The multidimensional impacts of high-standard farmland construction on rural household labour allocation: Evidence from China

To safeguard food security, the Chinese government has made large-scale investments in high-standard farmland construction (HSFC). However, its implications for rural household labour allocation remain insufficiently understood. Based on 2024 survey data of 1024 rural households, this study employs a control function approach to address potential endogeneity and systematically examines the multidimensional impacts of HSFC on rural household labour allocation across sectoral, temporal, spatial and directional dimensions. The results show that (1) HSFC significantly reduces rural households’ participation in nonfarm employment, nonfarm employment days and out-migration for work, while substantially increasing return migration into agriculture. (2) These effects are more pronounced in plain areas and villages without collective unified high-standard farmland transfer. (3) HSFC affects labour allocation by increasing agricultural production benefits, improving agricultural production efficiency and large-scale land management. Together, these changes induce a reallocation of rural household labour towards agriculture, characterized by an ‘retaining labour while expanding land scale’ pattern. This study offers new evidence for farmland infrastructure’s labour reallocation effects and deepens understanding of how agricultural modernization policies shape rural labour dynamics in developing countries.