Study On The Multi-intergenerational Transmission Of Poverty Among Rural Residents In China

Since the reform and opening up,China's anti-poverty work has made remarkable achievements,but the "poor second generation"," impoverished families can hardly nurture rich sons " and other hot topics have frequently appeared in the network media,and these comments have emerged as a social concern about intergenerational mobility and class curing concerns.The essence of these phenomena was the lack of intergenerational income mobility,reflecting that God is always on the side of the strongest battalions,that's the Matthew effect.Especially in the context of the large income distribution gap in China,the poor groups may inherit the economic and social environment left over from the father,but it is difficult to change this state of existence,which in turn causes the vicious circle of poverty in the intergenerational cycle.However,we find that against the backdrop of a large income gap in China at this stage,the large-scale slum phenomenon brought about by high income inequality in countries such as Latin America has not appeared in our country,nor has there been a major problem of social instability.From this,we think that one possible explanation is that,with the development of China's economy and the implementation of poverty alleviation work,the original solidified social stratum structure has been broken,creating opportunities and conditions for the income status of the poorer groups with lower incomes(Lei & Chen,2012),namely,the intergenerational transmission of poverty has been blocked.Therefore,it is of practical significance to deeply study the problem of multiintergenerational transmission of poverty in China,which provides theoretical opinions for accurate poverty alleviation in China.So,what is the trend of intergenerational transmission of poverty between three generations in the same family in rural China,and is there interruption of intergenerational transmission of poverty? If so,what are the mechanism of influence over three generations? How to improve the intergenerational income mobility of poor groups in rural China and block the multi-intergenerational transmission of poverty? Around the above three problems,this paper will take the rural poor groups in China as the object,based on the classical theoretical model of the intergenerational income flows of Becker and Tomes(1979),the use of CHNS data and CHIP data to form the main and auxiliary samples by TS2 SLS method,to do a comprehensive study on the relationship between grandparents,fathers and grandchildren of rural poor residents.The main content includes the following parts:The first part is the construction of theoretical analysis framework.By constructing the Mincer income equation and expanding the theoretical model of intergenerational income transmission,it lays a theoretical foundation for the subsequent rural residents of poverty intergenerational transmission.The second part is the poverty measure.Based on the Mincer income equation,estimate grandparents,and fathers income in the main sample of the three generations(CHNS data),multi-level and multi-indicators to measure the incidence of poverty among rural residents and the proportion of poverty multi-intergenerational transmission in the main sample of the three generations,and the present situation of rural residents' poverty in China was described.The third part is the poverty multiintergenerational liquidity measure.By using the method of two-sample two-stage least squares estimators,estimates the intergenerational income elasticity between different groups.Which empirically testing the conclusion of the theoretical model,validating the phenomenon of the interruption of the intergenerational transmission of poverty,and calculating the difference of intergenerational mobility from different angles.That lays a foundation for the next mechanism decomposition.The fourth part is the decomposition of the multi-intergenerational transmission mechanism of poverty.Based on the theoretical analysis of the multi-intergenerational transmission mechanism of poverty,combined with the decomposition method recommended by Blanden et al(2007),the role of education and health in the process of multi-intergenerational transmission of poverty was tested.The conclusions of this paper are as follows:First,the income levels of grandparents and fathers are influenced by human capital,occupation and birth age.The results show that,as far as education is concerned,the higher level of education,the higher level of individual's income.In terms of occupation,there are differences in income when there is a difference in occupation.In the age of birth,the later the age of birth,the higher the individual income.Whether grandparents or fathers,the later they were born,the higher their income.It shows that the better the economic development,the more employment opportunities,the higher the wage level,and the greater the impact on individual income.Second,the incidence of poverty and the intergenerational transmission of poverty among rural residents show the characteristics of dynamic change.The incidence of absolute poverty and relative poverty both showed a descending trend from generation to generation,with the highest of grandparents,the second of fathers and the lowest of grandchildren.There were differences in the incidence of poverty among rural residents in different regions and different grandchildren of gender.Overall,while absolute poverty is decreasing,the gap of income distribution within society is increasing,relative poverty is becoming more pronounced and disparities between regions are becoming more pronounced.From the perspective of intergenerational transmission of poverty among rural residents,whether it is the intergenerational transmission of absolute poverty or the intergenerational transmission of relative poverty,the grandchildren is more influenced by the father than the grandparent.Third,there are many intergenerational transmission of poverty among rural residents,and intergenerational transmission of poverty is blocked between grandparents and grandchildren by theoretical derivation and empirical analysis.From the theoretical derivation,the results confirm that the existence of poverty intergenerational transmission between three generations,and if the marginal income elasticity between grandchildren and father is greater than 0,the marginal income elasticity between grandchildren and grandfather is less than 0,which indicates that it is possible that the poverty of grandchildren and grandfather does not shift.The results of empirical analysis show that the influence of the grandparent on the income of the grandchildren is negative and weak,while the influence of the father on the income of the grandchildren is positive.Compared with the grandparents,the influence of the father on the income of the grandchildren