A Study on the Impact of Population Aging on the Agricultural Socialized Services

Actively coping with the aging of the rural population is an inevitable requirement for the implementation of high-quality development of modern agriculture and the comprehensive promotion of rural revitalization. Agricultural socialized services can effectively integrate the two key elements of technology and people in agricultural production and management. Based on research data on the livelihoods and economic behavior of 1023 farming households in 2021, this paper explores the impact of an aging population on the implementation of socialized agricultural services by rural households. The results of the study show that population aging has a significant positive influence on the degree of agricultural socialized services. The aging of the population has a significant positive influence on unified irrigation services, mechanized farming services, straw collection services, and origin processing services, which are labor-replacing and highly mechanized agricultural science and technology socialized services. The results of the heterogeneity analysis show that both young and middle-aged rural households and older rural households have a clear demand for agricultural socialized services. Based on this, we propose policy recommendations in two aspects: guiding land transfer in the context of rural aging and establishing a variety of agricultural technology socialized service types.