Poverty Alleviation Policies Research Articles

POVERTY ALLEVIATION POLICIES FOR ACHIEVING INCLUSIVE GROWTH: EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION

The Singapore Economic ReviewOnline Ready No AccessPOVERTY ALLEVIATION POLICIES FOR ACHIEVING INCLUSIVE GROWTHFarhad Taghizadeh-HesaryFarhad Taghizadeh-HesarySchool of Global Studies, Tokai University, JapanTokai Research Institute for Environment and Sustainability, TRIES, Japanhttps://doi.org/10.1142/S0217590823030017Cited by:0 PreviousNext AboutSectionsView articleView Full TextPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack CitationsRecommend to Library ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmail View article References Taghizadeh-Hesary, F, N Panthamit and N Yoshino (2021). Introduction. In Poverty Reduction for Inclusive Sustainable Growth in Developing Asia, F Taghizadeh-HesaryN PanthamitN Yoshino (eds.), Singapore: Springer. Google Scholar UNU-WIDER (2020). COVID-19 fallout could push half a billion people into poverty in developing countries. Available at: https://unu.edu/media-relations/releases/covid-19-fallout-could-push-half-a-billion-people-into-poverty-in-developing-countries.html. (Accessed on 2 May, 2022). Google Scholar FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Recommended Online Ready Metrics History Published: 20 June 2023 PDF download

Who is vulnerable to energy poverty in China?

Energy poverty has been identified as a problem in China, but research to date does not discuss who experiences it, unlike in other countries. Here, we compared sociodemographic characteristics known to be linked to energy vulnerability in other nations between energy poor (EP) households and non-EP households, using the 2018 survey data from China Family Panel Studies (CFPS). We found that a range of sociodemographic characteristics associated with transport, education and employment, health, household structure, and social security, are disproportionately distributed among five provinces (Gansu, Liaoning, Henan, Shanghai, Guangdong) in our study. EP households are more likely to have low housing quality, low education, old people, poor mental/physical health, be mainly female, be rural-Hukou, be without pension, and lack clean cooking fuels. In addition, the logistic regression results further evidenced the increased likelihood of experiencing energy poverty given vulnerability related socio-demographic predictors in the full sample, in rural-urban areas, and in each single province. These results suggest that vulnerable groups should be considered specifically when formulating targeted policies for energy poverty alleviation to avoid exacerbating existing energy injustice or creating new ones.

Inclusive Poverty Reduction for Sustainable Development in Nigeria

This study is premised upon the fact that any poverty reduction programme that is not inclusive can not fully deliver on sustainable development. Hence, the study focus is on how poverty alleviation policies can be inclusive so as to guarantee susatainable development in Nigeria. The study appraised some of the poverty reduction programmes in Nigeria so as to assess the extent to which they are inclusive when compared with global best practice using the Chinese multi-dimensional poverty reduction model. The study revealed that the Chinese model was designed to capture various dimensions of poverty with the intention of solving them based on their uniqueness and that some poverty levels are environmentally determined. The study further revealed that the poverty reduction approaches in Nigeria cannot be said to be inclusive and sustainable. level and to suggest possible solutions in order for poverty reduction policies to bring about desired inclusivity and sustainable development in Nigeria. The study recommended that Government policy on poverty alleviation should follow a multisectoral approach where all the stakeholders are given specific roles to play and that the Government should determine how the intended beneficiaries are to be identified to ensure that the benefits reach them directly.

A Comparative Study of Compulsory Education Between China and France

Compulsory education is the embodiment of a country's soft power. Only by strengthening compulsory education can people improve the overall level of education. Due to historical reasons, China is facing with huge difficulties. Therefore, learning from the advanced is of much necessity. As one of the first countries to implement compulsory education, France has a high level of national education and can be used as the object of the study. Therefore, in this article, by comparing both countries on their financial systems, teachers’ salary system, poverty alleviation policies and laws and regulations, several conclusions are gained so as to find the direction for the future improvement of China's compulsory education. China still lacks legal systems in quite many fields, while the establishment of regulatory bodies and departments is still in need of improvements. Meanwhile, it is also necessary that China increases the social status of the teaching and administrative staffs.

