Inequality of rural residents'income in China since the targeted poverty alleviation strategy:New trends,causes,and policy implications

Poverty and income inequality are problems faced by many countries including China.Since the implementation of Targeted Poverty Alleviation(TPA),absolute poverty has been eradicated,meanwhile,Chinese rural residents'income and inequality have experienced unprecedented new dynamics,but still,very few studies have focused on them.Hence,we attempt to examine the new trends in Chinese farmers'income inequality and to understand its causes during this period.We observe that China's urban-rural income ratio has been shrinking and the urban-rural inequality has been decreasing from 2014 to 2021.The reduction in the Theil index indicates a decrease in the regional inequality of farmers'income as well,and the decline in inter-regional inequality among eight economic zones contributes about 80%to increased equality.These new trends are caused by the fact that,with the TPA,the incomes of rural residents especially that in destitute areas,grew faster than that of urban residents and farmers in prosperous areas.The higher share of non-agricultural industry and agricultural mechanization level have significant positive impact on regional equality of farmers'income,while urban-rural dual structure has significant negative inhibitory effects.The lowest farmers'income and the highest inequality in the Northwest,and the slowest growth in the Northeast deserve more attention in rural Revitalization.From these findings,we propose four policy implications that would be applied to improve Chinese farmers'income equality,govern relative poverty,and achieve common prosperity in the post-poverty era.

Measurement and Decomposition of Multi-Dimensional Poverty in China

Based on China Family Panel Studies(CFPS) data and global MPI standard,this paper measures and analyzes multi-dimensional poverty in China. The study finds that the level of multi-dimensional poverty in China is not high and tends to decrease over time.Uneven regional development significantly affects multi-dimensional poverty. The poor are deprived in health, education and other aspects, but indicator contributions vary among specific groups of people. Overlap between economic poverty and multi-dimensional poverty has a trend of inter-temporal reduction. China's development-centered poverty reduction policy has achieved great results and significantly improved the development capabilities of the poor. Development-oriented approach is China's important experience in poverty reduction, and forebodes China's bright prospect of achieving its goal to complete building a moderately prosperous society by 2020.

Poverty alleviation through e-commerce:Village involvement and demonstration policies in rural China

The diffusion of e-commerce has played a significant role in recent rural economic development in China.E-commerce is also considered as an efficient channel to alleviate poverty in rural China.Voluminous studies have investigated the contribution of e-commerce to agricultural development,yet it is lacking empirical evidence as to the effects of e-commerce on rural poverty alleviation.Since the year of 2014,in order to develop rural e-commerce,Chinese government launched the National Rural E-commerce Comprehensive Demonstration Project.This gradual involvement policy offered a natural experiment for evaluation of e-commerce.Based on village-level survey data from rural China and Heckit method,our study finds that rural e-commerce has a significantly positive effect on rural income.Moreover,the effect is inverted U-shaped for the relative-poverty villages.The estimation of the propensity scores matching model confirms that the results are robust.The following policy recommendations are proposed:(1)policy support to rural e-commerce should prioritize the povertystricken villages.By doing so,the marginal income effects of e-commerce will be maximized.(2)Investment in internet infrastructure and establishment of human resources for e-commerce in rural areas will have spillover effects,increasing rural income through the"digital dividend".

Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on rural poverty and policy responses in China

Given the sudden outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic,a timely study on the impacts of and policy response to the pandemic on rural poverty in China is critically important because China has aimed to completely eradicate extreme poverty by the end of 2020.This paper uses data from the latest round of a nationally representative household panel survey to examine the impacts of the pandemic on rural poverty in China.Our data show that 11.9%of sample households were ever officially registered as poor households between 2013 and 2019,and this poverty incidence fell to 2.7%by the end of 2019.In the middle February of 2020,23%of the households who have graduated from poverty since 2013 perceived that they would fall back into poverty due to the COVID-19.Among those never poor households,7.1%perceived that they would possibly fall into poverty due to the pandemic.Results from both descriptive and multivariate analyses consistently show the interruptions that the pandemic caused in off-farm employment is an important channel that led households to perceive of falling back into or falling into poverty.We also find households in the bottom four quintiles when ranked in terms of household income per capita are much more likely to perceive themselves of falling back into or falling into poverty during this pandemic than those in the richest quintile.Meanwhile,our results show that the education and age of household heads,as well as being from Hubei Province matter in explaining household perception about falling back into or falling into poverty in some cases but not all.The paper concludes with a set of policy responses that China has taken to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on poverty alleviation.

