Study On The Effects Of Off-Farm Employment On The Rural Households' Vulnerability To Poverty In China

As the largest developing country in the world,poverty is one of the most important social issues in China.After years of poverty reduction work,China has made the greatest contribution to reducing poverty.However,in 2016,there are still 43.35 million poor people in China's rural areas.In order to realize the goal of building a moderately prosperous society in an all-round way by the year 2020,the concept of "targeted poverty alleviation" was proposed by Chinese Government.What's more,in the field of academic research,poverty has always been the focus of scholars.With the progress of scholars' research on poverty,the connotation of poverty has been widely expanded and the concept of "poverty vulnerability" has been proposed.Different from the meaning of poverty,vulnerability to poverty reflects a forward-looking connotation.Conceptually,vulnerability to poverty refers to the probability of a family falling into poverty in the future.Therefore,vulnerable households are made of two parts:families who are currently poor and will continue falling into poverty in the future and families who are not poor at present but will fall into poverty in the future.This may have certain inspiration for China's poverty alleviation.At present,one of the main challenges faced by China's poverty alleviation is the problem of poverty-returning.By understanding the connotation of vulnerability to poverty,it is possible to identify the current poor groups precisely.Furthermore,by identifying the different characteristics of different groups,we can take targeted ways to help the households and finally reduce the probability of poverty-returning.This paper uses the micro data of China Family Panel Studies(CFPS).Based on the calculation of vulnerability to poverty of the sample families,the paper has done a lot of analysis.The results show that poor families are more vulnerable,and the vulnerability of rural households is highly correlated with family characteristics.Since the vulnerability to poverty of rural households is the result of comprehensive use of various risk management measures when households face different risk shocks,after "targeted identification" of poor households,poverty alleviation can be achieved by improving the permanent income and reducing the income fluctuations.Because income is the root of vulnerability to poverty,and going out to work is the most common way for rural households to increase income,the paper calculates each household's vulnerability to poverty firstly,and then empirically studies the impact of off-farm employment on the vulnerability of rural households in China by constructing different econometric frameworks(Fixed Effects Model and PSM-DID model).In consideration of the endogeneity,we conclude that off-farm employment can reduce the probability of rural families falling into poverty by 5.3%in the future.Based on the above analysis,the article finally put forward policy recommendations related "targeted poverty alleviation".