Decomposition of Agricultural Labor Productivity Growth and its Regional Disparity in China

This paper studies the regional disparity of China's agricultural productivity growth by decomposing it into technical changes, efficiency changes and input accumulation per worker. The convergence test is also used to analyze the determinants of regional disparity. The paper finds that during 1987 and 2005, although the growth of China’s agricultural labor productivity mainly depended on the accumulation of inputs, technical changes contributed more to regional disparities in agricultural productivity growth. Improving efficiency to promote TFP growth is important for agricultural labor productivity growth for the three regions—Eastern, Central and Western of China. The increase in inputs for Western China, and the improvement in technical change for Central and Western China are significant aspects to promote the growth of agricultural productivity and narrow the gap with the Eastern China.