谁在享有公共救助资源?——中国农村低保制度的瞄准效果研究

Who are Beneficiaries of Public Assistance?——The Performance of the Targeting Mechanism of China's Rural DiBao program

公共救助资源的分配是社会各界关注的焦点问题。基于9107份入户调查数据,本文利用多种指标测量了最低生活保障资源在多大程度上分配给了穷人,分别是哪些类型的穷人。并进一步利用多项logit模型探讨了救助资源分配的影响因素。实证结果表明:"收入贫困"人口仅获得31.86%的低保救助资源,相当一部分救助资源分配给了其他类型的贫困人口。社区瞄准机制是导致农村低保制度的实际救助对象和政策规定目标人群相背离的一个主要原因。依据实证结果,本文提出如下政策建议:(1)扩展现有低保制度的目标群体,包括更为丰富的贫困类型。(2)中国农村低保制度可以采用代理家计调查和社区瞄准相混合的瞄准机制。首先通过社区瞄准初步确定救助对象名单,然后通过代理家计调查剔除不合格的救助对象,防止精英控制。

The objective of this paper is to explore who are beneficiaries of Di Bao program in rural China and to examine why some poor families haven't received any Di Bao benefits,whereas some non-poor families have been benefiting from public assistance. A quantitative study,involving 9107 households and 34132 individuals from five China provinces,was conducted in this article. The analysis,based on micro-level data,suggests that income poverty families only accounts for 31.86 percent of total Di Bao benefits and a large quantity of Di Bao benefits are allocated to families in expenditure poverty. Community targeting is the main reason of the observed inconsistency between real beneficiaries and beneficiaries stipulated by policy. The key limitation of the study is that given there is no consensus about the definition of expenditure poverty,this study defined that a family is in expenditure poverty if its educational or medical expenditure is 40 percent or more of non-food expenditure. Obviously this definition is a little arbitrary. Drawing on the empirical results,this study posed that a hybrid targeting mechanism should be employed to identify the beneficiaries of rural Di Bao program. The hybrid targeting mechanism consists of proxy means test and community targeting. In the practical application,community targeting will be used to determine the beneficiaries list firstly. Then proxy means test can be used to avoid elite capture by identifying unqualified families. Existed literatures about the performance of Di Bao targeting is focusing on the income poverty and could not present the real distribution of Di Bao benefits. This study draws on multiple indicators to explore how Di Bao benefits is allocated across families with different poverty characteristics and posits that community targeting is the main reason of the inconsistency between real beneficiaries and beneficiaries specified by policy.