The Lack Of Migrant Workers Social Assistance System And Countermeasures

It is an inevitable trend of industrialization and modernization that the surplus rural labours transfer to non-agricultural industries and cities. The rural labours in the city engage in the occupation of a worker, but their identity is still peasant because of the duality of Chinese society. They are so called Peasant-workers. They are not taken into the urban social security system, they wander outside of the management and service of the government. These helpless peasant-workers suffer such a unfair treatment that they become a special social vulnerable group. They contribute greatly to the economic growth and urban development. Instead of getting the deserved rewards, they live a difficult life. At present, there are 250 million Peasant-workers, totally 500 million including their children, which account for 38.5% of the total population. The most effective social security system to deal with the large-scale poverty resulting from social economic structural adjustment is social assistance, which is the final line of defence in social security system. Facing a great deal of actually existing poverty, social assistance can use the limited funds pointedly on the people who need it urgently. Social assistance plays a good role in the marginal area where is beyond reach of social insurance. Therefore, establishing the social assistance system for Peasant-workers can not only meet the urgent needs of such a large social vulnerable group, but also lay the foundations for next aim to establish a unified social insurance system covering all citizens including peasant-workers.On the basis of analyzing the current situation and questions of peasant-worker social assistance in our country, the article points out the absence of peasant-worker social assistance system from the aspects of government, society and peasant-worker; and analyzes the reasons of the absence from the objective factors social ideas, opinions and system, and subjective factor peasant-workers themselves. Then, based on the analysis and lessons of social assistance in foreign countries, the article puts forward the countermeasures aimed at the questions of the absence of peasant-worker social assistance system from the angle of the government.