The Limits of the Chinese Welfare State: Evidence from the Dibao Program in Chengdu

ABSTRACT

The Minimum Living Standard Guarantee Scheme (Dibao) is the most important social assistance program in China. It provides means-tested cash transfers for the poor and serves as a safety net in the Chinese welfare state. Like minimum-income schemes in Western societies, however, it is also a deterrent to efforts by welfare recipients to find work. In order to solve this issue, China officially established an employment assistance program in 2014, aimed at “activating” welfare recipients. Evaluative evidence on the effectiveness of employment-assistance programs, however, remains scarce. This article uses in-depth interviews to analyse the activation paradigm and evaluate the effectiveness of employment assistance in China. The results indicate that employment assistance is of limited importance in helping recipients move off welfare and become self-sufficient. To promote welfare-to-work transitions, the article argues, positive and negative measures of employment assistance should be emphasised and improved, and it is necessary to understand the unique employment barriers faced by many welfare recipients and provide individually tailored services.

KEYWORDS:

• Employment assistance
• welfare recipients
• activation paradigm
• Minimum Living Standard Guarantee Scheme (Dibao)
• social assistance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. In China’s social assistance system, there are eight basic programs, including Dibao, relief for “three-nos” people (those lacking the ability to work, income and family support), employment assistance, medical assistance, disaster relief, housing assistance, education assistance and temporary assistance. As mentioned in the Introduction, Dibao is the most important program in China’s social assistance system.

2. In China, primary industry includes agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery; secondary industry includes mining, manufacturing, construction, electricity, heat, gas and water production and supply; and tertiary industry means service industries, which include wholesale and retail, transportation, hotel and catering services, financial services, education, health, culture, sports and entertainment, and so on.

3. In China, the working age for men is 16 to 60, and 16 to 50 or 55 for women.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Social Science Fund Project of China (17BSH062) and the Sichuan University Outstanding Young Scholars Project (SKSYL201808).