中国农村反贫困政策的反思——从社会救助向社会保护转变

Reflection on China's Rural Anti-poverty Policies:Transition from Social Assistance to Social Protection

在中国反贫困战略取得举世瞩目成绩的时候,农村剩余贫困人口的特征凸显了开发式扶贫政策的局限:它对于地域和贫困人口劳动能力的依赖使得其对于剩余贫困人口的政策边际效益几乎等于零,因此重构农村反贫困政策势在必行。在对发达国家新的社会政策,亦即积极的社会政策的理论基础——人力资本理论、生命周期理论与社会风险管理理论进行评述的基础上,作者利用2004年农村住户问卷调查数据分析了中国农村贫困人口的特征和致贫因素,并对社会救助政策的效果进行了评估,认为中国农村反贫困政策要从社会救助转向社会保护。为此提出了“四驾马车”的反贫困政策框架,即由普遍性的医疗保障制度、普惠型社会福利、选择性社会救助以及新型开发式扶贫政策组成的“四驾马车”来共同发挥作用。

While China's anti-poverty strategy has witnessed remarkable achievements,the existence of a poverty-stricken surplus rural population highlights the limitations of development-oriented policies of poverty alleviation.The fact that they depend on the regions and on the working capacity of the poor means that the marginal utility of policies for the surplus poor is close to zero.This means that we need to restructure rural anti-poverty policies.This paper is based on a discussion of the theoretical basis of new social policies in the developed countries,i.e.active policies-human capital theory,life cycle theory,and social risk management theory.The authors utilize data from a 2004 survey of rural households to analyze the characteristics of the rural poor and the reasons they fall into poverty and evaluate the effects of the social assistance policy.They argue that China's rural anti-poverty policies should make the transition from social assistance to social protection.To this end,they put forward a “four-horse team” of measures functioning together as an anti-poverty policy framework:a universal health guarantee system,a universally accessible system of social welfare,selective social assistance and a new model of development-oriented poverty alleviation.