Social Capital, Poverty and its Alleviation in a Chinese Border Region: A Case Study in the Kirghiz Prefecture, Xinjiang

Border poverty is a special type of poverty that urgently needs to be reduced in order to construct a well-off society in China by 2020. China’s current policies for targeting poverty alleviation in its border areas pay greatest attention to the availability of physical and human capital and ignore the role which social capital might play in poverty alleviation. Making use of survey results obtained in July, 2016 from a sample of households dominated by Kirghizs in the Kirghiz Prefecture of Xinjiang, the attributes associated with being poor are identified. Logistic regression is employed to determine the probable effects of increased social capital on border poverty. The results indicate that increasing social capital at the household level could have a significant positive effect on poverty alleviation, while increased collective social capital probably does not. In addition, it is found that the amounts of livestock and village pasture land possessed by households and their use of formal financial capital are positively associated with the absence of poverty of households, whereas greater human capital (education) and amounts of informal financial capital do not display this association. Policy implications of the analyis are outlined and assesed.