the extensive and in-depth participation of farmers and to ensure the sustainable development of the system of new rural social endowment insurance, it is vital to understand the current situation of farmers’ participation, payment levels and their influential factors.On the basis of the accumulation of numerous related research and theoretical results, this research is going to analyze the current situation of farmers’ participation in the new rural social endowment insurance and their payment levels by taking the farmers in Nanyang City Henan Province as investigating objects, using Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Lewin’s Field Theory and Coleman’s Rational Choice Theory as the theoretical basis and implying a combination of both quantitative and qualitative methods.This paper is presented in five parts. This first part is an introduction to the research, which introduces the background of the study, the purpose and significance of the research, review of relative literature, theoretical basis, content, assumptions and research methods. The second part introduces the current situation of the surveyed areas and basic characters of the farmers. The third part is going to present the current situation of farmers’ participation in the new rural social endowment insurance. The fourth part conducts an empirical analysis on the participation and payment situation and payment levels of farmers. The regression result shows that factors of individual, family, neighborhood and policy will influence farmers’ choices of payment levels. The fifth part, based on the previous analysis, gives a conclusion that farmers’participation in the system is rational but their behaviors of choosing payment levels are not completely rational, and also provides recommendations to promote the development of the policy.