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The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the trend of off-farm employment in rural China over the past four decades since the reform and opening-up.

Using two sets of panel survey data, the China National Rural Survey conducted in 2000 and 2008, and the China Rural Development Survey conducted in 2005, 2008, 2012 and 2016, this study offers a re-visit of China’s off-farm employment to give us the latest information about its evolution and whether rural labor markets have developed in a way that will allow them to facilitate the transformation of China’s economy more effectively. The evolution of off-farm employment is further examined through decomposition of types, destinations, industries, and population sub-groups as well as the change in the wage rate.

The data show the rapid increase in rural labor activities over the whole study period. Most notably, the authors findnd that a rapid rise in off-farm employment has continued even until after 2008 and into the mid-2010s, which is a time when some feared that macroeconomic conditions might keep rural residents on the farm or drive them back to the farm. In the disaggregation of labor market trends, the authors show that labor markets are acting consistently with an economy that is in transition from being dominated by agriculture to being dominated by other forms of production and with a population that is consistently becoming more urban.

The authors believe that the results will contribute positively to the exploration of answers to the question whether or not rural labor markets have developed in a way that will allow them to facilitate the transformation of China’s economy more effectively over the last four decades.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the trends in residential solid waste collection (RSWC) services in rural China over the past decade and analyze the determinants of these services using nationally representative data.

The authors draw on panel data from three rounds of village-level surveys of 101 villages. The three surveys were conducted in 2005, 2008, and 2012 in five provinces. The authors used fixed-effected regression approach to analyze the determinants of these services.

The results show that in the aftermath of increased investment and policy attention at the national level, the proportion of villages providing RSWC services in rural China increased significantly from 1998 to 2011. However, half of all villages in rural China still did not provide RSWC services as of 2011. Based on econometrics analysis, the authors show that villages that are richer, more populous, and villages with more small hamlets are more likely to provide RSWC services.

The analyses are based on primary survey data and the first to quantify trends in waste management services in the beginning of the twentieth century. The authors believe that the results will have significant policy implications for China in its continuing quest for better waste management policy.

Many public health systems have struggled with the dual questions of (1) why the uptake rate of maternal health services is low among some subpopulations; and (2) how to raise it. The objective of this study is to assess the uptake rate of a new set of maternal health services in poor rural areas of China.

The analysis is based on the survey responses of women’s representatives and village cadres from almost 1000 villages in June 2012 as part of a wide-scale public health survey in Sichuan, Gansu and Yunnan provinces in the western part of China.

We find that the uptake rate of maternal health services (including in-hospital delivery, antenatal care visits and post-partum care visits) in poor rural areas of western China are far below average in China, and that the rates vary across provinces and ethnic groups. Our analyses demonstrate that distance, income, ethnicity and availability appear to be systematically correlated with low uptake rates of all maternal health services. Demand-side factors seem to be by far the most important sources of the differences between subpopulations. We also find that there is potential for creating a Conditional Cash Transfer program to improve the usage of maternal health services.

We believe that our results will contribute positively to the exploration of answers to the dual questions that many public health systems have struggled with (1) why the uptake rate of maternal health services is low among some subpopulations; and (2) how to raise it.

The paper aims to discuss whether the younger generation of China's rural labor force is prepared, in terms of education level or labor quality, for the future labor markets under China's industrial upgrading.

Using nationally representative survey data, the paper gives detailed discussions on the young rural laborers' education attainments, and their off‐farm employment status including job patterns, working hours, and hourly wage rates. The relationship between education and employment status is analyzed and tested. Through these discussions, an employment challenge is revealed, and some policy implications are made.

This paper finds that China's young rural laborers are generally poorly educated and mainly unskilled. They work long hours and are low paid. While they lack the labor quality that will be required to meet the industrial upgrading, an employment challenge may face them in the near future. This paper also finds a strong link between education levels and employment status for the young labor force, which implies the possible effect of policies such as improving rural education.

Based on a solid foundation of a national rural household survey, this paper updates the understanding of the education and employment situations of the young rural labor force in contemporary China. The concern about the employment challenges raised in the paper is related to the future of China's rural labor transition and the whole economy.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of off-farm employment on agricultural fixed assets among households in rural China.