Assessment of the effects of targeted poverty alleviation policy on differently poverty‐stricken households: A multi‐propensity score weighting model

AbstractEliminating poverty is a multifaceted global challenge and a focal point of global development governance. With the implementation of targeted poverty alleviation (TPA), China's poverty alleviation efforts have had significant achievements. This study provides a new perspective by classifying poverty‐stricken households based on poverty root causes at the household level, a multi‐propensity score weighting model based on counterfactual inference is employed to examine the poverty reduction effect and policy precision on six non‐equivalent poverty‐stricken household groups in a Chinese county. The results reveal that the poverty reduction effects differed among poverty‐stricken households with different root causes of poverty. Specifically, households impoverished due to disability have the lowest income of the six groups. The assistance policy effects also vary significantly and are found to be poorly suited to poverty‐stricken households a lack of labor force and funds. A robustness test confirms this conclusion and a more nuanced analysis reveals that these differences are reflected in the wage and transfer incomes. Therefore, to ensure the stability of poverty reduction and the sustainability of income for poverty‐stricken households, relevant associated aid policies need to place different emphases based on their household characteristics.

Assessing Multidimensional Poverty Index in Coastal Regions: Implications for the Makran Region of Iran

The Global Multi-Dimensional Poverty Index (MPI) was developed in 2010 and used health, education and standard of living indicators to determine the incidence and intensity of poverty experienced by a population. While the MPI is a global index, the method is flexible and can be modified to best suit the environment or target groups. Coastal regions are one of the most critical areas that require modified MPI, since their complex structures are constantly subjected to natural and human changes that affect the living conditions of residents. What is lost in using the global MPI for poverty assessment in coastal communities is the lack of attention to contextual characteristics and, subsequently, missing various multi-aspect indicators in different natures and scales. This paper reviews the MPI and tries to expand the model based on the indicators of marine development approaches for the Makran coastal region as the case study. Overall, this review draws attention to social, natural, and financial capitals that have not conventionally been incorporated into the MPI model. According to the proposed model, although the Makran region has made slight progress in poverty reduction based on the general MPI index under the influence of development plans and various drivers during a ten-year period, it is severely impoverished in social, financial, and natural indicators presented by the expanded model. This difference shows the importance of using the developed model to enhance assessment accuracy and recommends a combination of five main poverty-related dimensions for poverty alleviation policies and evaluation processes in coastal regions.

Investigating the effectiveness of livelihood capital in reducing re-poverty risk: an empirical analysis of policy withdrawal and income structures in rural China

In the context of China’s comprehensive poverty alleviation efforts, this study explores the differences in the re-poverty risk between households that have been lifted out of poverty before and after policy withdrawal, as well as the sensitivity of different family types to their livelihood capital. The study used data from 45,141 out-of-poverty households in Yucheng County, Henan Province, from 2016 to 2020, and combined the poverty vulnerability theory and short-fall risk method to evaluate the re-poverty risk. The Tobit model was used to explore the influence of livelihood capital on the re-poverty risk. The study found that the overall re-poverty risk is 1.13%, which increases to 18.09% after direct poverty alleviation policy is withdrawn. The risk of working families is significantly lower than farming families. All kinds of livelihood capital significantly reduce the re-poverty risk, with natural capital playing the most significant role. For different family types, the marginal contribution of financial capital to reducing the re-poverty risk is relatively larger in working households, while that of natural capital is larger in farming households. Specifically, labor capacity, arable land area, local leaders, and loans have a more significant inhibitory effect on the re-poverty risk. These findings provide valuable insights for formulating policies related to increasing household income and preventing the occurrence of re-poverty.

