Exploring rural decline with the perspective of demographics: Case study of Hubei, China

Abstract

Rural development has lagged behind in contrast to the rapid development of urban areas in China and one of the biggest consequences for this change is the serious rural out-migration. The accompanying demographic problems represented by serious rural population aging and underdeveloped rural population educational level are under-researched. By comparing the average population age and educational level with and without the large number of the exodus of rural residents in rural area, this research calculated the specific impacts of rural out-migration on rural population aging and educational level in Hubei, Central China. The average age of rural population in Hubei has increased by 2.67, and the average education year of rural population in Hubei has decreased by 0.42 by not taking into account the huge group of rural out-migration in 2010. Research results indicated that rural out-migration has significantly intensified the rural population aging and deterioration of education level. And furthermore, the influences and underlying reasons of the changing rural demographic were interpreted far and wide. The counties in Hubei were divided into eight categories according to population aging, educational level and the comprehensive impacts of out-migration on the former two. Well-calibrated and differential development strategies were put forward according to various categories to which the areas belong to revitalize the rural areas.

Introduction

China has seen a remarkably sustained high-speed economic growth over the past 40 years. However, rural areas have severely lagged behind in multiple aspects compared with the rapid development of urban areas(Jin et al., 2018; Liu and Li, 2017). Owing to the long-term implementation of industrial and urban priority strategies, rural residents are placed in disadvantageous positions in terms of comprehensive life chances, such as subsistence level income, low quality of life, poor living environment, bottom informal employment, lack of promotion space, and inadequate welfare (Guo et al., 2018; Li et al., 2019; Matz et al., 2015; Wang et al., 2019; Yang et al., 2010). Although the support of agriculture, countryside, and farmers continued to increase, the stagnation of the rural development has not been fundamentally reversed (Chen et al., 2018a; Jin et al., 2019a; Long et al., 2012; Mayer et al., 2016). Consequently, rural decline has deepened continuously and brought about many problems and challenges for the future development of rural area, such as the nonagriculturalization, non-grain preference and abandonment of farmland use together with the derelict and idle rural housing land, and so on. Moreover, rural decline has significant impacts on rural demographics among which rural out-migration is the most conspicuous. The diversified performance and a series of consequences of rural out-migration require in-depth analysis to enhance understanding of rural decline(Dong et al., 2020). One of the consequences due to rural out-migration is the weakening of rural development mainbody presented by rural depopulation aging and poor educational level of rural population (Dong et al., 2019; Ji et al., 2017; Li et al., 2015).

The demographics of rural China has been profoundly changed from two aspects of rural population and educational level and has become a major concern due to accompanying economic and social effects (Chen et al., 2018b; Zhang and Goza, 2006). Population aging is a big problem in the countryside where the elderly comprises nearly 70% of all the elderly in the country (Dai et al., 2011). Particularly, the population in rural areas is rapidly getting older, and the share of rural population aged over 65 has increased from 5.0% in 1982 to 12.03% in 2015 (Liao and Gao, 2018). Moreover, the ageing process would continue at a remarkable pace for the next few decades (Chen et al., 2017). The aging of China's rural population potentially has important socio-economic consequences. Rural population aging would change the age composition of agricultural labor force and subsequently influence farm productivity (Li and Sicular, 2013). In addition, the huge number of rural elders places enormous pressure on health security, which increases costs in rural China due to deepening health problems with complex health conditions, such as growing threats of chronic diseases and disabilities (Dai, 2015; Liu et al., 2017a). Consequently, severe rural population aging exerts profound negative impacts on rural development motivity and will drag rural economic growth. Other than the aging problem, wide performance gap exists between urban and rural students in China's educational system, which is embedded in the disparity in educational investment, children's educational attainment, school quality, and returns to education (Wu, 2011; Zhang, 2017). The most alarming problem is the low matriculation rate of the rural students into college than the students from urban families (Li, 2019). However, inequalities in college access was foreshadowed early in the pathway to college. Less than 30% of students from poor rural areas attend high school, whereas more than 80% from city school districts do (Wang et al., 2011b). Rural educational performance has fallen behind even earlier. China's rural children can only receive poor quality of early childhood education and low participation rates in early childhood education (Luo et al., 2012). The overall rural–urban education disparity generates huge impacts on rural development motivity, as educational attainment is the path to opportunity (Crookston and Hooks, 2012; Rao and Ye, 2016).

