Farmers’ Welfare Effects Of The Rural Residential Land Circulation

With the advance of industrialization and urbanization, urban population is growing rapidly and the demand for construction land is expanding. Contradiction between construction land and cultivated land is increasingly obvious. Local governments are facing lots of pressure from economic growth. Meanwhile, due to the limitation of the different land policy and hukou (household registration system) policy, rural migration has not driven resource exchange between rural and urban area, which leads to extensive and insufficient use of construction land in rural area. According to current statistics,10% to 15% of the 200 million mu rural residential land is idle; moreover, the rural residential land per capita is far higher than the national standard. There will be even more idle land in rural area as farmers continue migrating to cities. Not only the government but also the farmers want to reclaim rural residential land in order to revitalize the stock of construction land and to capitalize farmers’ properties. Local governments had explored many ways to circulate rural residential land to redistribute rural and urban land resources; however, uneven regional economic development and land market evolvement leads to regional difference in circulation model and policy for rural housing sites, and also leads to unequal distribution of farmers’ welfare. Unequal benefit distribution causes social injustice and affect prevents the utilization of rural residential land. It is theoretically and practically significant to study the circulation of rural residential land and distribution of farmers’ welfare in different regions and different models.By combining relevant theories including land property rights theory, land rent theory, welfare economics theory, etc. This article defines farmers’welfare based on Amartya Sen’s Welfare Economic Theory, builds evaluation system for farmers’ welfare with the indicators of income, housing conditions, social security, living environment and psychological condition, theoretically analyzes farmers’ behavioral features and welfare variation tendency of rural residential circulation under different circumstances, including stratum differentiation, circulation patterns of differentiation, regional differences and land price changes. Meanwhile, based on dual attributes of government and the market, we furthered corresponding empirical research with the case of Wuxi, Chongqing and Guangzhou. The content mainly includes the following parts:1. Analysis on circulation patterns and policy differences of study area. This article applied different stages of economic development and diversity of circulation patterns, analyzed and compared changes of farmers’welfare under the circulation patterns of Wuxi’s "Double Land Replacement" policy, Chongqing’s Land Ticket System and Guangzhou’s diversified circulation methods and studied the statistical analysis result of sample’s survey data.2. Empirical study based on the survey. Based on the data obtained in 319 copies of questionnaires and the fuzzy evaluation model, this article calculates farmers’ welfare function changes and internal welfare gap of the rural residential land circulation. The results show that:i. Circulation promoted welfare function value from 0.383 to 0.518; ii. Five welfare indicators have improved to varying degrees, of which the living condition and the environment are the most greatly improved. Among sub-indicators, agricultural income, the Engel Coefficient, agricultural land, living space per person and air quality has declined due to rural residential land circulation.iii. Farmers’ welfare Gini Coefficient decreases after circulation, which means rural residential land circulation could eliminate the internal welfare gap in the short term.3. Regional difference analysis. After the empirical studies of welfare functions and welfare differences on samples of Wuxi, Chongqing, Guangzhou, the analysis comes to three conclusions:i. Before and after the transfer, and the more economically developed the region is, the higher farmers’ welfare will be. ii. Different transfer patterns lead to diversity in changes of welfare function. For the regions that have stronger government regulation, the enhancement of welfare function would be relatively lower. Meanwhile, difference in the way of compensation and the level of participation might lead to opposite direction of change of sub-welfare indicators in different regions.iii. Farmers’welfare gap will be increased if pushed by a strong local government, while circulation policy which respects the framers’ wishes can better promote the equity of internal welfare distribution among farmers.4. Finally, this article discusses future policy of rural residential land based on the goal to increase the welfare of farmers. The central government should improve laws and regulations, establish rural residential land circulation market, provide diverse circulation and compensation methods, and adjust policies to local conditions.