Analyzing Influencing Factors of Rural Poverty in Typical Poverty Areas of Hainan Province: A Case Study of Lingao County

Rural poverty and poverty reduction are not only the focal issues that have attracted worldwide attention, but also the vital issues on people's livelihood that has attached great importance and aimed to be solved by the central and local governments of China. Based on the survey data of 354 farming households, this paper, taking the national poverty county of Lingao County, Hainan Province for an example, examined the characteristics of rural poverty of the county. Moreover, this paper established the spatial lag model(SLM) from five dimensions, namely, status of the household head, household structure, health status, income composition and traffic accessibility, to analyze the main influencing factors of rural poverty according to the values of Moran's I and the diagnosis of spatial dependence of the OLS model. It is found that the poor farming households gathered mainly in five towns in the north and southwest of the county, and the rural poverty have the characteristics of low educational level of the heads, more minor children, high population of farming peasants, high incidence of disease and low proportion of household wage-equivalent income. The results also showed that the variables such as the number of minor children, the number of migrant worker, the number of farming peasants and the proportion of wage-equivalent income have significant effectiveness on rural poverty, while the status of the household head, health status and traffic accessibility have little influence. It is an important way to realize the goal of poverty alleviation by controlling the number of farmers' fertility, strengthening the vocational skills training of farmers, vigorously developing specialization and large-scale agriculture and increasing the employment opportunities of farmers.

Off-farm employment and poverty alleviation in rural China

Two phenomena in the history of China's economic growth during the last four decades are the increase in the share of offfarm employment and the progress in poverty alleviation in rural China.Although both of them have been well documented in the literature,less is known about the linkage between the two.To better understand the role that off-farm employment has played in poverty alleviation in rural China is critically important not only for China but also for those countries that are trying to reduce poverty.Here,we examine the impact of off-farm employment on poverty alleviation in rural China.Using the data from two nationally representative household panel surveys(China National Rural Survey and China Rural Development Survey),this paper provides supporting evidence that off-farm employment contributes to poverty alleviation in rural China.Specifically,if household participation in off-farm employment increases by 10 percentage points,the likelihood for a nonpoor household to fall into poverty will decrease by 0.88 percentage point whereas the likelihood for a poor household to climb out of poverty will increase by 3.5 percentage points.In a word,off-employment can not only prevent rural residents to fall into poverty but also help those already in poverty climb out of it.

Impact of climate-smart agricultural technology on multidimensional poverty in rural Ethiopia

A large body of empirical literature showed that the adoption of agricultural technologies reduces poverty. However, dominants of those studies so far used one-dimensional income or expenditure-based measures of poverty which may not reflect other types of deprivations. Therefore, the major objective of this study is to examine the impact of adopting climate-smart agricultural technology, which refers to a joint application of row planting methods and the use of chemical fertilizers, on the multidimensional poverty status of rural households in Ethiopia. To estimate the impact of the stated technologies, this study employs propensity score matching and endogenous switching regression methods. To measure the multidimensional poverty index, the study also uses the Alkire and Foster counting approach. Using the Ethiopian Socioeconomic Survey(ESS), collected in 2015-Wave 3, the results of the study show that the adoption of these technologies reduces deprivation score and one of its component, the standard of living part. Regionally, a high reduction in deprivation is observed in Amhara and Oromiya regions. The results also show that the impact is significantly higher in severely deprived households. It is also observed that the reduction in multidimensional poverty due to the technology is through an increase in income/consumption via improvement in production gain. The impact channels more through the non-food expenditure pathway. Finally, this study also sheds light on the effects that technology adoption has on multidimensional poverty reduction.