Rural population aging and poor education are closely associated with the alarming exodus of rural young adults. Since the reform and opening up in 1978, China has been in the process of reshaping the old, distorted economic system and has moderately eased the restriction of the Hukou system under which the rural population were largely restricted to living in the countryside before (Meng and Zhao, 2018). In addition, Urban development and the booming economy require a large number of labor force (Jia et al., 2017; Zhu and Luo, 2010). The emancipating of peasants from the restrictions of their land and the surge of demand for cheap labor has attracted wave after wave of rural labor migrants seeking for better living conditions and job opportunities in urban areas over the past 40 years (Zhou, 2014). The out-migration of China's rural laborers into urban areas and non-agricultural sectors has profound impacts on poverty reduction in rural poor areas, and rural migrant workers have slowly become the primary source of non-agricultural economic growth(Zhu and Luo, 2010). Despite their growing contribution to the economic boom in urban areas, rural surplus labor force migrating into urban area is selective across farmers based on their age and educational level. This condition has resulted in a dramatical change in the demographic structure remaining in the rural area. The relationship between age and the decision to migrate is an inverted U, which was first positive and then negative (Willmore et al., 2011). The bulk of aging population could not access jobs in cities and are thus forced to stay behind in the countryside. Likewise, urban labor markets provide more employment opportunities to people with high levels of education than those with low levels of education(Cheng et al., 2018). Wang et al. demonstrates that for each additional year of education, the probabilities of becoming a migrant and local wage earner both rise by 16% (Wang et al., 2011a). Owning to the reasons above, the elderly and people with poor education left behind in the countryside. Thus, out-migration has significant effect on rural population aging and poor education.

Numerous studies focus on the realistic difficulties of these demographics issues in the countryside, but few investigate the relationship between rural out-migration and rural population aging and undeveloped rural population educational level. For example, many studies are found on Chinese rural population aging. Several studies focus on the impacts of rural population aging on rural development (Chen et al., 2016; Li and Sicular, 2013; Min et al., 2017), examine living conditions (Li et al., 2015; Liang and Wu, 2014), and social security services (Dai et al., 2011; Ding, 2004; Fisher et al., 2011; Wang, 2006) for the elderly in rural areas. Another group of studies focuses on the urban and rural educational gap and educational return (Li and Yang, 2013; Luan et al., 2015). These studies find that rural population and backward education somewhat drag down the competitiveness of the rural population. Rural out-migration has a profound impacts on rural sustainability. However, the realistic impacts of rural out-migration on rural population aging and rural backward education, has not undergone sufficient research. Although several researches have identified the relationships among rural population aging, rural education, and out-migration at micro level and from a qualitative point of view(Bodvarsson et al., 2017; Zhang et al., 2019), the quantitative impacts of rural exodus on regional population aging and educational level have not undergone a thorough investigation. Drawing upon a quantitative analysis framework, the current research attempts to analyze the specific impacts of rural out-migration on rural population aging and educational level and run the gamut of rural decline with the perspective of demographics. By comparing the average population age and educational level with and without the large number of the exodus of rural residents in rural area, this research calculated the specific impacts of rural out-migration on rural population aging and educational level in Hubei, Central China.

The remainder of this paper is structured as follows: Section 2 describes the data and methodology. Section 3 illustrates the results that were derived from the proposed approach, which indicates that out-migration has strong impacts on rural population aging and educational level of rural population. Section 4 discusses the influences, reasons and policy implications of the rural demographics. Conclusions are presented in Section 5.