Does rural tourism reduce relative poverty? Evidence from household surveys in western China

Debates on whether tourism has pro-poor effects remain imperative and unsettled owing to the discrepancy of research perspectives, estimation techniques, data source, study regions, and variables designs, etc. With the eradication of absolute poverty in China, the focus of tourism-relative poverty nexus could get deeper insights into the poverty reduction efficacy of tourism development in developing countries. This study examines the impacts of rural households’ tourism participation on relative poverty using the survey data from 22 pro-poor tourism villages located in western China and the endogenous switching probit (ESP) model. The results show that participating in rural tourism reduces both objective and subjective relative poverty. However, it has no direct effect on subjective poverty, but exerts an indirect effect by decreasing objective poverty. Furthermore, heterogeneous effect analysis shows dual impacts. On the one hand, it brings reduction of relative poverty probability for tourism participants; on the other hand, it exacerbates the relative gap by individual endogenous capital endowments and narrows the gap by exogenous targeted poverty alleviation (TPA) policy interventions. Our findings extend theoretical significance of the pro-poor tourism arguments by clarifying the pro-poor effects and the pathways of rural tourism on both objective and subjective relative poverty at the household level. It also provides empirical evidence for improving the current anti-poverty policy related to rural tourism in China.

Effects of Targeted Poverty Alleviation on the Sustainable Livelihood of Poor Farmers

It is crucial to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the effectiveness of targeted poverty alleviation (TPA) policies in promoting sustainable livelihoods among impoverished populations, particularly in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. The existing literature, however, predominantly focuses on assessing the policies’ effectiveness in terms of income, while neglecting other critical dimensions of sustainable livelihoods. In line with sustainable livelihood theory, we utilized data from the Chinese Household Financial Survey Database from 2017 and 2019 and employed a fuzzy regression discontinuity (FRD) method to systematically examine the implementation outcomes of TPA policies through the lens of “capability-strategy-results”. Our analysis revealed that the implementation of TPA policies had a positive impact on the ability of poor households to cope with unexpected shocks, as evidenced by an increase in the accumulation rates of material, social, and financial capital. Furthermore, we observed an optimization of livelihood strategies among poor households, with a significant increase in the proportion of wage income. These policies also had a positive impact on their livelihood outcomes, such as a reduced likelihood of falling back into poverty and an increased possibility of escaping from marginal poverty without relying on government subsidies; however, some limitations require attention. Notably, our analysis revealed that the policies did not effectively improve the human capital of poor households. To further explore the heterogeneity of policy effects, we categorized poor households into three groups based on their farmer’s market participation ability and willingness. Our findings indicate that TPA policies effectively reduced poverty among households lacking labor force through government subsidies and saw an increase in the proportion of medical insurance reimbursement; however, households lacking motivation or capability did not experience positive outcomes in the short term. Therefore, future support policies should prioritize these vulnerable groups and monitor their progress closely. Moreover, our analysis revealed that migrant work is the primary livelihood strategy among the poor, and stabilizing their employment faces significant challenges amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Consequently, additional policies and interventions are needed to address the adverse impact of the pandemic on the employment and livelihoods of low-income households.

RETRACTED ARTICLE: Health-related quality of life among ethnic minority residents in remote Western China: a cross-sectional study

