The Poverty Reduction Effect Of The Urban Minimum Living Security System

In the four decades of reform and opening,China has achieved remarkable successes in poverty reduction,especially the elimination of extreme poverty.The current poverty problem can be characterized from three aspects,i.e.large base of poor population,large base of potential poor population,and individual poverty alleviation.To address the upper problems,Chinese government carries out the "targeted poverty alleviation" policy continuously and transforms the poverty alleviation policy from regions to populations.In urban social security system,the urban minimum living security is the last "safety net" which guarantees the basic life of urban residents.Previous studies on public transfer payment policies such as subsistence allowance mainly focus on their impact on the current state,and the researches from a forwardlooking perspective are emerging in recent years.This paper uses the concept of poverty vulnerability in a forward-looking perspective and focuses on the geographical division of poverty line to which the academia pays little attention.Specifically,the following questions are answered in this paper: What is the vulnerability of urban households to poverty in China? Does the urban subsistence allowance system affect the vulnerability of urban families to poverty and how much effect does it have on poverty reduction?Based on the data of China urban household survey(UHS)and the local subsistence allowance standards on the official website of the civil affairs bureau of People's Republic of China,we measure the poverty vulnerability.In specific,we adopt the widely used measurement in literatures--three-stage feasible generalized least square method and propensity score matching method to analysis the impact of urban subsistence allowance system on vulnerability.This paper is organized with the following five chapters: The first chapter is the introduction of research background and its significance,as well,presents the organization of this paper.In the next chapter,we introduce some related researches at home and abroad which concentrates on the field of poverty and poverty vulnerability.Meanwhile,a theoretical foundation and improving direction for the empirical research of this paper are also clarified.This part carries on the statistical comb to the domestic empirical literature microscopic data.The third chapter is the theory,which introduces the definition and identification of poverty,the measurement method of three-stage generalized least square method and the propensity score matching method in detail.The fourth chapter introduces the experiment data,including micro data UHS and regional subsistence allowance standards.In addition,data cleaning/matching and descriptive statistics of variables are given.The fifth chapter performs empirical analysis.Insides,dynamic changes of "Di Bao Family" are analyzed,and poverty vulnerability is measured.Then,a series of dynamic analyses are carried out on poverty and poverty vulnerability.Finally,we analyze the influence of the minimum living allowance system on the vulnerability of poverty with propensity score matching method.The last chapter makes the conclusion,recommends some feasible policies on the basis of the aforementioned empirical analysis,and highlights our innovations and shortcomings.The research results of this paper show as follows: First,"Di Bao Family",in terms of the actual dynamic subsistence allowance,is more likely to show chronic poverty again,with the ratio reaching 70.06%.At the same time,compared with the families that have lifted themselves out of poverty,there is a large number of families that return to poverty and become "Di Bao Family".Second,in terms of the poverty vulnerability,according to the grouping of "Di Bao Family" or not,no matter what poverty line lines on,the average poverty vulnerability of "Di Bao Family" is higher than that of non-"Di Bao Family",accounting for about 1.5-2 times.According to different regional groupings,no matter what poverty line lines on,the average vulnerability in north China is the highest,followed by eastern China and central and southern China,and the lowest in northwest China,which means that the average vulnerability of cities in traditional rich areas is higher.Third,in terms of dynamic changes in poverty and vulnerability to poverty,no matter what poverty line lines on,poor families are in higher probabilities to fall back into poverty.Fourth,in the perspective from the impact of urban subsistence allowance on vulnerability,although the urban subsistence allowance system has a significant mitigating effect on the vulnerability of urban household poverty,it shows a significant weakening trend.