Did China's Tax-for-Fee Reform Improve Farmers' Welfare in Rural Areas?
利用中国家庭收入项目的村级调查数据，研究了1990年代末农村税费改革对农民直接和间接福利的影响，发现改革并未提高农民净收入，反而因削弱村庄融资能力而降低了整体支出，对农民福利产生显著负面影响。
China enacted a rural tax reform - the 'Tax-for-Fee Reform' (TFR) - in the late 1990s. A crucial but unanswered question is whether this reform improved farmers' welfare in rural areas. This article uses village-level survey data from the Chinese Household Income Project in order to examine the effect of the TFR on farmers' direct and indirect welfare. We find no evidence that the direct welfare effects improved farmers' net income. In contrast, the reform appears to have reduced the villages' financing capacity, and hence to have lowered their overall expenditures. These indirect effects have had significant negative impacts on farmers' welfare.