Rural Poverty Patterns and Influencing Factors in Yunnan Province, China: Based on County Level Dataset

A reasonable rural settlement's layout for administrative villages contributes not only to education poverty and health povertyalleviation, but also to help the government make scientific decisions for rural infrastructure construction. However, at present there exist some problems on village settlement distribution, especially in the poverty-stricken counties, such as the large amount but the small scale, unordered and scattered settlement layout, the imperfect infrastructure and so on. In the previous research, almost all the calculation principles on the rural resident's space distribution were based on the Euclidean distance, however, the Euclidean distance can not reflect the influence of topography on the residential spatial distribution pattern,while the road is the main way to connect the settlements, and the road length among the settlements is the true reflection of distance. At present, there are some blanks on taking the road network connectivity distance as a measurement to evaluate the village settlement's spatial dispersion in poverty-stricken areas, and as well as on the correlation with economic development. So taking Neixiang county as a study area, which is one of state-level poverty-stricken counties from the Qinling-Da mountains in China, this paper focuses on the specific distribution of rural residential areas and its correlation with the net income of rural residents. Based on the road network connectivity and dispersion composite index(DCI), this paper builds a discrete degree evaluation model, consisting of three inner indicators and three outer ones, and then uses GIS network analysis, overlay analysis and statistical analysis to evaluate the discrete degree of residential space distribution on 288 administrative villages from Neixiang county. Furthermore, respectively at the county scale, different geomorphic scales and different economic circles scales, the correlation analysis between the DCI and the net income of rural residents which reflects the economic development level of village, is done to reveal the relevant relationship between economic development and spatial distribution for village settlements. Results indicate that: as the dispersion degree of village residents' spatial distribution is concerned, there exists an aggregated-discrete distribution from town center to peripheral area, and specially, there is the smallest DCI value around Chengguan town, and the highest DCI values near the north,northwest and southwest mountains of the county; DCI reduces not only with the increase of net income of rural residents, but also with the influence of the DCI values of the surrounding villages; in the mountain conditions, the negative correlation between DCI and net income of rural residents is obviously stronger than that in the hilly and plain areas; the radiation effect of economic circle has great influences on both DCI and the net income of rural residents. The above conclusion has an important significance for the government's regulation planning of rural residents in poor areas, specially, when the governments plan rural residents for poverty alleviation in poor areas they have to deal with the problems systematically, so that they can improve the economic development levels of rural residents by adding economic centers, while reducing the discrete degrees of the resident settlements.

As the core component of agricultural development projects, high-standard farmland construction is a reliable measure of agricultural production, and can be used to improve the economy in rural areas. Based on provincial panel data, this paper adopts the continuous difference-in-differences (DID) method to analyze the impact of China’s high-standard basic farmland construction policy on the incidence of rural poverty and its mechanisms. The results show that this policy can significantly reduce the incidence of rural poverty by 7.4%, and if, after using robust standard error and bootstrap sampling 1000 times for a robustness test, the regression results are still robust, this also shows that this inhibitory effect is stable and persistent. It can be seen from a heterogeneity analysis that the implementation of the policy has a more significant effect on poverty reduction in areas with a higher incidence of rural poverty and a larger scale of land remediation, as well as areas in the eastern and western regions. A mechanism analysis shows that natural disasters, output value and technological progress play a partial intermediary role in the poverty reduction effects of high-standard basic farmland construction policy, and the intermediary effects are 5.79%, 44.03%, and 14.13%, respectively. This paper suggests that we should continue to promote the construction of high-standard basic farmland, explore suitable construction modes of high-standard basic farmland for different regions, continuously promote the process of agricultural modernization, and broaden the ways through which rural residents are able to accumulate capital to promote rural poverty reduction and revitalization.

