Off-farm work, smartphone use and household income: Evidence from rural China

Abstract

In theory, off-farm work, by raising household incomes, can have a direct impact on smartphone use among rural residents and the use of these smartphones in turn enhances incomes by facil-itating online financial transactions, easing management tasks, strengthening social networks,providing technical services, and reducing exposure to risks. In light of this, this paper assesses the impact of participation in off-farm work on smartphone use, using an endogenous switching probit model and a survey of 493 rural households in China. The joint impacts of off-farm work participation and smartphone use on household income are also analyzed using a control func-tion method. The results show that participation in off-farm work increases the probability of smart phone use significantly. Furthermore, we find that the household heads who engaged in off-farm activities and who were smartphone users earned 3430 Yuan and 2643 Yuan more per capita annual income, respectively, compared to their full-time farming and smartphone-free counterparts.