Enhancing capabilities and promoting empowerment: How do follow-up support measures affect urban resettled household integration in China?

Abstract

Poverty alleviation resettlement (PAR) is a key poverty reduction initiative that has resettled nearly 9.6 million impoverished people during the tenure of China's 13th Five-Year Plan. Beginning in 2019 additional follow-up support measures have also been implemented to help resettled households integrate into their new communities. However, the question remains as to what extent these extra measures have actually aided in integration. In this paper, we consider not only the multi-dimensionality of the integration process but also how the diverse aspects of resettled households shape the integration process. Drawing on extensive primary data from 993 survey households collected at three cities in Shaanxi, China, along with a partial least squares structural equation model (PLS-SEM), we systematically examine whether the PAR follow-up support measures have actually helped resettled household integration. Our results show that family capabilities and empowerment are both fundamental to ensuring integration and that the follow-up support measures did indeed help to improve these elements. Furthermore, we find that enhancing capabilities through follow-up support measures can facilitate resettled households to integrate both psychologically and economically and that empowerment has a large positive effect on social integration.