Weakly Relative Poverty Standards and Measurement in China

Abstract

Abstract: To accurately grasp the status quo of relative poverty in China, it is necessary to measure the incidence of relative poverty and its changing trend based on the weakly relative poverty line. By making use of the data from the four rounds of the microscopic investigation of China Household Finance Survey 2013-2019, this paper conducts an empirical research. The findings show that the changing trend of the upper limit of the weakly relative poverty line is slower than the growth trend of per capita income, indicating that the relative poverty line obtained by the traditional income proportion method would overestimate the relative poverty incidence. The data analysis also shows that the relative poverty incidence is declining regardless of whether it is in urban or rural areas or by region, and the relative poverty incidences in rural areas and in the western areas are higher than those in the urban and the eastern areas, respectively. Over the sample period, the regional concentration of the relative poverty distribution keeps rising, and the relative poverty incidence presents the characteristics of switching from high-level dispersion to low-level concentration. Therefore, the key points in the governance of the relative poverty lie in paying close attention to the gaps between the urban and rural areas and the regional differences, and implementing policies tailored to local conditions.

Key words: weakly relative poverty, poverty incidence, welfarism, Martin Method

CLC Number:

F019.6

SUN Wei-hong, WU Jun-qian, LIU Din, WANG Zhuo. Weakly Relative Poverty Standards and Measurement in China[J]. Contemporary Finance & Economics, 2022, 0(5): 13-24.

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