BackgroundPaying attention to the health-related quality of life (HRQOL) of rural residents in poverty-stricken areas is an important part of China's poverty alleviation, but most studies on health-related quality of life have focused on rural residents, elderly individuals, and patients; evidence on the HRQOL of rural minority residents is limited. Thus, this study aimed to assess the HRQOL of rural Uighur residents in remote areas of Xinjiang, China, and determine its influencing factors to provide policy opinions for realizing a healthy China strategy.MethodsA cross-sectional study was performed on 1019 Uighur residents in rural areas. The EQ-5D and self-administered questionnaires were used to assess HRQOL. We applied Tobit and binary logit regression models to analyse the factors influencing HRQOL among rural Uighur residents.ResultsThe health utility index of the 1019 residents was − 0.197,1. The highest proportion of respondents reporting any problem was for mobility (57.5%), followed by usual activity (52.8%). Low levels of the five dimensions were related to age, smoking, sleep time, Daily intake of vegetables and fruit per capita. Gender, age, marital status, physical exercise, sleep duration, daily intake of cooking oil per capita, daily intake of fruit per capita, distance to the nearest medical institution, non-infectious chronic diseases (NCDs), self-rated health score, and participation in community activities were correlated with the health utility index of rural Uighur residents.ConclusionsHRQOL was lower for rural Uyghur residents than for the general population. Improving health behavioural lifestyles and reducing the incidence of poverty (return to poverty) due to illness are effective means of promoting the health in Uyghur residents. The region must fulfil the health poverty alleviation policy and focus on vulnerable groups and low-income residents to improve the health, ability, opportunity, and confidence of this population to live well.

The Promise of Gold. Gold and Governance in China’s Borderlands, Then and Now

Eagleback Village is located in Eya Naxi Autonomous Township, deep in the mountains of southern Sichuan Province, an area whose history has been intimately bound up in the search for gold since at least the Ming dynasty. In the People’s Republic of China’s Reform era, efforts to extract Eagleback’s remaining gold resources have been fraught with controversy. Since 1984, reforms allowing individuals to pursue their own economic interests, combined with the difficulty of monitoring gold digging in such a remote area, have created a ‘grey area’ regarding ownership of the valley’s gold resources. A gold rush began when speculators, villagers and township cadres alike began engaging in artisanal and small-scale mining for gold in the hope of being able to participate in China’s growing economy and improve the standard of living of their families. At the county level in the early 2000s, efforts began to act on development and poverty alleviation policies, in particular the ‘Three Connects’ (三通) policy which aimed to connect every settlement in the county with roads, electricity, and water. County officials looking for contractors able to build roads made a deal with a Hunan gold mining multinational corporation (MNC) for mining rights throughout the county. However, when the project reached Eya Naxi Autonomous Township the damage done to the Longda River by the use of large-scale mining equipment led to a civil uprising in which villagers protested, eventually succeeding in bringing the mining to a halt in 2010. This chapter takes a historical approach while drawing on ethnographic fieldwork to present an example of ‘rightful resistance’ that offers a more nuanced understanding than that frequently offered with regard to state–society relations in China.

The impact of energy poverty on the aggregate and disaggregate material footprints in BRICS

This study aims to examine the impact of energy poverty on the aggregate and disaggregate material footprint components such as biomass, fossil fuel, metal ores and non-metallic minerals while considering the economic growth and tourism development during 2000–2014 for the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). By applying econometric tools, the study confirms a positive and significant impact of energy poverty on aggregate material footprint and its components. The same finding has been reached for tourism development. Moreover, this study finds a U-shaped Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) for all indicators used for material footprints. Based on the findings, this study proposes a set of policies for energy poverty alleviation to attain a sustainable environment and inclusive economic growth in the BRICS region.

The impact of poverty alleviation policies on rural economic resilience in impoverished areas: A case study of Lankao County, China

It has been recognized that China's targeted poverty alleviation policy can greatly improve the economic development of rural areas, but whether it can improve rural resilience for sustainable development has been less studied. Based on anatomising the connotation of rural economic resilience and proposing theoretical framework for the influence of policies, this study empirically analyses the implication of poverty alleviation policies on rural economic resilience using regression analysis techniques, based on field survey data from 338 villages in Lankao County, China. It is shown that rural economic resilience is connected with their resistance, adaptation, and transformation capabilities, and China's targeted poverty alleviation policies have significantly improved the economic resilience of villages because of the government's efforts to upgrade production factors, optimise the economic structure and expand rural functions have awakened the impetus of endogenous development in rural areas. Compared with resistance and transformability, poverty alleviation policies have a greater positive impact on the adaptability of rural economies. The explanatory power of poverty alleviation policies on the rural economic resilience of Lankao County shows obvious spatial differentiation. The effectiveness of poverty alleviation policies was more prominent in the southeast, where poverty was worse. The recommendations proposed based on these results can provide an important reference for promoting rural economic resilience and sustainable development in developing countries.

