Research On Poverty Of Minors Guarded By Family And Its Governance In P.R. China

Minors’poverty is an important social problem that many countries are facing. As economic development has provided material supports, social development has brought awareness of children’s rights, social undertakings’development has made great progress and people has started focus on the growth and development of minors, this problem gre getting more and more concern.Minors’poverty is one’s poverty in childhood and the poverty of minor group in a certain period, which includes economic poverty and service poverty. Economic poverty is mainly considered as low-income. Service poverty covers education, health, care, cultural services and so on. Economic poverty and service poverty are both different from each other and interrelated. Economic poverty is the basic performance of minors’poverty will affect minors’ access to service resources, resulting in service poverty. Service poverty is another important aspect, which will exacerbate the economic poverty and enlarge its impact. Besides, service is also related to public services provision and we can compensate for the impact of the economic poverty by strengthening the public services to improve the growth and development of minors.Depending on the guardianship, minors can be divided as minors guarded by family, by the state, by the collective and minors without guardian. Though minors guarded by family are far more than other three groups, their security issues especially the poverty problem have not got enough attention.By means of data analysis, I found that the poverty of minors guarded by family in China is severe. Firstly, in the dimension of economic poverty:No matter across the country or between urban and rural areas, the Gini coefficient of minors guarded by family is higher and the distribution is quite different, which caused poverty of some minors.Take50%of median income around the urban or rural in different regions as local relative poverty line (L-RPL), whether urban or rural, eastern, central or western regions, the relative poverty rate is high. Take the ratio of income to L-RPL to indicate the poverty situation of minors, there are no significant difference.Take50%of median income around the urban or rural in the whole country as national relative poverty line (N-RPL) and take the ratio of income to N-RPL to indicate the poverty situation of minors, there are significant difference between the eastern and central region, the eastern and western region. But the difference between the central and western region is insignificant. Minors’ economic situation of the eastern region is better than the central and western regions. There are significant differences between urban and rural.Take the living standard released by the World Bank as absolute poverty line(APL) and take the ratio of income to APL to indicate the poverty situation of minors, the difference is significant between the eastern and central region, the eastern and western region, but insignificant between the central and western region. Minors’economic situation of the eastern region is better than the central and western regions. The difference is also significant between urban and rural, and rural minors’absolute poverty is more severe.Secondly, as to the service poverty:minors in rural areas, backward areas and economically disadvantaged families, migrant children and stay-at-home children face severe service poverty. For example, there are still education quality gap of compulsory and droping-out problem in non-compulsory stage. Parents’lack of health care knowledge in low-income families will affect the health care for minors and their healthy living behavior. In rural and backward areas, there are fewer immune health resources and the quality of the workforce is relatively low. Migrant children face more severe problem than the urban resident children. And the economic poverty will also limit poor minors’access to public health services. Due to changes in production and lifestyle, the problem of inter-generational care is severe. However the public service of children care is insufficient, imbalance between rural and urban still exists and the the workforce’s quality is low. Besides, low-income families’cultural resources is scare, the construction of public libraries and school library is backward and still face imbalance problem, cultural performances and other services are also insufficient to meet the cultural needs of minors? which led some poor minors face relative poverty in quality and absolute poverty in quality.The reasons of poverty of minors guarded by family are:firstly, economic development imbalance occur between different regions, rural and urban, the public service construction is imperfect in rural and backward areas, and the income distribution gap is big, which has limited resources that the local government and families can provide minors. Secondly, the society has not taken its responsibility in the transformation process. For example, the public service such as education, health and culture is unbalanced, the social security system is imperfect which has limited minors to meet their demands and has not play well in protecting family life, reducing the family burden and thus indirectly to improve the growth and development of minors. Besides, there is no security system built specifically for minors to directly protect the life and growth of poor minors. Thirdly, as the main guarantor of minors, the family may face employment problem, single parents, high dependency ratio, medical expenses, and losses caused by disasters which will bring the family’s economic level down and can’t create a good growth and development environment for minors.As to the impact on individuals, some poor minors may face problem of innate quality, do worse in acquiring nutrition, healthy living environment and health care resources, which will affect their physical health. Poverty and the resulting social exclusion will affect their mental health, behavior and their social identity. Finally, such problems will result in backward of poor minors’ physical and mental qualities, human capital accumulation, which will affect their quality of employment and income in adulthood and call them more likely to fall into poverty. As to economic development, shortage of individual’s human capital accumulation will affect society’s human capital accumulation quality, current poverty and adult poverty would undermine the consumption power of the economic development and increase social welfare spending, which both will reduce economic efficiency. As to the society, minors’ poverty contrary to the intra-generational equity and intergenerational equity and is not conducive to promote the harmony between human beings, human beings and nature, and between different regions.To solve this problem, the Chinese government has taken laws, regulations and various policy documents as the basis, carried out a series of work including financial assistance, health care, and education. Social forces such as abroad and domestic NGOs, individuals and businesses are also actively involved and have made some achievements. However, compared with the work of other countries and regions, or consider the extent of poverty of minors guarded by families in China, these work are very inadequate. The government’s child welfare work is only a relief system with narrow coverage and imperfect policy system. It is not development-oriented poverty governance aiming at poor minors, neither formatting multi-dimensional policy system, and the organization system is still imperfect. Although NGO and other social forces actively participate in governance, they are still very small and weak, there are still obstacles of the policy and legal environment, and the service they can provide is still limited.The United Kingdom, the United States and Taiwan has established comprehensive policy systems to govern minors’ poverty, based on laws, involved by multiple subjects, including the promotion of parental employment, family assistance, the assistance of the minors, minors’ care services, which have some reference to China.Therefore, to improve the minors’ poverty governance in China, it is necessary to learn the advanced experience of other countries and regions and consider our actual. We need take realizing the rights of minors, demonstrating fairness and justice and promoting economic development as the value proposition; maintain a rapid and balanced development of the economy, reform income distribution, strengthen public service system in the backward and rural areas, raise the concept of social upbringing of minors and governing minors’poverty, finally to optimize the macro-environment; take the government and NGO as main participators, improve legal and organization system, reform the NGO management, promote the development of NGO, nurture public spirit and charity awareness, divide the responsibility of government, NGO and family, establish coordination mechanism between the government and NGO, improve life monitoring of minors, financial security, evaluation mechanisms, and then build the governance system of poverty of minors guarded by family; implement economic assistance projects for minors and family-oriented economic improvement projects, strengthen education, health services, care services, cultural services for poor minors and vocational training for older poor minors to make up the multidimensional system of governing poverty of minors guarded by family.