中国山東省小麦主産地における農家の労働配分・所得構成と食糧直接補助金に対する農家の評価

抄録

　　In the year 2004, the Chinese government introduced the Grain Direct Subsidy System for stabilizing grain production and sustaining farmers’ income.　Since then until 2012, the Statistical Yearbook of China shows an expansion in both grain acreage and total farm production along with a reduction in the income gap between rural and urban areas.　However, at the same time, the income of farm households has become increasingly dependent on non-farm jobs, indicating less importance of the subsidy for their income achievement.

　　This paper deals with the farmers’ attitudes and evaluations from the standpoint of recipient of the subsidy by analyzing the relationships between the living conditions of farmers and the given subsidy.　For this research, interviews based on structurally constructed questionnaires were conducted in March 2014 to the house representatives of 64 farm households sampled randomly from a village of 124 farm households in a major wheat production village in Shandong Province, the major wheat production province in China.　In the questionnaires, 51 variables were collected from four conceptual groups: family attributes （12 variables）, labor allocation （21）, family income （12）, and subsidies and evaluation （6）.　The variables of the last conceptual group were dependent variables and the other three were independent variables in the path causal model.　As to each of the three conceptual groups of independent variables, a principle component analysis was introduced to extract component factors and then the component factor indices were constructed according to the factor scores.

　　The analysis produced two important findings.　The first is that non-farm jobs are directly associated with recognition, receipt and evaluation of the subsidy.　Part-time farm households having stable employment （such as governmental employment） with higher income related to higher education have positive attitudes and evaluations towards the subsidy, while those having unstable non-farm jobs （such as construction） with lower income related to lower education have negative attitudes and evaluations towards the subsidy.　The second is that most general farmers do not recognize the positive impacts of a subsidy on farm income or wheat production, while farmers that only produce wheat and heavily depend on wheat and farm income recognize positive impacts on the costs of wheat production.　These findings indicate a strong necessity to consider the relationships between the labor and income structure of farm households, that is, the non-farm and farm employment conditions even if agricultural policies are under consideration.

JEL Classifications: C39, Q1, Q18