Social Capital, Agricultural Technology Training, and the Working Hours Distribution of Rural Residents: Based on Heckman Treatment Effect Model

The expansion and development of China’s agriculture facilitates the establishment of a “dual circulation” development pattern whereby domestic and foreign markets can boost each other, with the domestic market as the mainstay. To foster the further development of agriculture, more input —especially in terms of time commitment—should be made in agricultural production in the short and medium term.Thus we focus on the working hours distribution of rural residents in the agricultural and non-agricultural sector in this paper. Several results of this paper are noteworthy. First, theoretically, the working hours of rural residents are positively correlated with social capital in the agricultural and non-agricultural sectors. And in the agricultural sector, there is also a positive relationship between agro-technical training time and working time of rural residents.Second, the main regression results show that social capital and agro-technical training time have a statistically significant positive impact on farmers’ labor time in the non-agricultural and agricultural sectors respectively. But both effects are not significant economically. Third, the conclusions of the empirical analysis are robust and the possible heterogeneity between different groups and the endogeneity of agricultural technology training have no substantial impact on the regression results of the main explanatory variables.Fourth, the mechanism test shows that social capital acts on the working hours in the non-agricultural sector by influencing the wage of farmers in the non-agricultural sector, while agro-technical training time affects the working hour in the agricultural sector by influencing the wage of farmers in the agricultural sector.