The effects and mechanisms of land trusteeship on farm household welfare—a re-examination from the perspectives of gender roles and intergenerational relations

As an important form of agricultural socialized services, land trusteeship has increasingly become a key institutional arrangement influencing farm household welfare in developing countries. However, existing studies often treat farm households as homogeneous decision-making units and pay limited attention to how intra-household structural differences shape the effects of land institutional arrangements. By incorporating the perspectives of gender roles and intergenerational relations, this study examines how land trusteeship influences farm household consumption structure through intra-household resource allocation mechanisms. Based on first-hand cross-sectional survey data from 856 farm households in Shandong Province, China, this study employs the Endogenous Switching Model to identify the causal effects of land trusteeship and further explores the pathways through which intra-household labor allocation and resource transformation efficiency shape these effects. The results show that: (1) land trusteeship significantly improves household consumption structure, and this finding remains robust after controlling for endogeneity and conducting a series of robustness checks; (2) from the perspective of resource allocation pathways, male engagement in non-agricultural employment and the “dual role” of women in both non-agricultural work and family care serve as effective channels through which land trusteeship enhances household consumption structure; and (3) in terms of resource transformation efficiency, the effect of land trusteeship on improving consumption structure is particularly evident in households with intergenerational childcare responsibilities, but insignificant in households with intergenerational financial support obligations. Further analysis shows that higher levels of intergenerational geographic and educational mobility weaken the positive impact of land trusteeship, while an increase in the number of children amplifies it. Accordingly, differentiated trusteeship services should be provided based on household structure, and gender-sensitive rural labor policies and social security support systems should be strengthened.