Path Study on Rural Human Capital Investment to Increase Non-agricultural Farmer Income——Consideration Based on Micro Data from the Four Prefectures in Southern Xinjiang

From a micro-level perspective, this research dissects the short-term human capital investments within the rural confines of Xinjiang's southernmost four prefectures, delving into the strategies that could elevate non-agricultural labor earnings in these areas. Constructing a Bayesian network from survey data across four prefectures in southern Xinjiang, we forecasted the causal relationship and importance between the constructed indicators and non-agricultural income. Employing the fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) method and considering 11 key antecedents, the research distills the pathways that could enhance the non-agricultural revenue of rural farmers in Xinjiang's southern prefectures. The results show that the non-agricultural income of farmers is most closely related to labor health investment, and the non-agricultural income of farmers is limited by their own endowment. Four distinct pathways for augmenting non-agricultural income in Xinjiang's southern regions have been identified: the “ health investment + selfendowment + training investment” driven model, the “self-endowment + health investment” driven model, the all-factor driven model characterized by poor health, and the all-factor driven model marked by inadequate education. Based on the four paths, it can be concluded that the core conditions for increasing non-agricultural income in the four regions of southern Xinjiang are the workers’ age, education level, health status, possession of vocational certificates, education expenditure, and medical expenses. In the short term, the growth in non-agricultural income is attributed to the farmers' inherent resource endowments and investments in prior-year short-term technical training. Therefore, this article suggests that we should attach importance to the development of rural human capital in the four prefectures of southern Xinjiang, enhance financial support for agriculture, prioritize investment in health, balance investment in technical training, and focus on investment in education to better serve the modernization of Xinjiang's agricultural sector.