Abstract: Taking the data from CHNS Database 1989-2011 as samples, this paper chooses the perspective of social assistance to conduct an empirical test on the impact of that factor on the residents’ household income and poverty status, and by choosing the four proxy variables of government transfer payments, health insurance, education level and family cooking fuel, it makes a deeper level and multi-angle study of this impact from such aspects as government economic rescue, medical assistance, education assistance and protective infrastructure construction respectively. The results show that the three factors of medical insurance, education level and family cooking fuel can significantly enhance the positive effect of residents’ household income and the negative effect of poverty status; the government transfer payments can have significant negative effect on the poverty of absolute poverty-stricken families, but no significant impact on the poverty of low-income earners. This paper not only studies the impact of social assistance under the safeguarding poverty alleviation mode on households income and poverty status, but also analyzes from the new situation of targeted poverty alleviation the role of social relief in supporting and protecting its poverty alleviation function, especially rational poverty alleviation programs should be made according to the real conditions of each household when government making transfer payments to the absolute poverty-stricken families and the general relative poor and low-income families, so as to prevent the poverty alleviation resources from being “captured by the elites” and give full play to the social relief safeguard function of targeted poverty alleviation.

Key words: safeguarding poverty alleviation; social assistance; targeted poverty alleviation; two-value selection model