The present study investigates rural and urban poverty trends of Gujarat and India using a graphical and trend line method. The association of agriculture and allied sector growth rate, population growth rate, and GDP at factor cost with poverty trend were examined by correlation matrix in India during five-year plans. Poverty at National level has declined from 1951-52 to 2011-12. In 1966-67, the poverty rate reached the maximum level, and after the introduction of the green revolution in 1967-68, it has declined. Furthermore, in 2005-06, the MNREGA program’s implementation also influenced the reduction in poverty rate. Both rural and urban poverty at National level declined, however, rural poverty incidence was higher than urban poverty, which indicated rural poverty played a critical role in the overall incidence of Indian poverty. Rural and urban poverty in Gujarat has declined since 1958-59. A negative association between agriculture and allied sector growth rate and GDP at factor cost with poverty trend showed reduction in India’s incidence of poverty. Population growth rate positively affected poverty, which shows that as the population increases, poverty incidence also increases.

Shenggen FanInternational Food Policy Research Institute and Institute of AgriculturalEconomics of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural SciencesLinxiu ZhangCenter for Chinese Agricultural Policy of the Chinese Academy of SciencesXiaobo ZhangInternational Food Policy Research InstituteI. IntroductionChina is one of the few countries in the developing world that has madeprogress in reducing its total number of poor over the past 25 years.

A salient theme in D. Gale Johnson’s work is the importance of agricultural development for general prosperity and for economic diversification (e.g., Johnson 2000). Johnson has also noted that most of the world’s poor are engaged in farming, so that a key focus of development policy is to raise the incomes of farmers. From a global perspective, increasing the productivity of agriculture, given the fixity of land, is necessary for both poverty reduction and the development of the nonagricultural sector. At the level of the world, agricultural productivity gains, poverty reduction, and the growth of the nonfarm sector are complements. However, the question remains whether these observations imply that every poor country should focus its public resources on agricultural development in order to raise the incomes of people now engaged in farming and whether such a policy is necessary for obtaining economic diversity. In this article, we use the experience of India over the past 30 years to address the issue of whether agricultural technical change actually leads to economic diversification and income growth within the rural sector in the context of an open-economy country in which there are cross-area trade and capital flows. We focus in particular on the rural sector because this is the sector in which linkages between agricultural and nonagricultural sectors are thought to be the strongest. We exploit the fact that India has maintained a policy of openness with respect to agricultural technology over this period, permitting and actively supporting agricultural development, and has moved to a reformed regime in which goods are traded and capital is more mobile in the 1990s. Evidence on the relationship between agricultural growth and nonfarm

Consolidating and expanding poverty alleviation while simultaneously reducing carbon emissions has become one of the main issues facing China. The Chinese Certified Emission Reduction (CCER) trading programme is an important supplementary mechanism to China's carbon trading market. Based on the data of 1782 counties in China from 2006 to 2017 and a difference‐in‐differences model, this study investigates the rural poverty reduction effect of CCER trading. We find that: (1) during the sample period, CCER trading has increased the per capita net income of rural residents by at least 2.5% or 187.5 RMB (about 27.8 USD or 39.3 AUD) per year. (2) The poverty reduction effect of CCER trading in poor counties is greater than that in nonpoor counties. (3) Some relevant heterogeneous effects are also measured. We find that CCER trading of hydropower projects has played a significant poverty reduction effect; the poverty reduction effect is further enhanced when the county has additional CCER projects; we also identify regional differences with CCER trading having a greater poverty reduction effect in the western and central regions. (4) Compared with the implementation of the CCER project, trading the emission reductions generated by the CCER project has brought more significant poverty reduction effects.

Botswana was among the highest growing economies in the world during 1985-2005 and achieved a reduction in its overall incidence of poverty from 60 per cent in 1985/86 to 30 per cent in 2002/03. The incidence of rural poverty in Botswana decreased from 55 per cent in 1985/86 to 40 per cent in 1992/93, however, it increased to 45 per cent in 2002/03. The reversal of gains in rural poverty reduction has motivated this study. An analysis of Botswana’s overall economic performance, demographic changes and movements and policy responses contribute to the understanding of the occurrence of the incidence of rural poverty in Botswana. In conclusion, it is found that Botswana’s rural and non-rural economy might appear to be characterised by dualism using the economic input-output analysis, whereas in fact important economic linkages exist between these sectors because of government spending policy, private remittances, government transfers and rural development policy. Therefore, there is no economic dualism in Botswana, and the rural population benefits directly from Botswana’s sustained economic growth.

