Abstract
Villagers’ participation in poverty alleviation programs has received considerable attention, especially with regard to the poor. However, not much is known about the welfare effect of villagers’ program participation. This paper analyzes the impact of villagers’ program participation on their incomes. We used household data from 529 villagers in China’s Whole Village Poverty Alleviation Program. We focused on two types of program participation—discussion and voting. Using the propensity score matching approach, we estimate the impact of rural households’ program participation on their income. The results show that the education and the political career of the household head determine program participation. Households participating in discussion and voting have a positive and significant effect on household income. Richer households benefit more from the program. However, the poor receive less benefits. We conclude that broadening villager’s participation can boost the effectiveness of China’s poverty alleviation program.
Highlights
Reducing poverty has been the major task of the government to improve social development [1,2,3], boost economic growth [4,5,6] and benefit individual welfare [7,8,9,10]
Existing evidence finds that poverty alleviation programs have at least three positive effects, including improving the well-being of the poor [13,14,15], increasing community participation [16] and stabilizing household income [17,18,19]
Regarding to the income effect of poverty alleviation programs, Phan, et al [21] found that the Vietnam pro-poor program had a positive effect on income inequality, but that it has no significant effect on poverty incidence
Summary
Reducing poverty has been the major task of the government to improve social development [1,2,3], boost economic growth [4,5,6] and benefit individual welfare [7,8,9,10]. Existing evidence finds that poverty alleviation programs have at least three positive effects, including improving the well-being of the poor [13,14,15], increasing community participation [16] and stabilizing household income [17,18,19]. Qin and Shi [7] found that microfinance projects, led by the government, can increase household income level significantly and positively. They find that democratic villages with less political connections to the local government get more benefits [7].
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