Status and path of intergenerational transmission of poverty in rural China:A human capital investment perspective

This paper focused on the intergenerational transmission of poverty in rural China by estimating the intergenerational transmission of earnings and stated its mechanism from the perspective of human capital investment before children participated in the labor market.The data used in this study were longitude data collected in 2000 households of 100 villages among 25 counties across five provinces in 2005,2008,2012,2016,and 2019.Qualitative and quantitative methods were adopted.We found a significant intergenerational transmission of earnings in rural China,especially for the pairs of father–children and parents–children.The intergenerational earnings'elasticities were much less than those in urban areas,which indicated better social mobility in rural areas than that in urban China.The children with parents who could earn much were more likely to be invested before they participated in the labor market,gain a high education and have more skills.Three cases further showed that the mechanism of human capital investment in children breaking the intergenerational transmission of poverty and promoting social mobility.

The effects of social security expenditure on reducing income inequality and rural poverty in China

Social security has,as one of its primary aims,the provision of financial support to those deemed to be poor or facing the threat of poverty.Based on China's national statistical data covering social insurance,social assistance,and social welfare between the period 1978–2018,this paper evaluates the effect of social security expenditure in reducing income inequality and rural poverty with cointegration analysis.It was found that there is a positive correlation between social security expenditure and the income gap of urban and rural residents in the long run,but the effect is very limited;nearly 99%of the changes of the urban–rural income gap come from its own contributions.Further research also shows that the elasticity of rural poverty incidence to social security expenditure is–0.2255,which indicates social security expenditure helps reduce rural absolute poverty.Based on these findings,the policy implications can be that much social security expenditure and a more equitable social security system should be encouraged.It will become one of the major anti-poverty strategies after 2020 in China when we win the battle against absolute poverty.

The impact of the New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme on the“health poverty alleviation”of rural households in China

This study investigates the impact of the New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme(NRCMS)on rural households to escape poverty.We employ the instrumental variable method,the IVProbit model,to analyze the national data from the rural-resident field survey by the China Family Panel Studies(CFPS)in 2016.Based on the large-scale data,we found that,first,the hospitalization of family members is the key factor in increasing the risk of the family falling into poverty.The NRCMS has significantly reduced the likely risk of falling into poverty.Second,the impact of the NRCMS on poverty alleviation varies among groups with different levels of income.There is no impact on the upper-middle and high-income groups;in contrast,the NRCMS has substantially improved the capacity of low-income rural families to prevent poverty due to illness,especially for the lower-middle-income group.Third,there exist significant regional differences in the impact of NRCMS on the health poverty alleviation of rural households in China.The NRCMS has successfully reduced the risk of rural households in the western region falling into poverty,simultaneously,no significant impact on those in the eastern and central regions.In order to diminish and eliminate poverty eventually and boost rural residents'capacity for income acquisition,we propose the following:raise the actual compensation ratio of the NRCMS,control the rising expense of NRCMS by promoting the payment method reform,construct the comprehensive healthcare system in the western region,strengthen the medical security for the poor in remote area,and enhance the living environment for rural residents.

Empirical Study on the Relationship between Farmers' Human Capital Investment and Rural Poverty

Literatures about the relationship between human capital investment and rural poverty are reviewed.According to the time-series data from 1990 to 2007,VAR model and variance decomposition research are used to study the relationship between household human capital investment and rural poverty.Result shows that there is long-run equilibrium relationship between household human capital investment and rural poverty.Educational investment and health investment have significant impacts on the alleviation of rural poverty;while migration investment does not have significant impact on the alleviation of rural poverty.Among the factors causing poverty fluctuations,educational investment has greater impacts on poverty fluctuations than health investment in the short run,but health investment has greater impacts on poverty fluctuations than educational investment in the long run.Based on this,related countermeasures are put forward,such as further increasing the investment in education and health,implementing the compulsory education and social security system,consolidating the rural cooperative medical care,improving the retirement pension system in rural areas,and perfecting the training and technical extension system for rural population under the poverty line.