is greater.There are differences in multi-intergenerational income mobility between different groups.However,there was no gender difference in the blocked phenomenon.Fourth,the income elasticity between grandparent and grandchildren,father and grandchildren,will change with the change of the income quantile of the grandchildren.The results show that the intergenerational income elasticity between the parent and the grandchildren shows the trend of inverted U-shaped,while the change trend of U-type is shown between grandparent and grandchildren.Generally speaking,the middle-income grandchildren are greatly influenced by their grandparents and fathers.On the whole,the intergenerational income elasticity at the two ends of the grandchildren's income is smaller than the intergenerational income elasticity at the middle of income quantile.Fifth,human capital has a strong explanatory power for the intergenerational income mobility of rural poor residents,and there are differences in multi-intergenerational transmission mechanism of different groups.The results show that compared with the grandparents,the interpretation power of human capital in the process of intergenerational income transmission between the father and the grandchildren is stronger,and its contribution rate shows a trend of increasing from the grandparents to the parents.Compared with the health of the children,the contribution rate of the grandchildren education to the intergenerational income transmission between grandparent and grandchildren or parent and grandchildren is higher.Both parents and grandparents pay more attention to investment in education and health of grandson,but the granddaughter have higher returns on education and health investment than grandson.Based on the above conclusions,this paper holds that:Firstly,the research object was expanded.In this paper,grandparent is introduced into intergenerational income mobility model,which enriches and expands the existing research on intergenerational income mobility between parents and descendants in China.It not only extends the research object of the intergenerational transmission of poverty from two generations(parents and descendants)in the same family in the countryside to three generations(grandparents,parents and grandchildren),but also turns the static study of poverty in the past to the dynamic study of poverty,which further deepens the understanding of poverty.Secondly,constructs a theoretical model which can explain the problem of intergenerational transmission of poverty and explain the interruption of intergenerational transmission of poverty.It expands the theoretical model of intergenerational income mobility.There are studies on the intergenerational transmission of poverty in China,most of which are based on the theoretical model of intergenerational income mobility of Becker and Tomes(1979),and the conclusion shows that there is an intergenerational transmission of poverty between the two generations.On the basis of the theoretical model of two generations of intergenerational income mobility,this paper further deduces and expands into a theoretical model reflecting the intergenerational flow of income between grandparents,parents and grandchildren of rural poor residents in China,and the results of the final theoretical model show that the model can not only explain the intergenerational transmission of poverty,but also reflect the interruption of poverty intergenerational transmission,which further enriches the theoretical study of intergenerational income mobility in China.Thirdly,this paper examines the role of education and health in the process of multiintergenerational transmission of poverty from the perspective of human capital,and breaks through the limitations of existing research ignoring ancestral groups.First,the introduction of healthy human capital intermediate variables,to explore the rural poor residents of the intergenerational income mobility of the internal mechanism.At present,few literatures discuss the internal mechanism of multi-generational income mobility of rural poor residents,even if there is relevant literature,either focus only on education,or focus only on health.At the same time,the two basic variables of human capital,education and health as intermediate variables,compare the influence difference of two variables,and improve the relevance of rural poverty alleviation work has realistic guiding significance.Second,the study of the intergenerational transmission mechanism of poverty is intended to provide theoretical support for the policy analysis of blocking the intergenerational transmission of poverty,but in the past,the previous research has neglected the role of the grandparent in the accumulation stage of human capital in grandchildren,and this paper studies the internal mechanism of the intergenerational transmission of poverty among three generations.To a certain extent,it makes up for the deficiency of the existing research on the intergenerational transmission mechanism of poverty in China,which provides a more operational means for the formulation and implementation of anti-poverty policies,and further improves the effectiveness of precision poverty alleviation work.Fourthly,innovation in the application of measurement methods.At present,the tracking time of public database of Chinese microscopic investigation is generally short,and when estimating the level of income mobility in multiple generations,the pairing data of ancestor,parent and grandson are sorted out from a single database,and there may be no grandparent,parent income or income section data in the pairing sample,and there is a parent-child co-housing problem.All these factors will lead to the measurement bias of the intergenerational income elasticity estimation results.To this end,this paper chooses to obtain two samples from CHNS and CHIP two databases to estimate the level of income liquidity in multiple generations,to CHNS the database as the main sample and CHIP database as a supplement sample,grandparents,parents and grandchildren of their respective ages as the standard pairing,using two-stage least squares method(TS2SLS),and the estimation error of intergenerational elasticity coefficient is improved effectively.In addition,in order to clarify the perturbation effect of some unobservable abilities on their income,the difference of the influence of grandparent and parent income of grandchildren at different income levels is further analyzed,and most of the previous studies used conditional division regression method,but this method pays more attention to some unnecessary individual characteristics,which ignores the consistency of the results with the original intent of the policy makers.Therefore,this paper introduces the method of non-conditional division regression to investigate the intergenerational income elasticity of grandchildren in different income distribution.