The authors drew on panel data from two rounds of household-level surveys of more than 2,000 households in rural China. The two surveys were conducted in 2008 and 2012 in five provinces. The authors used instrumental-variable Tobit model to test whether the current value of agricultural fixed assets differ between households with different levels off-farm employment.

The authors observe that off-farm employment has a negative effect on the current value of agricultural fixed assets at the household level in rural China.

The authors believe that the results will contribute positively to the assessment of the effect of off-farm employment on the investment in agricultural fixed assets at the household level in the context of China.

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether an in-service life teacher training program can improve boarding students’ health, behavior, and academic performance.

The authors conducted a cluster-randomized controlled trial to measure the effect of life teacher training on student health, behavior, and academic performance among 839 boarding students in ten central primary boarding schools in Shaanxi. And the authors also tried to identify why or why not life teacher training works. Both descriptive and multivariate analysis are used in this paper.

The authors find significant improvements in health and behavior. Specifically, compared to boarding students in control schools, 15 percent fewer students in treatment schools reported feeling cold while sleeping at night. The results also showed that student tardiness and misbehaviors after class declined significantly by 18 and 78 percent, respectively. However, the in-service life teacher training program had no measurable impact on boarding students’ BMI-for-age Z-score, number of misbehaviors in class, and academic performance. The analysis suggests that improved communication between life teachers and students might be one mechanism behind these results.

This is the first empirical work which explored how to improve the welfare of boarding students via their life teachers. Because of the sudden increase in boarding students in rural China, it is almost certain that school personnel lack experience in managing boarding students. As such, one promising approach to improving student outcomes might be in-service training for life teachers.

With the rise in the opportunity to go to college, the purpose of this paper is to identify if China's rural poor are being excluded from the university system, and if so, why.

Two sets of the authors' own primary survey data were used: a group of randomly selected high school students in Shaanxi Province and a census of all freshmen entering into four universities in Sichuan, Anhui and Shaanxi. The intention was to show if the rate of the rural poor attending universities is lower than that of urban students and that of rural non‐poor; also to identify the barriers to education (if they exist) that are keeping enrollment rates low for the rural poor. The authors used ordinary least squares method to make the estimations.

Matriculation rate of the poor into college was found to be substantially lower than the students from non‐poor families. Clearly, barriers exist that are excluding the rural poor; however, the authors demonstrate that the real barriers are not at the point of college admissions, but before students have even matriculated into high school.

This is the first empirical work which studies the barriers that keep the poor out of university.

This paper aims to explain why the quality of infrastructure projects in rural China differs from village to village and how project quality is correlated with project design attributes and governance factors.

Using primary data collected by the authors on three types of infrastructure projects in villages across China, they created measures of project quality for each village. They then used both descriptive and multivariate approaches to examine how quality varies from village to village and factors correlated with quality.

Between‐project within‐village quality differences are small and project design has little explanatory power. Between‐village variations are large. There are strong correlations between the ways villages govern themselves and project quality. The authors conclude that it is difficult to make good projects work in communities that lack good governance.

Disaggregated data on the quality of infrastructure (and its determinants) were collected by the authors to allow for variation in the type of infrastructure projects (roads, irrigation, and drinking water) and variation in village governance, making it possible to identify and contrast the effects of project design and village governance factors on project quality. As its chief contribution, this work identifies potential ways to improve the quality of infrastructure projects in rural development.

The purpose of this paper evaluates the effects of the Great Western Development (GWD) policy on agricultural intensification, land use, agricultural production and rural poverty in western China.

The authors collect county-level data on land use, input application, grain crop production, income, poverty and geophysical characteristics for 1996–2005 and use a quasi-natural experimental design of difference-in-differences (DD) in the empirical analysis.

Results suggest that the GWD policy significantly increased the grain crop production in western China. This increase resulted from higher yield, with increased fertilizer use and agricultural electricity consumption per hectare, and more land allocated to grow grain crops. The policy also increased land-use concentration, reduced crop diversity and alleviated rural poverty in western China.

This paper makes three contributions. First, the authors add to the growing literature on the GWD policy by evaluating its effects on farm household decisions and exploring the mechanisms and broad socioeconomic impacts in western China. Second, the authors take advantage of a quasi-natural experimental design to improve the identification strategy where input use, land allocation, production and off-farm labor participation are all endogenous in a farm household. Third, the authors explore a long list of variables within one integrated dataset to present a comprehensive picture of the impact of the GWD policy.