A Counterfactual Assessment of Poverty Alleviation Sustainability on Multiple Non-equivalent Household Groups

Poverty has been a long-term global challenge, and China’s Targeted Poverty Alleviation (TPA) Strategy has made considerable advances in recent years. Taking a poverty-stricken county in Southwest China as an example, this study evaluated the effectiveness of the TPA strategy using a propensity scoring weighting model for multiple non-equivalent household groups based on counterfactual inference. It was found that households who planned to be out of poverty earlier had significantly higher incomes than those later, with transfer incomes contributing substantially to the income gap. The non-poverty-stricken households had much higher total income and significantly lower transfer incomes than the poverty-stricken households, including those that planned to be out of poverty earlier and those later. A more nuanced analysis revealed that the income of the poverty-stricken households was not as sustainable as expected. Therefore, measures to improve the self-development capabilities of these poverty-stricken households were also proposed to ensure the poverty alleviation programs are more effective and sustainable.