Zhejiang Province Of The Relative Poverty: The Evolution Of Trends, Structural Characteristics And Influencing Factors

It is well known that poverty and wealth go hand in hand in human history. But with the development of social productivity and people's ability in creating physical materials, general absolute poverty will be gradually replaced by relative poverty of a fraction of people. The developed country's poverty practice has already proved this. As a country being in a period of transition, there still exists absolute poverty in such special areas as central and western regions and minority areas of China, but its poverty incidence is very low. Meanwhile, the relative poverty also becomes more and more prominent problem accompanied by not only the increase of income per capita, but the aggravating of income inequality, which are being paid more attention by the social people. For example, Zhejiang province, as the first province entering moderating developed level, the fastest economy increment and the highest per capita income level for rural residents, has basically ended the absolute poverty. At the same time it also brings expanding disparity between the rural residents in income and the opposite development between poverty and wealth in rural areas. All of these factors mentioned above not only have negative effects on social economic running, but also influence the building of harmonious society and new countryside. Therefore, if we study relative poverty in rural Zhejiang, we can get the grip of its external expression, probe its internal mechanism and rules. And this kind of work can not only provide us certain theory and practice foundation for effectively controlling the relative poverty, but provide us certain referential value for predicting and averting undeveloped area's relative poverty problems so as to further promote our economy and society's sound and sustainable development.By using fixed observation spot longitudinal data from 1993 to 2006 in rural Zhejiang, this dissertation study evolution trends, structure, influence factors and dynamic traits of relative poverty in rural Zhejiang with the instrument of DAD software, Logit and Probit model. The basic thread of thought about the whole work is focused on "how relative poverty change? How relative poverty develop from monetary poverty to non-monetary poverty". The main contents and results are as follows:Chapter 1 is an introduction. First we describe backgrounds, meaningfulness, objectives, hypotheses, methods, theoretical framework of the research as well. And then we point out the innovation work and the inadequate which may be conquered in future research.Chapter 2 focuses on theory evolution and relative poverty in poverty research history. By following evolution path of poverty research, this part of study reviews the contents and achievements in regard to classic poverty theory, research direction and the scaling system in poverty. Based on above information we discuss the expending and changing in poverty research and the necessity of relative poverty research in rural China.Chapter 3 to Chapter 5 describe the whole status, structure, influence factors of relative poverty and their evolution in rural Zhejiang. Chapter 3 is about the status and its evolution of the relative poverty in rural Zhejiang. In which we examine the status and evolution of the relative poverty with the Gini coefficient and FGT index. The result of data analysis demonstrate that, although there exist differences in specific status and evolution trends, resident's income inequality, income poverty and consume poverty show rising trend in high-level fluctuating. And also we find these kinds of situation are more serious among the poor. Chapter 4 is about the structure and its evolution of the relative poverty in rural Zhejiang. In which after anatomizing the multidimensional poverty structure and its evolution we analyze the difference consisting in poverty incidence, poverty depth and poverty intensity among different groups. Further, after examining the relative poverty risk of specific groups we comparatively study the difference in probability falling into poverty of specific groups and their evolution. We find out families ,which residing in downland, engaging mainly in agriculture, being short of education of the main labor with old age, having moderate cultivated land per capita and lacking technical titles, vocational training, communist and cadre, always have relatively higher poverty probability and more serious poverty problems. Chapter 5 is the analysis of the influence factors of relative poverty in rural Zhejiang. In which through decomposing poverty with Shapley value approach, we analyze such factors as economy growth, income distribution and different income sources, and their effects to poverty and their evolution. Different micro factors affecting family poverty and poverty diversity in typical years are explored by using Logit model, In addition, to predict the typical family poverty probability we deeply dig out the data we have. As a result the findings indicate: economy growth, income from household business and wage income are always the important power for decreasing poverty, but compared to the later factor's role gradually strengthen, the two former factors' role gradually weaken. While factors, such as relatively superiority natural condition in plain, more cultivated land, nonproductive fixed assets and per capita financial assets, relatively higher yield of non-agriculture industries and non-agriculture employment, human capital's advantage in labor and main force, optimum population sizes in core family, low dependency ratio and social political capital, can bring down poverty probability.Chapter 6 is the study of relative poverty dynamics in rural Zhejiang. Based upon the new development in poverty dynamics theory, we test the basic status of chronic poverty, temporary poverty, never poverty, poverty enter-exit-stay from two angles of poverty term and poverty-in-and-out. Influential factors and the marginal effects on different poverty term and poverty enter-exit-stay are probed by using Probit model. The results show that most families are always in the movement of poverty-in-and-out, although different families have large diversity in proportion on suffering from never poverty to chronic poverty. Among them families that belong to without cultivated land, non-agriculture main business and employing, having highest average educated time of labor and main force have the higher ratio of never poverty and the lower ratio of chronic poverty; while families that belong to downland, agriculture main business and employing, non-educated experience of labor and main force and cultivated land per capita from 1 to 2 mu, have the higher ratio of chronic poverty and the lower ratio of never poverty. Meanwhile the increase of pure agriculture force ratio can significantly enhance slipping and staying chronic poverty probability, but decrease the probability of never poverty and poverty-out; The improvement of education of main labor force can significantly raise probability of never poverty and lower temporary poverty's; Similarly the increase of cultivated land can extremely decrease never poverty's probability and enhance chronic poverty and poverty in-and out's probability; And the increase of nonproductive fixed assets can remarkably advance never poverty probability and decrease chronic poverty, temporary poverty and poverty in-and-out probability; The increase of family type hierarchy can remarkably decrease temporary poverty probability but enhance chronic poverty and poverty maintaining probability.Chapter 7 reveals the relative poverty based upon non-monetary aspect in rural Zhejiang. According to previous results in non-monetary poverty and its connotation and denotation, we explore the status and evolution trends of education poverty, employment poverty, health poverty, the relationship within non-monetary poverty and between non-monetary poverty and monetary poverty of rural residents in Zhejiang. And we get following results: to a certain extent the situations in education poverty, employment poverty and health poverty are improved, while the internal distance in employment poverty and health poverty's families appear expanding trend. Moreover, non-monetary poverty interior and its connection with monetary poverty have dialectic relationship. Once plunging into certain poverty, the probability of staying current poverty and running into other poverty will increase.Chapter 8 gives some conclusions and revelations. Based on summarizing the paper and combining the actual situation of rural Zhejiang, we put forward some ideas and policies to cope with relative poverty. That is, with the idea of a society for all and social justice, we should pay equal attention to advancing economy growth and adjusting income distribution, accelerate rural industrialization and promote non-agriculture development, facilitate lands transfer and speed modern agriculture construct, establish and improve rural social security system, improve human capital and enhance development capability, etc.This paper makes out some innovations to the following aspects. Firstly, studying poverty in rural Zhejiang with relative poverty perspective, we not only break through the limit of previous research focused on absolute poverty, but keep in line with the socioeconomic development and the changing of poverty in developed rural area. Secondly, carrying empirical research on poverty dynamics and non-monetary poverty, we achieve organic integration of static poverty and dynamic poverty, monetary poverty and non-monetary poverty. Thereby, we overcome the shortcoming of previous research on static and absolute poverty. Thirdly, exploring the multidimensional poverty structures and relative poverty risk of particular groups, we deepen comparative study on immanent mechanism of poverty, and surmount the lack of pertinence of previous holistic approach of poverty. Fourthly, combining with a variety of approaches such as FGT, Shapley value ,Probit and Logit model, we study poverty status, poverty structure, influence factors of poverty and poverty-in-and-out, consequently, realize the innovation of integration use on econometric research method.