Analysis and Proposals on the Poverty Reduction Effect of Inclusive Finance in China's Counties

Poverty has long been an important issue in China's development, and the disparity between rich and poor in many families is obvious, which hinders the development process of China's economy and the stability of social development. Although China has implemented numerous poverty alleviation measures, poverty still plagues the daily lives of many families and hinders social progress, with a particular concentration of poor families in counties. The current policy of precise poverty alleviation and poverty alleviation is driven by county financial reform and innovation, while a variety of measures have been taken to rely on the financial industry to solve the problem of poverty in counties has become the current guiding direction for policy formulation and social development. Inclusive finance refers to a financial service system that will provide services to all segments of society (especially poor households) in a reasonable and diversified manner according to market standards so that all segments of society can benefit from financial information services. Therefore, county government departments should give full play to the poverty reduction role of inclusive finance, increase investment in education, optimize industrial structure, promote economic growth, reasonably allocate fiscal expenditure, optimize financial infrastructure construction in rural areas, alleviate relative poverty and interrupt return to poverty, fully implement rural revitalization, and thus achieve the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.

APPLICATION OF THE APRIORI ALGORITHM TO DETERMINE THE COMBINATION OF POVERTY INDICATORS

Poverty is a society that has not been solved until now. The decline in poverty in Laweyan District from 2000 to 2013 was 5.71%, among the five lowest in the reduction in the percentage of poverty in Central Java Province. The problem of poverty is very complex, and the differences in regional characteristics, as well as the techniques used, also influence the indicators of the causes of poverty and the formulation of policies for poverty alleviation. This study uses Principal Component Analysis as part of data preprocessing, followed by applying association rules with the Apriori Algorithm to explore the relationship pattern of poverty indicators. Based on the research that has been conducted on the poverty dataset, which consists of 46 attributes, it is found that the attributes that have passed the preprocessing data are six attributes, namely the Poor Population, ADHB in the Communication Sector, ADHB in the Mining and Excavation Sector, ADHB in the Agriculture and Food Crops Sector, ADHB in the Plantation Sector. and unemployment. These six attributes are transformed into Ascending, Fixed, and Descending categorical data. The fuzzification process for the increase and decrease categories uses the shoulder-type triangle membership function. Applying the Apriori Algorithm to the poverty dataset with a minimum support of 0.4 and a minimum confidence of 0.8 produces 38 rules that show the relationship between indicators and poverty and 134 rules that show the relationship pattern between indicators.

Asset Smoothing and Consumption Smoothing: Disaster‐coping Strategies in Noncontiguous and Contiguous Destitute Areas

AbstractDo households sell assets in order to smooth consumption? The empirical evidence is mixed. Using household‐ and village‐level data in the context of China's poverty alleviation policy, we analyze the relationship between climate shocks and household coping behaviors from the perspective of whether coping strategies to deal with weather shocks are sensitive to the contiguity of destitute areas. Our results indicate that, unlike households living in noncontiguous destitute areas, households struck by weather shocks in contiguous destitute areas tended not to reduce or liquidate assets. To overcome weather shocks, households in contiguous destitute areas instead reduced household consumption, such as food consumption and increased nonfarm working hours. Our findings point to the possibility that the implicit assumption of consumption smoothing coupled with a failure to incorporate explicitly the factor of contiguous regions has led to seemingly divergent findings in the literature regarding consumption smoothing.

