Assessment of China’s Poor County Program

ABSTRACT

China made remarkable progress in rural poverty alleviation. A major policy instrument is the County Level Poverty Alleviation Program, which has vast policy support but is also criticized for targeting errors, misuse of funds, and making poverty both shameful and attractive. Whether this program, or the country’s economic growth in general, is the main force in poverty reduction is the question addressed in this article, analyzing data for the 592 poor counties. The response to the economic growth–policy alleviation conundrum is that a push for social wellbeing and empowerment is needed together with economic growth to achieve major poverty improvements.

KEYWORDS:

• Anti-poverty expenditures
• economic growth
• poor counties
• poverty alleviation
• poverty targeting

Acknowledgments

The second and third authors acknowledge the financial assistance of the Australian Research Council.

Notes

1. In addition to the above-mentioned four sub-programs for poverty alleviation, mechanisms, such as the agricultural tax reform, foreign funds, the Hope Project and a new cooperative medical care, also assist the development of poor counties. However, as they do not specifically target these type of counties, they are not included in the analysis to follow.

2. Goal 1 of the eight UN Millennium Development Goals announced in 2000 is to Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger, available at http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/poverty.shtml.