Risk Shocks,Financial Behaviors And Sustainable Livelihoods Of Farm Households

Sustainable livelihoods of farming households have been one of the major concerns of academics,a key issue to be addressed in the rural revitalization strategy,and an important indicator to measure the livelihood capacity and standard of living of farming households in the post-poverty alleviation period.This paper selects CFPS data from the China Household Tracking Survey(CFPS)from 2010 to 2018,and uses panel data of 3890 farm households continuously surveyed over a five-year period to construct a sustainable livelihood indicator system based on the DFID sustainable livelihood analysis framework,and measures the sustainable livelihood index of farm households based on the entropy weighting method to calculate the weights of sustainable livelihood indicators.Using a panel Tobit model,this paper explores the impact of different types of risk shocks on farmers’ sustainable livelihoods and analyses the regional heterogeneity of risk shocks on farmers’ sustainable livelihoods.At the same time,the paper verifies the moderating role of three financial behaviors-health insurance behavior,saving behavior and borrowing behavior in the impact of risk shocks on the sustainable livelihoods of farm households.The results of the study show that:(1)There are large differences in the sustainable livelihood levels of farm households,and most of them are at a low level,but the overall sustainable livelihood levels of farm households are on the rise.(2)There are large differences in the characteristics of risk shocks and financial behaviors of farm households,the type of risk shocks that farm households suffer most is natural risk,and purchasing basic urban and rural residents’ health insurance is the main.(3)Natural risk,major disease risk and chronic disease risk shocks all have a significant negative impact on farmers’ sustainable livelihoods.By region,the impact of natural risk,major disease risk and chronic disease risk shocks on the sustainable livelihoods of farmers in the eastern region did not pass the significance test;major disease risk had a significant negative impact on the sustainable livelihoods of farmers in the central region;natural risk was the most important negative impact factor on the sustainable livelihoods of farmers in the western region;health risk had a significant negative impact on the sustainable livelihoods of farmers in the northeastern region.(4)The moderating effect analysis showed that farmers’ financial behavior was the main financial behavior of farmers.The effect analysis shows that farmers’ saving behavior has a positive moderating effect on the impact of major disease risk shocks on farmers’ sustainable livelihoods,and borrowing behavior has a negative moderating effect on the impact of natural risk shocks on farmers’ sustainable livelihoods.Based on the findings of the study,the paper proposes policy recommendations to improve farmers’ own risk coping capacity,increase their awareness of risk management and prevention,enhance the capacity of basic public services and reduce the inter-regional development gap in an integrated manner.