Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Habitat International journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/habitatint The impact of rural laborer migration and household structure on household land use arrangements in mountainous areas of Sichuan Province, China Dingde Xu a,b,c , Shili Guo d , Fangting Xie e , Shaoquan Liu a,∗ , Sha Cao a a Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu 610041, China b Sichuan Center for Rural Development Research, Sichuan Agricultural University, Chengdu 611130, China c College of Management, Sichuan Agricultural University, Chengdu 611130, China d China Western Economic Research Center, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu 610074, China e Institute of Rural Development, Jiangxi Agricultural University, Nanchang 330045, China ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Land arrangement Land transfer Land abandonment Labor migration Sichuan province China ABSTRACT Rural household land arrangements under different household divisions of labor were investigated in Sichuan Province, a typical mountainous area of Western China. Survey data were used to construct multinomial logistic regression models of the relationships between the attributes of land plots, farmers' households, and land ar- rangement behaviors. In this study, (1) a total of 1839 land plots available to 240 farmers were sampled. Among these, 79.61%, 15.88% and 4.51% were cultivated, transferred or abandoned, respectively. (2) There are sig- nificant correlations between farming household structure and migration income, as well as land arrangement behaviors. Specifically, the more laborers (Labor) there are, the higher the ratios of farming laborers (Agriculture) and part-time laborers to laborers (Pluriactivity), greater numbers of elderly individuals aged 64 + engaged in household agricultural production (Old), the greater the possibility that farmers would choose family farming. The higher the ratio of migrant labor income to total household income (Ratio), the greater the possibility that farmers would choose land transfer or land abandonment. The higher the ratio of non-agricultural laborers to the laborers (Non-agriculture), the greater the possibility that farmers would choose land transfer. This study furthers our understanding of rural household land arrangement behaviors in mountainous areas in the context of China's unique land rights system and high rates of labor migration. 1. Introduction The household contract responsibility system, which was im- plemented in the early 1980s, is a land rights system unique to China. Under this system, land belongs collectively to the village, and farmers have the right to contract and manage the land. In the implementation of this land rights policy, the government carried out random land al- locations according to family size and land quality. This land allocation method greatly stimulated farmers' enthusiasm for production, re- sulting in great improvements in land production efficiency. However, it also led to land becoming fragmented and scattered. In order to maintain the stability of land contracts, the government and farmers signed a second round of land contracts in 1998, in which it was clearly stated that farmers had a 30-year land management right. In 2002, the government issued the Rural Land Contracting Law, which allowed farmers to transfer their land management rights in order to improve land use efficiency and ensure food security. China's No.1 Central Document for 2013 clearly pointed out that it is necessary to guide the orderly transfer of rural land contract management rights, encourage and support the transfer of the contracted land to the leading specia- lized households, family farms and farmers' cooperatives and develop various forms of moderate scale management. Since then, in China's No.1 Central Document for each year and No. 1 Documents of many provinces and autonomous regions, as one of the key contents, the moderate scale management has been expounded separately, and it is considered that the moderate scale management is one of the effective ways to change the traditional land use patterns in rural areas, realize the urban-rural integration and narrow the income gap between urban and rural areas. Concurrent with the implementation of the household contract re- sponsibility system, China underwent many other political and eco- nomic reforms in the early 1980s, which stimulated the national economy. The first wave of a “tide of migrant workers” appeared in China between the late 1980s and early 1990s. After this period, in- creased numbers of laborers sought work away from home, and the composition of farmers’ household incomes changed (Xu, Zhang, Rasul http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.habitatint.2017.10.009 Received 19 January 2017; Received in revised form 13 October 2017; Accepted 18 October 2017 ∗ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: Xudingde@imde.ac.cn (D. Xu), guoshili@swufe.edu.cn (S. Guo), fountain_xie@163.com (F. Xie), liushq@imde.ac.cn (S. Liu), caosha15@mails.ucas.ac.cn (S. Cao). Habitat International 70 (2017) 72–80 Available online 28 October 2017 0197-3975/ © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. MARK