Abstract:To scientifically analyze income changes of farmers’ households after land transfer,this paper explains incentives of decision-making behavior of farmers’ land transfer by micro-economics models,uses binary logistic regression to analyze influencing factors of farmers’ decision on land transfer and uses propensity score matching to test the impact of rural land transfer on farmers’ household income level and income structure based on survey data of rural households of 9 counties (cities/districts) in the eastern part of Hubei province. The results imply that:1) farmers’ education,area of land management,number of people in agricultural labor force,policy cognition and property right cognition have a significant positive impact on farmers’ scale operation of transferred land flow. The age of heads of household,management type,endowment insurance and policy cognition are the main incentives for farmers to low out their land and engage in off-farm activities. 2) Land flows in or out is beneficial to farmers’ household income increase since its income growth rate is 12.74% and 7.57%,respectively,compared with land non-flow farmers. 3) There are significant structural differences in the income growth effect between transfer-in farmers and transfer-out farmers. The former contribution rates of operating income,wage income,transfer income and property income to household income increase are 62.87%,26.24%,9.05% and 1.84%,and the latter contribution rates are -52.41%,88.69%,25.09% and 40.33% respectively. Therefore,this paper puts forward some policy suggestions to broaden the channels of increasing farmers’ income:cultivating new-type agricultural businesses and adopting new transfer patterns to promote the efficiency of agricultural production,and further reforming land tenure policy for different types of farmers.