Mechanisms And Effects Of Social Security On The Multidimensional Relative Poverty Of Urban Households

Collective prosperity is the essential requirement of socialism.After successfully eliminating absolute poverty in China,measuring and further eliminating relative poverty has become an urgent and important issue in the process of achieving collective prosperity and promoting socialist modernization.The 20 th National Congress of the Communist Party of China clearly pointed out that material abundance and spiritual enrichment are the essential requirements of socialist modernization,and that Chinese-style modernization is the modernization of the entire Chinese people.This has presented new requirements for research on relative poverty.On the one hand,as we enter a new stage of development,the governance of relative poverty aimed at achieving common prosperity should not be limited to the economic dimension,but should also be expanded to the multidimensional level in order to promote comprehensive human development and the synchronous abundance of material and spiritual wealth.On the other hand,the rapid urbanisation and industrialisation process has caused some urban residents to lose their jobs or lower their income levels due to changes in social welfare,socio-economic restructuring,etc.and thus have insufficient income-generating capacity,while the rural migrant population ends up in relative poverty due to insufficient human capital,lack of social capital and lack of long-term stable employment and social security.To meet these new requirements,this study uses data from the 2019 Chinese Social Survey(CSS)and employs the AF method to calculate the multidimensional relative poverty index of urban households,decomposed by region and indicator dimension.This study finds that in the multidimensional relative poverty measurement of urban households across the country,the financial capital dimension has the highest contribution rate,followed by the material capital and social capital dimensions.Specifically,the indicators with the highest contribution rates are per capita income and social status.In terms of regions,the multidimensional relative poverty index of urban households in the eastern region is lower than that of the central and western regions.Among them,the contribution rate of the material capital and financial capital dimensions to the multidimensional poverty index of urban households in the central region is higher than that in the eastern and western regions;compared with the eastern and central regions,the contribution rate of the social capital dimension to the multidimensional poverty index of urban households in the western region is higher;and the contribution rate of the human capital dimension in the eastern region is higher than that in the central and western regions.Firstly,in the multidimensional relative poverty measure of urban households nationwide,the financial capital dimension makes the highest contribution,followed by physical and social capital.Specifically,the top contributing indicators are per capita income and social status.In order to explore effective policy tools and mechanisms for alleviating relative poverty,this article,based on an accurate measurement of multidimensional relative poverty,empirically studies the impact of social security on multidimensional relative poverty of urban households,and conducts robustness checks using multiple methods.This article also explores how social security further affects multidimensional relative poverty of urban households by influencing political trust.The regression results show that social security can significantly improve the multidimensional relative poverty status of urban households,with a significant mitigating effect on poverty levels in terms of material capital,financial capital,and social capital.Moreover,government social security spending in each province also has a significant effect on reducing the multidimensional relative poverty levels of urban households.More importantly,social security can significantly enhance the political trust of urban households and thereby alleviate multidimensional relative poverty,providing an explanation for the mechanism of social security policy.The findings of this article provide certain policy insights for poverty reduction in China: The government should pay attention to the relative poverty of urban dwellers,and policies should be designed to cover more dimensions than just the economic dimension,taking into account regional differences as well.The government should further improve the social security system and promote the accumulation of livelihood capital among the poor,enhance their sustainable development capabilities,and make the social security system a powerful tool for long-term governance of relative poverty in the future.The government should focus more on reaching out to the people,and alleviate relative poverty problems by increasing their trust level through more policies.