Rural household income and inequality under the Sloping Land Conversion Program in western China

Rural household income and inequality under the Sloping Land Conversion Program in western China.

As payment for ecosystem services (PES) programs proliferate globally, assessing their impact upon households' income and livelihood patterns is critical. The Sloping Land Conversion Program (SLCP) is an exceptional PES program, in terms of its ambitious biophysical and socioeconomic objectives, large geographic scale, numbers of people directly affected, and duration of operation. The SLCP has...

Income Inequality and Health in Rural China

As an indicator of social development and human capital, health has aroused ever-increasing concerns. Using CHNS2000 data, we attempt to address the following two issues: how could income inequality influence health; does the rising income inequality result in health inequality, especially will the health of the lower-income group get worse. We find that there is an “inverted-U” association bet...

Household Income Dynamics in Rural China

It is well known in theory that certain forms of non-linear dynamics in household incomes can yield poverty traps and distribution-dependent growth. The potential implications for policy are dramatic: effective social protection from transient poverty will be an investment with lasting benefits, and pro-poor redistribution will promote aggregate economic growth. We test for non-linearity in the...

Land Retirement and Nonfarm Labor Market Participation: An Analysis of Chinaメs Sloping Land Conversion Program

— China’s Sloping Land Conversion Program pays more than 32 million households to plant trees on highly erodible cropland, and has effected major land-use changes. Farmers retire land indefinitely but receive time-limited subsidies, after which they, in principle, enter nonfarm employment. We analyze annual data we collected on over 3,000 individuals and plots from 1998–2006, which contain vari...

The Urban-Rural Gap and Income Inequality in China