In this paper made an attempt to examine the trends in rural poverty in India using secondary data for the time period from 1973–74 to 2011–12. The study considers all states and union territories of India as population and seven states from high per capita income states and seven states from low per capita income states are selected as sample. For assessing poverty levels of sample states, the variables like number of rural population below poverty, percentage of rural population below poverty line and rural poverty line in rupees are taken in to consideration. Growth rates, CV analysis, f-test and t-test are applied along with descriptive statistics for the analysis. Our result shows that the trend in rural absolute poverty has been declining over a time period, but not same kind in high per capita income and low per capita income states and there is significant mean deference noticed. The incidence of rural poverty in high per capita income states and low per capita income states of India was decreasing and varied considerably during the study period. Rural poverty growth rates have fallen quickly for all high per capita income states more than 10 per cent of compound annual growth, while in all low per capita income states less than 10 per cent of compound annual growth. There is significant mean difference witnessed between high per capita income and low per capita income states in declining poverty.

Begins by considering trends in the incidence of rural poverty in China, comparing China and India. Although the incidence of rural poverty in China declined generally, such poverty is still a matter for concern, especially now that China has joined the WTO. There is concern about the possible impact of China's WTO entry on its rural poverty and its ability to adopt policies to address it. Recent international studies of such poverty in China by bodies such as the World Bank, OECD, ADB and IFPRI are outlined and reviewed critically with these economic issues in mind. The most recent study by Anderson and others suggests that China's agriculture will be forced to undertake more structural adjustment than forecast in earlier studies. The Chinese policies to deal with rural poverty will need to give increasing attention to structural adjustment support and migration from rural areas in the future. The WTO does not count such measures as a form of economic protection. In fact, a large number of measures to provide financial support to farmers, including support to poor farmers, are WTO‐exempt. As discussed these include “green box” measure, certain development measures in developing countries, and “ blue box” measures. In addition, under the de minimis principle, China can provide economic protection on average of 8.5 per cent of the value of an agricultural product.

Raising agricultural productivity in developing countries is often said to reduce poverty more than comparable growth arising from other sectors. This claim has frequently been based on casual theorising, rather than empirical evidence. Productivity growth generates additional income and must benefit someone, though not necessarily the poor. It is conceivable that most, or even all of the benefits might go to others. Using region‐level data from Thailand, we study the relationship between agricultural productivity growth and rural poverty incidence. The dependent variable for our regression analysis is the annual rate of change in rural poverty incidence at the regional level between the years for which poverty data are available. Agricultural productivity is measured as the annual rate of change in regional total agricultural productivity, covering the same time intervals as the poverty observations, but lagged one calendar year. Other control variables include regional non‐agricultural incomes and the real price of food. The estimated coefficient on the change in agricultural productivity is negative and highly significant, implying that agricultural productivity growth does reduce rural poverty, holding other variables constant, though not more so than non‐agricultural sources of income growth. The poverty‐reducing contribution of recent agricultural productivity growth has been small. The poverty‐reducing effects of long‐term drivers of agricultural productivity growth are also analysed, using simulations based on the estimated model.

The purpose of this paper was to examine the concept of poverty and its causes in Nigeria and to analyze how adult and non-formal education programs can be utilized to reduce rural poverty in Nigeria. In spite of Nigeria's affluence in human and material resources, it is classified among countries with high level of poverty. Incidentally, the incidence of poverty in Nigeria assumes wider dimensions in rural areas where larger proportion of the population (about 70%) reside mainly as subsistence farmers, fishermen and women, retail traders, herdsmen, palm wine tappers, the aged and hunters whose cultural and occupational affiliations do not encourage them to migrate. The incidence of rural poverty in Nigeria is attributed to lack of adequate education/illiteracy, subsistence farming, protracted illness due to inadequate medical care services, lack of employment opportunities, and failure of government to provide basic social amenities. To ameliorate the extent and dimensions of rural poverty in particular, successive governments, over the years, have introduced various economic recovery programs, most of which failed due to official corruption, lack of proper mobilization and top-down nature of such programs/schemes. This paper advocates a revert to the use of adult and non- formal education programs to educate and train the rural poor outside the formal education system on how and what to do to come out of the stronghold of poverty. In this regard, the use of adult basic education and functional literacy, agricultural extension education, women education, health extension education and vocational skills acquisition programs are seriously indicated. It is strongly recommended that for poverty alleviation programs of government to succeed, community members particularly, the poor for whom the programs are meant, should be well mobilized as to make inputs in the planning, execution, monitoring and evaluation of such programs and schemes that concern them.

