Addressing Rural–Urban Income Gap in China through Farmers’ Education and Agricultural Productivity Growth via Mediation and Interaction Effects

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is a well-written paper. Readers without a strong statistical background can understand this paper easily.

Introduction sets the direction of this paper and conclusion summarises all keep findings and implications well. 

Methodologies have been illustrated clearly. Also, relevant methodologies, such have been used to derive key findings.

However, minor change has to be made so that the clarity of this paper can be improved. I hope that the authors can check the consistency of the notations in the equations, text and tables.   

Author Response

Dear Professor, 

Thank you so much for your help and praise.  We have checked and revised all notations and equations.  This version is much better. 

Thanks a million!

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper uses several different methodologies to find out how farmer’s education and agricultural productivity growth affected rural-urban income gap in China. The paper can be improved it the following issues are addressed.

11. On lines 72-79, the paper mentions that there is a debate about the official data of rural-urban income gap in the academic circle.  The authors then say nothing about how they see the debate. A question is: given the possible problem of the official data, why do the authors work on them? If they think the criticism on the reliability of the official data, they should explain why.  If they think the debate is not important, they may consider putting the debate in a footnote so that the readers will not be distracted by unimportant issues.

2.      Make sure that Equation (4) is typed in the paper. It is missing in the current pdf file. Some of the variables subsequently cannot be understood.

3.      The choice of “illiteracy rate” (vis-à-vis average of years of schooling, share of people who completed high school, etc) as a measure of education level has led to serious restriction on the interpretation of the results and to draw policy implications.  For instance, in lines 636-643, the authors suggest that the Chinese government “should continue to increase the investment in rural education resources, which is conducive to improving the labor skills of farmers, thus increasing non-agricultural income of farmers and effectively narrowing the rural-urban income gap.”  Although this kind of policy suggestion is commonly agreed, it cannot be drawn from a study that uses illiteracy rate as a measure of education level.  Most illiterate people in China are old people who had no chance to attend school when they were young.  Investing more education resources will not change the illiterate into literate.  The Chinese government has adopted compulsory schooling since the mid 1980s, thus almost all the young people can read and write, even though their academic performance may vary.  More education resources can likely help the young people to learn more (and thus may be conducive the TFP), but this is irrelevant to the regressions in this study.  My suggestion is that the authors should (1) discuss the limitation of the current study due to the use of  “illiteracy rate” as a measure of education level, (2) consider the use of other measurement of education (e.g. share of working population in rural area who have completed primary school/junior high school and redo the regressions. In the latter case, investing more money is education will bear reasonable meaning. 

4.      The full name of SFA (i.e. Stochastic Frontier Analysis) should be spelled out when it first appeared in the paper.

5.      It is odd to see the heading “2.1. SFA Efficiency Measurement Model” for anyone who knows the meaning of SFA.  I believe it is better to use “Efficiency Measurement Using Stochastic Fronter Analysis”.

 6.      The full name of SC, TEC and SC in equations (9)-(13) should be specified, and their intuitive meaning should be explained.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

 The introduction and Literature Review should be split into two different sections. The Introduction should highlight the relevance of the topic, the novelty of the results, the importance of policy implications, the sample's choice, the methodology's appropriateness, the data used, the contribution to the literature, and the study's limitations. The estimated model must be justified in light of the literature on this specific topic. The results should be discussed in more detail. Comparisons with previous studies are absent. The conclusions are too short. Policy implications are weak.

Further research should be indicated. Limitations of the study are not provided. The English need proofreading by a native speaker.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

Dear authors! 

I have reviewed your research and found it quite interesting and novel. I appreciate the way you have put your efforts in conducting this study. The study is perfect from every aspect and does not require any changes. The findings of the study may be beneficial for the policy makers and government of the China. 

Wish you good luck! 

Author Response

Dear Professor,

We are very grateful for your help and your praise. 

Thanks a million!

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Accepted in the present form