Understanding the Role of Rural Poor’s Endogenous Impetus in Poverty Reduction: Evidence from China

Motivating the endogenous impetus of the poor to eradicate poverty is an endogenous dilemma that is difficult to solve using the current external poverty alleviation model. In this paper, based on the field survey data of 1112 poor rural households in China, we examine the impact of the poor’s endogenous impetus on their poverty reduction. Firstly, we identify two different components of endogenous impetus: thought impetus and behavior impetus. Secondly, the poverty reduction (livelihood status) of farmers was used as an endogenous variable to construct a partial least squares model to verify our explanation of the role of endogenous impetus of the poor in poverty reduction. The results indicate that (1) both thought impetus and behavior impetus have a positive impact on the livelihood status of the poor; (2) the human capital, physical capital, and social capital of the poor have a positive relationship with the two components of endogenous impetus; and (3) endogenous impetus plays a mediation role between livelihood capital and livelihood status. As expected, human and physical capital have a positive and significant relationship with poverty reduction. The important enlightenment of this study is that it is very important to motivate the poor’s endogenous impetus of escaping poverty in addition to improving external conditions such as livelihood capital owned by farmers in an effort to realize sustainable poverty reduction.