Based on secondary data, this paper estimates the incidence of poverty by sectoral employment status of individuals and it explores the factors determining individual’s joint probabilities of being poor and being engaged in the non-farm sector jobs (at micro-level). It also finds the impact (at macro-level) of rural non-farm sector employment on the incidence of rural poverty, and it identifies the subsectors of the non-farm sector, which help reduce the incidence of rural poverty in India. Using bivariate probit, recursive bivariate probit regression models, it finds that individual’s human capabilities owing to better education and training and higher occupations of their head of the family significantly determine their probability of being employed in the non-farm sectors, which in turn help reduce their chance of being poor. The panel system generalized methods of moment result suggest that the provincial states of India, which have achieved higher level of non-farm sector NSDP growth along with the creation of jobs through an improved level of infrastructure (roads, railways, banking, and industries) base, have succeeded to reduce the incidence of rural poverty to substantially low levels. Based on these findings, it is argued that the incidence of rural poverty can be reduced on a sustainable basis through the development of rural manufacturing, and by promoting growth of modern service sectors like education, health, communication, real estate, and finance and insurance, along with the infrastructural development.

The spatial pattern of rural poverty and its influencing factors are unique in regions located in the “double zone”, overlaying the Loess Plateau landform and interprovincial border socioeconomic zone. Using Huining County, located in the interprovincial border area of the Loess Plateau, as a case study, this paper examines the spatial heterogeneity of rural poverty patterns and poverty-causing factors by using geographically weighted regression (GWR) modeling. The potential accessibility indicator is employed to identify the formative mechanism of rural poverty. The results show that rural poverty is significantly correlated with county-level accessibility, water resource accessibility, and town-level accessibility. County-level accessibility and town-level accessibility have significant border effects on rural poverty. The arid characteristics in certain areas of the Loess Plateau mean that the impact of water resource accessibility on the incidence of rural poverty is second only to that of county-level accessibility. Forestland resources have a positive correlation with the incidence of rural poverty in the region dominated by farming. Finally, targeted poverty reduction policies are proposed based on the results of the analysis of poverty-causing factors. The findings derived from this paper can help other developing countries in designing their own poverty reduction policies.

In order to contribute to the body of knowledge on sustainable poverty reduction by exploring the relationship between rural and structural transformations and rural poverty incidence in Asian developing countries, this paper selected China, the Philippines, and Vietnam as case studies. Based on a comparison with the provincial data from those three countries, both the graphic and regression analysis suggest that structural and rural transformations matter in rural poverty reduction in these three countries. There is strong evidence showing that raising the share of non-agricultural GDP and the share of rural off-farm employment significantly contributes to rural poverty reduction in all three countries. More importantly, with the expansion of the non-farm sectors in both urban and rural areas, high-value agricultural share has a statistically significant and negative correlation with rural poverty in China and Vietnam over time, while such a negative correlation is much weaker or even does not exist in the Philippines. This paper further concludes with several implications for policymakers to promote inclusive structural and rural transformations.

Accessibility plays an important role in alleviating rural poverty. Previous studies have explored the relationship between accessibility and rural poverty, but they offer limited evidence of the collective influence of multiscale transport accessibility (town-level, county-level, and prefecture-level accessibility) and its nonlinear effects on rural poverty. This study adopted the gradient-boosting decision tree model to explore the nonlinear association and threshold effects of multiscale transport accessibility on the rural poverty incidence (RPI). We selected Huining, a poverty-stricken county in China, as a case study. The results show that multiscale transport accessibility collectively has larger predictive power than other variables. Specifically, town-level accessibility (12.97%) plays a dominant role in predicting the RPI, followed by county-level accessibility (9.50%) and prefecture-level accessibility (7.38%). We further identified the nonlinear association and effective ranges of multiscale transport accessibility to guide poverty-alleviation policy. Our results help inform policy and planning on sustainable poverty reduction and rural vitalization.