How Population, Economic, Inequality and Unemployment Contribute Affect Indonesian’s Poverty

In the globalization era, poverty is one of the world's fundamental problems, especially in developing countries. With living standards often poor in developing countries, poverty will only get worse in the future. Thus, the current study investigates the relationship between poverty with population growth, economic growth, income inequality, and the unemployment rate in Indonesia. The data used is data from 33 provinces compiled by the Indonesian Central Bureau of Statistics. The results showed that population growth positively affected poverty severity. The economic growth variable has a positive effect on the poverty rate. Income inequality has a positive effect on the poverty gap and poverty severity. Also, the unemployment rate variable positively affects the poverty rate, poverty gap, and poverty severity. Based on these findings, it is suggested that the government maintain stable population growth, create an economy that all groups can enjoy, equitable distribution of infrastructure, social and economic development, and provide more employment opportunities. In addition, a poverty alleviation policy is needed that is sustainable from time to time.

Watershed Horizontal Ecological Compensation Policy and Green Ecological City Development: Spatial and Mechanism Assessment.

Green ecological development has become an inevitable choice to achieve sustainable urban development and carbon neutrality. This paper evaluates the level of green ecological city development in the Xin'an watershed as measured by green total factor productivity (GTFP), analyzes the direct and spatial effects of the Watershed Horizontal Ecological Compensation policy on GTFP, and further examines the moderating effect of the Research and Development (R&D) incentives, industrial structure, and income gap. This paper conducts difference-in-differences (DID) and spatial regression analysis on 27 cities from 2007 to 2019. The results show that GTFP progresses to varying degrees across cities over time, especially in the pilot cities. Crucially, the Watershed Horizontal Ecological Compensation policy significantly improved GTFP, although the effect was slight. Interestingly, the increase in GTFP in pilot cities that implemented the policy spatially suppressed the increase in GTFP in cities that did not implement the policy. Our evidence also shows that the positive effect of the policy is higher in regions with higher R&D incentives and industrial structure upgrading, which indicates that R&D incentives and industrial upgrading are crucial. In comparison, the income gap has not made the expected negative adjustment effect under the Chinese government's poverty alleviation policy. However, the positive policy effect is heterogeneous in the downstream and upstream pilot cities. The "forcing effect" of the policy on the downstream cities is more favorable than the "compensating effect" on the upstream cities. Therefore, policymakers should pay more attention to ensuring the effectiveness of the Watershed Horizontal Ecological Compensation policy in enhancing GTFP as a long-term strategy to guarantee the sustainability of green ecological development in Chinese cities.

Research on the Willingness of Educational Poverty Alleviation of female college students -- A case study of CWU

Educational poverty alleviation is the fundamental policy of poverty alleviation, an important premise of rural revitalization, an important basis for the implementation of the strategy of strengthening education, and an important starting point of education work. The paper takes the female students from CWU as the research object, using questionnaire survey and statistical analytical method to analyze the willingness of educational poverty alleviation and its influencing factors. The results showed that differences significant in terms of whether accept education funding and whether only-child and differences non-significant in terms of the different grade, income and source of students. Finally, the paper provides suggestions from three aspects of the state, school and individuals to encourage more college students to engage in educational poverty alleviation and boost the national rural revitalization.

Pentahelix Collaboration Concept as an Effort to Accelerate Poverty Reduction in the Covid-19 Situation in the City of Mataram

Pentahelix concept collaboration as an instrument to accelerate poverty alleviation in the Covid-19 situation in the City of Mataram. The Pentahelix concept is a form of the ability of elements (Government, Academics, Private, Community, Media) to build harmonious synergies in responding to accelerated poverty reduction amid the Covid-19 situation. The research method used is qualitative with a case study approach. Data collection techniques were carried out through interviews and documentation. The research results of the Pentahelix collaboration process (Government, Academics, Private, Community, Media) in poverty alleviation in the City of Mataram have been well established. This can be seen from the negotiations that took place between the government as a policymaker and other Pentahelix elements. Commitment from every element in Pentahelix in every poverty alleviation policy and program in the Covid-19 situation in the City of Mataram which was carried out as the implementation of a joint decision. the involvement of various actors such as the Government, Academics, Private, Community, and Media, especially in alleviating poverty in the City of Mataram due to the Covid-19 Pandemic is going well.