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This paper aims to review the institutional evolution of China's rural social security system in the past 35 years, focusing on major policy transformations of the rural social security system in a large country, and extract the Chinese experience on developing rural social security.

This paper systematically reviews the evolution of rural social security system via organizing policy documents, key events and research literature on the construction of rural social security since the Reform and Opening-up.

First, institutional transformation is a profound change in China's rural social security system; second, policy transformation has taken place in the main areas of China's rural social security system, including rural endowment insurance, medical insurance and social assistance; third, the policy evolution of China's rural social security system has a unique experience in a large country.

China is the country with the largest rural population in the world. The process and experience of transforming the social security system in the vast rural areas of China have important value and reference significance for other developing countries.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the causality between social security policies and farmland reallocation in rural China.

It quantitatively analyzes the impact of each ongoing social security policy on farmland reallocation based on a data set from the 2011 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS, 2011).

The study finds that the inclination of a village farmers’ collective to reallocate farmland due to changes in the village population increased if social security policies do not effectively cover the village because farmers rely primarily on income from farmland to cover their basic living expenses. However, if social security policies provide adequate coverage, then farmers do not rely entirely on on-farm income and the likelihood of farmland reallocation decreases. Furthermore, the effectiveness of social security policies includes not only coverage but also the sufficiency of the security policies provided.

First, the authors use only cross-sectional data in this study, which may result in biased estimation and also limit temporal examination of the impact of social security systems, farmland reallocation and related policy variables. This limitation may be especially important in China because the country is undergoing a rapid socioeconomic transition. However, the research is constrained by the available data. Furthermore, there could be endogeneity problems that are difficult to address, given the current data set. These problems could involve the impacts of village-level economic, natural and social variables, the implementation of related public policies (land development and consolidation, land expropriation, etc.) and other economic variables.

These findings may provide implications for related policy reform in the near future.

These findings may facilitate a recognition and understanding of the causality between social security policies and farmland reallocation in rural China.

This paper aims to describe China's need for old‐age pension coverage in its rural areas, to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the new rural pension system currently being implemented, and to suggest some needed reforms.

This paper's analysis is based largely on evidence from Chinese government documents, newspaper reports, and research reports including those discussing related programs in rural areas of other developing countries. This evidence is supplemented with a small number of interviews with government officials, Chinese academics, and farmers living in rural China.

China has recently started a major effort to bring old‐age pension coverage to rural China. While it is too early to know how successful this effort will be, there are some structural issues that should be addressed. The paper's major conclusion is that the current funded accounts component needs to be supplemented with a modest social pension scheme.

To date next to nothing has been published for an academic audience about this major new and first ever countrywide old‐age pension program for rural China. If successful, this program has the potential to stimulate efforts in many other developing nations around the world to provide pension coverage in rural areas. The paper analyzes the program, uncovers some serious limitations, and proposes changes to deal with those limitations.

Increased economic insecurity helps to spur individuals to work harder and be more efficient according to the theory of work incentive. However, in a civilised society, the society has a moral obligation to provide basic needs and social safety nets for its poor and unfortunate members who, due to factors beyond their own control, have not been able to earn a living. This paper analyses the trade‐off between economic reforms and economic and social security in India and China. The findings show that both countries’ attempts to minimise the social costs of economic reforms have not been successful. The policy implications are also discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the new rural social pension program’s effect on household consumption in rural China.

The paper employs field data in Hebei Province and comprehensively applies the ordinary least squares regression model and the difference-in-difference matching method.

The findings show that participation in the Program may not obviously increase household consumption, rather it significantly inhibits the marginal propensity of young families’ consumption temporarily without an apparent impact on participating households’ consumption.

In addition to maintain the stability of the basic system framework of the new rural social pension program and preserve or increase the value of the fund under the Program, dynamic adjustments to pension levels should be made as and when appropriate.

The study provides a new empirical evidence for the relationship between the new rural social pension program and consumption and gives insight into potential modifications and improvements to the Program.

The relationship between state and peasants are reflected as the distribution of the economic benefits to each party. The purpose of this paper is to explore the essential change of the relationship from the fiscal term since the beginning of the new century.

Utilizing first‐hand survey data, this paper illustrates the changes of relationship between state and peasants by certain qualitative and quantitative approaches.

Recent positive changes in China have seen the creation of a new public finance system designed to improve equality within basic public services not only for the world's largest population but also the world's largest number of peasants. This development has produced a change in the relationship between state and peasant from “take more” to “take less.”

The sample size used in the empirical studies in this paper is relatively small. In addition, the studies focus only on the effects of relationships in the fiscal term while the social impacts are neglected.

This paper provides evidence that the recent positive changes in China have seen the building of a new public finance system, with the intention of enabling a huge number of peasants to experience equality within basic public services.

China's New Rural Pension Program (NRPP) has been implemented for a decade, but the factors that facilitate rural residents' participation have received little attention. This study aims to investigate whether financial literacy has an influence on rural residents' behavior of participation in the NRPP. In particular, this study further verifies if high financial literacy is important and whether financial education can enhance the impact of financial literacy on current, long-term and dynamic pension decisions of rural households.

