Study On Rural Poverty And Minimum Living Standard Guarantee Program In China

Since the reform and opening up,rural economy has developed rapidly and rural poor population has significantly reduced in China.However,the poverty problem in China's rural areas is still very grim,which is a great challange for government to reduce poverty.China's rural minimum living standard guarantee or "dibao" program began in the 1990s,and in 2007 the central government adopted the program nationwide.As Chinese government's main anti-poverty policy,China's rural dibao program bears a heavy responsibility to alleviate the poverty in rural areas.Based on the data of China Family Panel Studies of 2010(CFPS2010)and 2014(CFPS2014),we studied the relationship between China's rural poverty and rural dibao program.We find that:Firstly,we measure the income poverty,expenditure poverty and multidimensional poverty,which is education,health,medical care,living standards and income in China's rural areas.The incidence of multidimensional poverty is more than 50%,and is higher than that of income or expenditure poverty.Secondly,we study the determinants that affect the targeting of the rural dibao program.Family size,average age,the ratio of the elderly population and housing difficulties,the distance to the nearest town,minority and natural disasters will increase the probability of households getting the mimimum living security.However,the ratio of the salary income,sanitation and car will reduce the probability.Thirdly,we study the anti-poverty effect of the rural dibao program from the perspectives of village level and household level respectively.At the village level,increasing the dibao threshold can reduce the poverty for the whole village.However,at the household level,the dibao program has a positive and significant impact on rural households,income poverty,which means that the rural dibao program didn't reduce the poverty of rural households.Fourthly,we explore whether there is welfare dependency caused by rural dibao program in China.When the dependent variable is"labor time supply",whether national or our four areas,the rural dibao program reduce the working time of the multidimensional poverty individuals.That is to say,there is significant welfare dependency effect caused by the current rural dibao program.As the dependent variable is "current work state",there is significant welfare dependency effect caused by the current rural dibao program in the northeastern and eastern rural areas.But there is no welfare dependency in western rural areas.Welfare dependency is related with economy,poverty,and the dibao threshold.Finally,we offer several feasible suggestions for future poverty reduction strategy according to our results and the China's situations.