The Spatio-temporal Evolution of China's Grain Production Resilience and Its Drivers from Agricultural Insurance Subsidy Policies

Revealing the spatio-temporal evolution of China’s grain production resilience and quantitatively assessing the driving effects of agricultural insurance subsidy policies on it are instrumental in constructing a differentiated and precise grain security governance system. Based on provincial panel data from China (2011–2023), an evaluation system for grain production resilience was constructed from three dimensions: robustness, adaptability, and transformability, with a comprehensive index calculated using the entropy weight method. The spatio-temporal evolution, regional disparities, and convergence characteristics were analyzed through kernel density estimation, Pyatt’s Gini coefficient decomposition, and a β-convergence model. The multi-period Difference-in-Differences (DID) model was employed to identify the effects of agricultural insurance policies, supplemented by parallel trends tests, placebo tests, and other robustness checks to ensure the reliability of the results. The findings indicate: First, although national grain production resilience shows a continuous upward trend, significant regional disparities exist, with marketing areas experiencing faster growth and higher levels, while production areas and balanced areas lag relatively. Second, pronounced internal disparities are evident across different functional zones, with intra-regional heterogeneity being the primary source of overall variation. Third, convergence characteristics vary heterogeneously among functional zones: marketing areas exhibit a convergence trend, production areas show divergence, and balanced areas display no significant convergence. Fourth, agricultural insurance policies significantly enhance grain production resilience, a conclusion supported by a series of robustness tests. Moving forward, precisely targeted policies within regions should be implemented to advance the transformation of grain security governance from a focus on output maintenance to a resilience-oriented approach of system strengthening.