This study investigates the impact of financial literacy on rural residents' participation in China's NRPP using the China Household Financial Survey (CHFS) Data of 2015 and 2017. This study constructs an analytical framework for current, long-term and dynamic impacts and comprehensively analyzes the value of financial literacy in the decision making of the NRPP. This study uses the instrumental variable method to solve the possible endogeneity problem. In addition, the authors also demonstrate the positive role of high financial literacy in household pension decisions. Further analysis reveals gender and regional heterogeneity in the impact of financial literacy on pension decisions. The moderating effect model explores whether financial education has a significant moderating effect on financial literacy and pension decision making of the NRPP.

Financial literacy can improve the participation behavior of households in rural areas (dynamic effect) and promote their current and long-term participation in the NRPP, choosing a higher pension contribution level in the NRPP. However, financial literacy has no significant effect on the change in the contribution amount of the NRPP. Further research finds that high financial literacy has comparative advantages in household pension decision making in rural areas. There are gender and regional differences in the impact of financial literacy on pension decisions. In addition, effective financial literacy education enhances the current, long-term and dynamic impacts of residents' financial literacy on NRPP participation and pension contributions.

This study comprehensively considers the impact of financial literacy on pension decision making behavior from three aspects: current, long-term and dynamic, making up for the dearth in the existing literature that only focuses on the impact of financial literacy on current financial behaviors and bridging the gap between the theoretical framework and experimental results. Our study proposes new policy implications: (1) Governments and financial institutions should pay attention to financial literacy and education levels in rural areas and carry out financial education and training programs to increase social welfare levels by increasing rural residents' participation and pension contribution. (2) The community can strengthen the policy advocacy of the NRPP and make people develop a stronger sense of trust toward it. The government can also subsidize individual accounts through financial support.

This study comprehensively considers the impact of financial literacy on pension decision-making behavior from three aspects: current, long-term and dynamic, making up for the dearth in the existing literature that only focuses on the impact of financial literacy on current financial behaviors and bridging the gap between the theoretical framework and experimental results. Our study proposes new policy implications: (1) Governments and financial institutions should pay attention to financial literacy and education levels in rural areas and carry out financial education and training programs to increase social welfare levels by increasing rural residents' participation and pension contribution. (2) The community can strengthen the policy advocacy of the NRPP and make people develop a stronger sense of trust toward it. The government can also subsidize individual accounts through financial support.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the level of new socialist countryside (NSC) construction among different provinces in China. China prioritized a NSC reform policy in 2005 to address the growing disparities in incomes and living standards between rural and urban populations. These policies are evaluated to measure the extent of effective reform concerning farmer, agricultural, and rural economic development.

An index system is developed and factor analysis is performed to describe the relative contributions of economic reform. Aggregate index scores are computed to rank provincial progress.

Rankings indicate the progression of rural economic reform is moderate, at best, and mostly isolated to well‐developed eastern provinces. Reform growth is also uneven across similarly rural provinces, indicating a need for continued attention in these poorer areas.

Continued applications of the index and scoring procedure developed here will provide useful insights as time progresses and reform efforts continue.

The purpose of this paper is to measure Farmer’s adoption tendency towards drought shock, risk-taking networks and modern irrigation technology.

Based on this assumption, this paper evaluated the data gathered from 498 household surveys of Zhangye, Gansu province, PRC, by using the binary probit model. First, the empirical data was analyzed for evaluating the impact of drought shock and risk-taking tendencies on the adoption of modern irrigation technology by farmers. Second, the authors introduced informal risk-bearing networks with formal risks. Final, based on the empirical results, the sustainability test, along with the marginal effect analysis and the degree of impact was carried out.

The results show that the drought shock has a significantly deferent effect on the modern irrigation technology of the farmers. The probability of using technology for each level of drought loss is reduced by 15.02%. The risk-taking network has a significant role in promoting the modern irrigation technology of farmers. The probability of adoption for each additional unit of rural household labor security supply, the likelihood of adoption by farmers increased 23.11%, the probability of approval for each level of relative support, and neighborhood assistance by farmers increased by 13.11% and 17.88% respectively. This study further revealed that insurance purchases enabled farmers to adopt new irrigation technology with the probability increased by 24.99%; easily available bank loans increased the probability of farmers using irrigation technology by 31.89%. From the perspective of interactions between farmers, the risk-taking network can alleviate the inhibitory effect of drought impact towards the adoption of irrigation technology. Among the control variables, the number of years of education, the age of farming, the degree of arable land, the distance from home to the market, and the price of water all has significant effects on the adoption of modern irrigation technology by farmers.

The novelty of the study is that it illustrated the interactive influence of drought shock and risk-taking networks on the farmer’s adoption tendencies of modern irrigation technologies, the inner relationship among drought impact, the risk-taking network and the farmer’s adoption behavior and provide an interactive relationship between the formal risk-taking network and the non-risk-taking network in farmer’s technology adoption.