Are“Internet+”tactics the key to poverty alleviation in China’s rural ethnic minority areas? Empirical evidence from Sichuan Province

China has made great efforts to alleviate poverty in rural ethnic minority areas and targeted achieving the poverty-alleviation task by the end of 2020.Aba,Ganzi,and Liangshan,three of the poorest ethnic prefectures in Sichuan Province,Southwest China,have all implemented“Internet+”tactics since 2013,which have had the positive effect of increasing family revenues by improving communication infrastructure and encouraging the large-scale use of e-commerce.This paper aims to comprehensively investigate whether“Internet+”tactics play a key role in poverty alleviation in Sichuan’s rural ethnic minority areas and to propose further measures to enhance the efficiency of e-commerce practice.To this end,we conduct an analysis using the framework of classic growth theory and use panel data from 2000 to 2018 to examine the relationship between Communication Infrastructure Investment(CII)and a set of poverty-alleviation indicators,including local GDP growth rate(LGGR),local government revenue(LGR),and per-capita income of residents(PCIR).The results indicate that strengthening CII improves the PCIR and local economic growth,playing a key role in poverty alleviation.However,the stimulation of CII on LGGR and LGR wanes as time passes.More financial and technical actions will be needed to improve the efficiency and quality of current strategies for sustainable development in those areas.

Advances in Studies about Rural Financial Poverty Alleviation from the Perspective of Targeted Poverty Alleviation

With the objective of building a well-off society in an all-round way reaching the decisive stage,poverty alleviation enters the final stage,and rural financial poverty alleviation is increasingly becoming a hot topic of various circles of society. In order to accelerate the poverty alleviation and provide references and recommendations for further development of theory and practice of financial poverty alleviation,this paper made an overview of the organization system,operation mechanism and service products of rural financial poverty alleviation,elaborated the development path of financial poverty alleviation,and came up with recommendations for financial poverty alleviation.

Developing strategy for rural transformation to alleviate poverty in Pakistan:Stylized facts from panel analysis

Sustainable income growth and poverty reduction remain critical challenges at the forefront of research in Pakistan,particularly in rural areas.To overcome these challenges,the role of rural transformation(RT)has emerged and gained importance in recent years.The present study is based on district-level data and covers the period from 1981 to 2019.The study attempts to quantify the role of rural transformation in boosting rural per capita income and alleviating rural poverty in the country.The study also aims to explore the impact of stages of rural transformation on rural per capita income and rural poverty alleviation.The empirical findings reveal that rural transformation(RT_(1)and RT_(2))is essential in enhancing rural per capita income and alleviating rural poverty.The role of the share of high-value crops(RT_(1))is more pronounced than the share of non-farm employment(RT_(2))in boosting rural per capita income and poverty alleviation.The trend of larger contribution of RT_(1)to enhance rural per capita income also continued at 2nd stage of rural transformation.In the case of poverty reduction,at 3rd stage of rural transformation,the role of RT_(2)is dominant.Our results indicate that districts at higher stages of rural transformation(both RT_(1)and RT_(2))tend to correlate positively with increased rural per capita income and reduced poverty rates,suggesting that progress in rural transformation is associated with improved economic conditions.However,it is important to note that this correlation does not necessarily imply a direct causal relationship between rural transformation and these economic outcomes;other factors may have influenced this relationship.In addition,the welfare impacts are more noticeable among the districts where a simultaneous shift from grain crops to cash crops and from farm employment to non-farm employment is observed.The study provides baseline information to learn experiences from fast-growing districts and to replicate the strategies in other districts,which boosts the RT process that may increase rural per capita income and enhance poverty reduction efforts.

Integrated Development of Rural Tourism and Rural Poverty Alleviation in the Context of Rural Revitalization:A Case Study of Enshi Prefecture,Hubei Province

As a good mode of getting rid of poverty,poverty alleviation through tourism can transform the advantages of local resources into industrial advantages,mobilize the local economic vitality,and effectively improve the income of farmers.Through the investigation and study of rural poverty alleviation through tourism in Enshi Prefecture,Hubei Province,this paper analyzes the model of poverty alleviation through tourism formed in Enshi Prefecture,and puts forward the corresponding recommendations according to the problems encountered in the process of poverty alleviation through tourism.

