Measuring The Impact Of Sloping Land Conversion Program On Poverty Alleviation

In 1999,to restore the degraded ecosystems,the Chinese government launched the Sloping Land Conversion Program.Farmers are the main target of implementation of the Sloping Land Conversion Program.The Sloping Land Conversion Program converts farmers’sloping and desertified arable lands into forest lands and grants them subsidies within a certain period.Increasing farmers’income is one of the two core objectives of the Sloping Land Conversion Program.The coverage of the Sloping Land Conversion Program highly overlaps with areas where extreme poverty occurs in China.Since the 18^thNational Congress of the Communist Party of China,targeted poverty alleviation and ecological civilization construction have been elevated as a national strategy.Whether the implementation of the Sloping Land Conversion Program has a positive effect on increasing farmers’income and rural poverty alleviation deserves the attention of the Chinese government and academia.In this study,based on the balanced panel data and income determination equations of 952 sample households in 216 administrative villages from 72 towns in 15 cities of 6 provinces from 1995 to2016 obtained by continuous follow-up research,the effect of the Sloping Land Conversion Program on the income growth and income inequality of sample farmer households was estimated,and on such basis,the impact of the Sloping Land Conversion Program on rural poverty alleviation was measured based on the paths of change including income growth,income inequality,etc.The following conclusions can be drawn from the empirical results of this study.（1）The implementation of the Sloping Land Conversion Program increased the land-based income of the sample farmer households by 10.80%,and the impact on the non-agricultural income of the sample farmer households was not significant.（2）The implementation of the Sloping Land Conversion Program increased the income inequality of the sample farmer households;from 2003 to 2016,the contribution rate of the Sloping Land Conversion Program to the Gini coefficient remained between1.60%and 2.80%.（3）In the sample area,the Sloping Land Conversion Program has produced a good poverty alleviation effect;from 1999 to 2016,based on the 1995 poverty line standard,the Sloping Land Conversion Program reduced the poverty rate in the sample area by 2.65%;on the one hand,the income growth brought about by the Sloping Land Conversion Program reduced the poverty rate by2.83%;on the other hand,the income inequality caused by the Sloping Land Conversion Program caused the poverty rate to rise by 0.17%.Based on the conclusions of this study,the following policy implications can be drawn.The adjustment of the Sloping Land Conversion Program policy needs to further reflect its active role in increasing farmers’income and poverty alleviation in rural areas.It is necessary to cautiously adjust the subsidy policy of the Sloping Land Conversion Program,increase support for the following industries of the Sloping Land Conversion Program such as economic forests,and strengthen assistance and guidance for the optimization of the allocation of production factors for farmers participating in the Sloping Land Conversion Program.Meanwhile,it is necessary to focus on the problem of increasing income inequality caused by the implementation of the Sloping Land Conversion Program,and to achieve the comprehensive upgrade including ecological improvement,income growth,reduction of income gap and reduction of poverty of farmers through appropriate policies that favor low-income and poor groups in the areas covered by the Sloping Land Conversion Program.The possible marginal academic contribution of this research lies in the quantitative estimation of the contribution rate of the Sloping Land Conversion Program to rural poverty alleviation by establishing a research framework for the impact of the Sloping Land Conversion Program on rural poverty alleviation from the path of income growth and income distribution and based on the above influence path.