Can health poverty alleviation project reduce the economic vulnerability of poor households? Evidence from Chifeng City, China

Abstract

Poverty is a worldwide problem. The Chinese government proposed the Health Poverty Alleviation Project (HAPA) from the health care perspective in 2016. The project aims to prevent poverty caused by disease or a return to poverty due to disease. We employ the propensity score matching and difference-in-differences method and an economic vulnerability indicator to evaluate the project effects using 2017–2020 internal data from the government of Chifeng (a prefecture-level city in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region). We analyze the impact of the HPAP on the catastrophic health expenditures of families with different levels of poverty and health. We also discuss its effect on poverty alleviation and its connection with other poverty alleviation projects. We show that the HPAP reduces the occurrence and intensity of catastrophic health expenditures by 17.1% and 31.2%, respectively. For families with poor health and extremely poor families, the effect is stronger, and the project has effectively alleviated the economic vulnerability of poor families. In addition, we find a connection between education and health poverty alleviation and confirm the scientific rationality of China's targeted poverty alleviation system.