Rural transformation,income growth,and poverty reduction by region in China in the past four decades

China has experienced rapid rural transformation in the past four decades.Accompanying the rapid transformation is a significant rise in rural household income and a substantial fall in rural poverty.This paper examines the evolutions of and the relationships between rural transformation(high-value agriculture and rural non-farm employment)and its outcomes(per capita rural income and rural poverty incidence)using provincial-level data.The results show that 31 provinces/autonomous regions/municipalities have undergone significant rural transformation,but the level and speed of rural transformation differed considerably.Moreover,an increased level of rural transformation is often associated with higher per capita rural income and reduced rural poverty incidence.Notably,a category of provincial rural transformation based on high-value agriculture and rural non-farm employment is also analyzed.We further discuss the likely impacts of institutions,policies,and investments(IPIs)on rural transformation and conclude with policy implications.

Investigating poverty in rural Iran: The multidimensional poverty approach

In this study, rural poverty in Iran is investigated applying a multidimensional approach, association rules mining technique, and Levine, F and Tukey tests to household data of 2008. The results indicate that poverty in its multi-dimensions is an epidemic problem in rural Iran. The results also exhibit that there are 11 patterns of poverty in the rural areas including four main patterns with 99.62% coverage and seven sub-patterns with nearly 0.38% coverage. In these patterns, housing and household education are the most important dimensions of poverty and income poverty is the least important dimension. Government income support policy to households, in enforcement the law of targeting subsidies, cannot be regarded as pro poor policy but it follows other political aspects.

The effect of rural labor migration on poverty alleviation:a village-level study in China

The construction of the new socialist countryside is being carried out in China nowadays. Although lots of successful experience has been gotten, different problems occur in various regions yet. To analyze the relationships among rural labor migration, poverty alleviation and characteristics of migrants is important in considering the effect of rural labor migration on the construction of the new. socialist countryside, Available sampling and typical case study are adopted and 236 questionnaires are collected from four villages in northwest GuangxL China, Daxin, Lixin, Longhe and Yongehang, We analyze the rural labor migration status, characteristics of migrants, remittance situation and income, household income and the ratio of remittance income to total household income. About 2/3 of the households have migrants in surveyed villages. And nearly half of the migration households have only one family member as migrants in the four villages. The migrants mainly comprise male and the younger, with the education level of junior middle school and higher More than half of the migrants are employed in Guangdong Province. But the characteristics of migrants in Yongchang are more diverse. The rural labor migration in the village is extremely active and extensive. And over 60% of the household with family members as migrants have remittance income. The rate in Yongchang is extremely high （80%）, And the income of households with migrants getting remittance income is significantly higher than their counterparts. More than half of their income comes from remittance as far as the former kind of household is concerned And in Yongchang, the rate is nearly 80%. The conclusion is that rural labor migration is popular and extensive in lots of villages. And the migration and remittance play an important role in rural household income, especially in some poor villages. For this kind of village, the rural labor migration may be some ＂compulsory course＂ in rural development. And the rural labor emigration is an essential way in poverty alleviation. This is the first step in the construction of the new socialist countryside.

Targeted Poverty Alleviation Lies in Precisely Identifying the Poverty–Stricken Population: An Analysis of the Targeting Effect of the Rural Subsistence Allowance Policy

Poverty–stricken populations must be identified precisely in the fight against poverty to implement the strategy of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects by 2020. The analysis based on the household survey in 2013 shows that the targeting accuracy is not high based on the standard of income and the accuracy is higher based on the standard of multidimensional poverty index. But the latter still has a low coverage rate. To gradually achieve integration of the rural poverty line and the rural subsistence allowance line, standards applied to identifying households entitled to subsistence allowances should be changed from the standard of income to multidimensional poverty indexes. A unified standard of subsistence allowances and a unified method for identifying related households should be developed. At the same time, coverage and funding of subsistence allowances should be extended and increased to better meet people's basic needs.

Measurement of Rural Inclusive Financial Development and Analysis of Spatial Effects on Anti-poverty

Based on two dimensions of supply and demand,we use six indicators to establish a rural inclusive financial development index and evaluate the development of China's rural inclusive finance. We use spatial panel data model to examine the relationship between financial inclusion and rural poverty. Results show that:( i) both the rural inclusive finance and rural residents' per capita consumption present spatial clustering feature and show significant spatial correlation;( ii) the development of rural inclusive finance has significant spatial effect on poverty alleviation along time and space dimensions. In this study,the paper puts forward policy recommendations on strengthening the rural financial resources flow and constructing diversified rural inclusive financial system.