The Impact Of Meteorological Risk On The Differences In The Regional Development Of Agricultural Insurance

Statistics show that since the central government introduced the policy of subsidizing agricultural insurance premiums,the types of subsidized crops have increased from five in 2007 to sixteen bulk agricultural products such as oil crops and natural rubber and more than seventy local specialty agricultural products,covering roughly the bulk agricultural products that involve national livelihood and food security of various kinds.At the same time,the state adopted different subsidy measures according to the characteristics of regions and types of insurance,and the subsidy ratio gradually increased.in 2020,China’s agricultural insurance premium income was 81.5 billion yuan,of which the national treasury at all levels bore a total of 60.3 billion yuan in premium subsidies,providing farmers with agricultural risk protection of 4.13 trillion yuan.Meteorological conditions are the main factors affecting agricultural production.Floods,droughts and other meteorological risks cause damage to agricultural output and restrict the development of agriculture.According to statistics,the area of crop damage in 2020 was 1995.77 million hectares,and the area of crop failure was 2.761 million hectares,and the direct economic loss caused by natural disasters was as high as 3.701.5 billion yuan,facing the increasingly severe challenge of meteorological risk.As an important link and powerful means of risk management for agricultural producers,agricultural insurance should match the risks borne by agricultural production.However,China’s agricultural insurance premium subsidy policy is simply based on the geographical division of the subsidy ratio,such as the proportion of central to local transfer payments and the proportion of local first subsidies are determined without taking into account the size of regional weather risk,which to a certain extent has led to a mismatch between weather risk and agricultural insurance development.Therefore,in order to contribute to the stable development of agricultural production,it is urgent to implement a differentiated agricultural insurance development strategy based on the principle of "local adaptation".In this study,we use agricultural statistics and insurance data from 2005 to2019 to quantify the level of meteorological risk in each province of China by using the HP filtering method.At the same time,the regional development differences of agricultural insurance in China were measured in several dimensions: total index,relative index,Gini coefficient and Thayer coefficient,and further decomposed the Thayer coefficient into the degree of inter-regional and intra-regional imbalance to clarify the main sources of regional development differences of agricultural insurance,and the analysis concluded that: the development of agricultural insurance in China is unbalanced between regions,and the gap between each region is much smaller than the regional The gap within the internal gap,by further splitting the imbalance within the east,west and central regions,we find that there is no clear correlation between the level of economic development and the balanced level of agricultural insurance development,i.e.,the eastern region with the best economy and the western region with the worst economy are the most unbalanced in agricultural insurance development,while the agricultural insurance development within the central region is more balanced.Based on the above,regressions with quantified weather risk as the core explanatory variable,depth of agricultural insurance as the explanatory variable,disposable income of rural residents,depth of property insurance coverage,crop sown area,relative status of agriculture,fiscal share of agricultural expenditures,and government natural disaster relief expenditures as control variables are used to explore the impact of weather risk on regional differences in agricultural insurance development using panel data.In order to investigate the mechanism of the effect of weather risk on the regional development differences of agricultural insurance,the one-period lagged agricultural insurance payout is further used as a mediating variable and its mediating effect is tested,and the test results are analyzed for reasons.In summary,this paper concludes that(1)during the period from 2005 to 2019,the level of regional development differences of agricultural insurance in China has fluctuated,but overall the level differences of regional agricultural insurance development are gradually decreasing,and the development gap within the east,west and central regions is much larger than the development gap between regions.(2)At present,China’s meteorological risk is negatively correlated with the level of agricultural insurance development,and there is a regional mismatch.The elasticity of agricultural insurance supply of insurance companies to reflect changes in meteorological risk is greater than the agricultural insurance demand of farmers,which further leads to a lower level of agricultural insurance development.(3)The intermediary effect of agricultural insurance payout expenditure in the relative meteorological yield and agricultural insurance depth in the lagging period is significant,and there is a partial intermediary effect.Agricultural insurance is a policy insurance,and its development cannot be achieved without the help of central finance and local government.At the same time,as a means to counteract agricultural risks,the development of agricultural insurance should be adapted to the level of meteorological risks in each region in order to better play its role of economic compensation.This paper studies the regional development differences of agricultural insurance in China from the perspective of meteorological risks and makes the following recommendations:(1)local governments should develop special agricultural insurance implementation policies based on meteorological risks according to local conditions;(2)the central government should implement differentiated and focused agricultural insurance development strategies among regions;(3)provincial governments should attach importance to meteorological risks and strengthen agricultural development;(4)agricultural insurance companies should be encouraged to combine;(5)Encourage agricultural insurance companies to innovate insurance types by combining meteorological conditions;(5)Increase the supervision of agricultural insurance and strictly regulate the insurance market order.