Quantifying Poverty Temporal Changes in Association with Rural Transition in Guangxi, China

Heyuan You

doi:10.1155/2016/2717954

Abstract

Poverty is a social problem in developing countries, especially for the rural places experiencing rapid transition. This study characterizes the temporal changes of rural poverty under rural transition during 1991–2010 in Guangxi. In particular, poverty is measured by the Foster-Greer-Thorbecke method, and rural transition is described from three aspects including rural industrialization, regional urbanization, and agriculture commercialization. Relationships are quantified by multivariate linear regression. Results reveal that industry income proportion (IIP) and secondary industry proportion (SIP) are positive contributors to the poverty incidence, while urban-rural income gap (URIG) is a negative contributor to the poverty incidence. Industrial total output of township and village enterprises (ITOE), IIP, and grain commercialization rate (GCR) present positive correlation with the poverty depth. The URIG has a negative correlation with the poverty depth. Tertiary industry proportion (TIP) and expenditure on fixed productive assets per capita (EFPA) are positively correlated with the poverty severity, while URIG and power of agricultural machinery (PAM) associate with poverty severity negatively. Redundancy analysis shows that individual influence of rural industrialization is higher than that of regional urbanization and agriculture commercialization. The joint influences of rural industrialization, regional urbanization, and agriculture commercialization are the strongest.

Highlights

Poverty alleviation is a primary goal of rural development in China [1], and China’s Central Government has initiated several antipoverty programs during the last three decades [2]
The rural household income associated with the rapid economic growth in China has increased rapidly [3], and the population living in poverty has been decreased drastically in rural China [4]
H cannot be fitted comfortably since the distribution of H has no significant increasing or decreasing trend. It denoted that the poverty incidence varies hugely in a short time, and the poverty incidence remains at a certain level

Summary

Introduction

Poverty alleviation is a primary goal of rural development in China [1], and China’s Central Government has initiated several antipoverty programs during the last three decades [2]. The rural household income associated with the rapid economic growth in China has increased rapidly [3], and the population living in poverty has been decreased drastically in rural China [4]. At the end of 2014, China still had 70.17 million people in rural areas living below the official poverty line of 2300 RMB in annual income using 2010 constant price [8]. The inequality between lowincome rural household and high-income rural household as well as that between rural places and urban cities slacks the rural poverty alleviation. It decreases the elasticity of rural poverty reduction due to rural economic growth [10]

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Results

Conclusion