A Study On The Urban Poverty In Transitional China

Since the middle 1990s, because the urban economy is being quickly developed and the income level of the urban and rural citizens is increasing, the urban poverty in China appeared quickly and became serious gradually. Followed with four steps of what, why, how and should, based on the literature carding and field investigating, the study makes a system research of the present urban poverty in China with the methods of integrating theory with practice, qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis, historical analysis and logical deduction, positive analysis and normative analysis.The study includes the following chapters.The first chapter finds out that both the study approaches and the study contents need further to deepen, transform and extend in the study of the urban poverty theory through sorting the related literature both abroad and at home.Chapter 2, taking the population who have the urban household register as the analyzing object, reviews its size of suffering the poverty and analyzes the relations between the urban poverty line and the lowest safeguard line as well as earnings/expenditures through comparing that of in different years and districts. While the relative data are underestimated compared with the reality, the study still shows the followings: (1) the urban poverty population disperses over the central and west China; (2) different districts have different poverty line, in order to avoid overestimating for the poverty actuality in central and west China and underestimating for the poverty actuality in east China, it is not suitable to have a same poverty line in China; (3) there are a large quantity of population are sensible to the change of the poverty line because they are families in the position of the poverty verge; (4) the theoretical poverty line and the actual salvation line are out of joint in some cases but there are high degree of relativity between them.The third chapter reviews the probability of poverty arising accompanied in classifying according to the degree of the education, the sex, the age, the employment status and the profession features of the population who have the urban household register, the chapter also reviews the general character expressed in their life, mind, behaviors and residential area. Generally, the rate of the urban poverty is reverse to the education degree; the young is easier to the poverty status than the old; the urban household has the rural registered residence and the farmer workers are easy to the poverty status; the unemployed person, the people losing the ability to work, the disabled or the chronic patients, or the housework workers are easy to the poverty status; but there are no clear sex difference. To the features of the urban poverty population, the study focuses on the following aspects: the economic embarrassment of living beyond income, the consumption structure of concerning with the food, the short of the various capital, the low social position, the low employment rate or re-employment rate, serious pessimism mood and group consciousness, and inhabited in a region of the urban poverty population, etc.Chapter 4, focused on the macro level, analyzes the foundation and mechanism that cause and prick up the urban poverty in transitional China which is concerned in many aspects such as the institutional factors, structural adjustment, deprivation, reprobation and poverty culture. (1) The different institutional reforms such as revenue allocation system, social security system, urban employment system, household registration system are impacting the arising and developing of the China's urban poverty. (2) Under the industrial structure transformation, it forms a vicious circle of the poverty (lower income and lower quality employment in lower level industries or unemployment lower income or no income) that can not break in a short time since there are income differences because of the forms of the labor in or between the different industries and different enterprises. The circle has the obvious effect to the urban poverty with the market economy in its leading position. In addition, the synthetic factors from the industrial structure adjustment and the other related policies and cultures lead to the special urban poverty in transitional China. (3) While there is no tangible poverty culture, there exists the discrimination and reprobation to the poverty groups, especially to the farmer workers, from the whole society which are showing in policy and non-policy level.Based on the survey information and statistical data,the fifth chapter,taking Lanzhou as the case,analyses the predicament of the poor in this city, such as income,consumption, houing,education,medical treatment,and psychology,etc. Then, analyses the macroscopical and microcosmic causes of formation of Lanzhou's urban poverty.Chapter 6 focuses on governing the urban poverty and builds China's strategic frame to fight against the urban poverty according to the thought of decreasing poverty advocated by the World Development Report and points out that all of works should start with the metric of whether the work improve the poverty's welfare or not and its improving degree. Particularly, it can take many measurements to form a synthetic social security and salvation system. Such measurements include: to adopt favorable growth model to the poverty group, to improve the investment environment, to develop the non-public-owned economy, to strengthen the institutional and legal construction, to improve the government governing and to combine other related policy in education, medicine and housing, all of which are based on the survival safeguard system to the urban poverty population.