IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp2758.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Social Assistance Receipt and its Importance for Combating Poverty in Urban China

Author

Listed:
  • Gustafsson, Björn Anders

    (Göteborg University)

  • Quheng, Deng

    (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)

Abstract

Since the second half of the 1990s economic restructuring in urban China has led to widespread joblessness and income insecurity. The rapid expansion of the system of social assistance, Di Bao, can be understood from this perspective. Using a survey covering large parts of urban China in 2002, we investigate factors affecting receipt and how receipt affects urban poverty. Results from estimating probability models indicate that social assistance receipt is strongly linked to joblessness among household members, the household’s expenditure burden, as well as the lack of financial assets. Further, a long education of the household head and membership in the Communist Party reduces the probability of receiving social assistance while having been sent to rural China during the Cultural Revolution increases it. For some types of households, receipt of Di Bao differs greatly across cities in China. The social assistance payments appear strongly targeted to the poor. However, as the Di Bao payments typically are small and many of the urban poor are not receivers, much urban poverty remains.

Suggested Citation

  • Gustafsson, Björn Anders & Quheng, Deng, 2007. "Social Assistance Receipt and its Importance for Combating Poverty in Urban China," IZA Discussion Papers 2758, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp2758
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp2758.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Foster, James & Greer, Joel & Thorbecke, Erik, 1984. "A Class of Decomposable Poverty Measures," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(3), pages 761-766, May.
    2. Cai, Fang & Giles, John & Meng, Xin, 2006. "How well do children insure parents against low retirement income? An analysis using survey data from urban China," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(12), pages 2229-2255, December.
    3. Fang, Cheng & Zhang, Xiaobo & Fan, Shenggen, 2002. "Emergence of urban poverty and inequality in China: evidence from household survey," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 13(4), pages 430-443, December.
    4. Yao, Shujie, 2000. "Economic Development and Poverty Reduction in China over 20 Years of Reforms," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 48(3), pages 447-474, April.
    5. Yin Zhang & Guanghua Wan, 2005. "Why Do Poverty Rates Differ From Region to Region?: the Case of Urban China," WIDER Working Paper Series RP2005-56, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    6. John Knight & Li Shi, 2006. "Three Poverties in Urban China," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 10(3), pages 367-387, August.
    7. Ravallion, Martin & Chen, Shaohua, 2007. "China's (uneven) progress against poverty," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(1), pages 1-42, January.
    8. Brandt, Loren & Holz, Carsten A, 2006. "Spatial Price Differences in China: Estimates and Implications," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 55(1), pages 43-86, October.
    9. John Giles & Albert Park & Fang Cai, 2003. "How has Economic Restructuring Affected China???s Urban Workers?," William Davidson Institute Working Papers Series 2003-628, William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan.
    10. Knight, John & Li, Shi, 2006. "Unemployment duration and earnings of re-employed workers in urban China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 17(2), pages 103-119.
    11. Chen, Shaohua & Ravallion, Martin & Wang, Youjuan, 2006. "Di Bao : a guaranteed minimum income in urban China?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3805, The World Bank.
    12. Simon Appleton & John Knight & Lina Song & Qingjie Xia, 2004. "Contrasting paradigms: segmentation and competitiveness in the formation of the chinese labour market," Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 2(3), pages 185-205.
    13. Brandt, Loren & Holz, Carsten A, 2006. "Spatial Price Differences in China: Estimates and Implications," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 55(1), pages 43-86, October.
    14. Gustafsson, Bjorn & Li, Shi, 2004. "Expenditures on education and health care and poverty in rural China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 15(3), pages 292-301.
    15. Giles, John & Park, Albert & Cai, Fang, 2006. "Reemployment of dislocated workers in urban China: The roles of information and incentives," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 582-607, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bjorn A Gustafsson & Deng Quheng, 2011. "Di Bao Receipt and Its Importance for Combating Poverty in Urban China," Poverty & Public Policy, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 3(1), pages 1-32, March.
    2. Gao, Qin & Zhai, Fuhua & Garfinkel, Irwin, 2010. "How Does Public Assistance Affect Family Expenditures? The Case of Urban China," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 38(7), pages 989-1000, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bjorn A Gustafsson & Deng Quheng, 2011. "Di Bao Receipt and Its Importance for Combating Poverty in Urban China," Poverty & Public Policy, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 3(1), pages 1-32, March.
    2. Gustafsson, Björn Anders & Yue, Ximing, 2006. "Rural People’s Perception of Poverty in China," IZA Discussion Papers 2486, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. LABAR, Kelly & BRESSON, Florent, 2011. "A multidimensional analysis of poverty in China from 1991 to 2006," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 646-668.
    4. Appleton, Simon & Song, Lina & Xia, Qingjie, 2010. "Growing out of Poverty: Trends and Patterns of Urban Poverty in China 1988-2002," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 38(5), pages 665-678, May.
    5. Zhang, Chunni & Xu, Qi & Zhou, Xiang & Zhang, Xiaobo & Xie, Yu, 2014. "Are poverty rates underestimated in China? New evidence from four recent surveys," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 410-425.
    6. Zhang, Yin & Wan, Guanghua, 2006. "The impact of growth and inequality on rural poverty in China," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 694-712, December.
    7. Démurger, Sylvie & Gurgand, Marc & Li, Shi & Yue, Ximing, 2009. "Migrants as second-class workers in urban China? A decomposition analysis," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(4), pages 610-628, December.
    8. Liu, Xiaoying & Hannum, Emily, 2017. "Early poverty exposure predicts young adult educational outcomes in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 79-97.
    9. Meng, Xin & Gregory, Robert & Wang, Youjuan, 2005. "Poverty, inequality, and growth in urban China, 1986-2000," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 710-729, December.
    10. Anderson, Gordon & Farcomeni, Alessio & Pittau, Maria Grazia & Zelli, Roberto, 2016. "A new approach to measuring and studying the characteristics of class membership: Examining poverty, inequality and polarization in urban China," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 191(2), pages 348-359.
    11. Bjorn Gustafsson & Ximing Yue, 2012. "Rural people's perception of income adequacy in China," China Agricultural Economic Review, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 4(3), pages 264-280, August.
    12. Qu, Zhaopeng (Frank) & Zhao, Zhong, 2008. "Urban-Rural Consumption Inequality in China from 1988 to 2002: Evidence from Quantile Regression Decomposition," IZA Discussion Papers 3659, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    13. Chen, Shaohua & Ravallion, Martin, 2021. "Reconciling the conflicting narratives on poverty in China," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 153(C).
    14. Björn Gustafsson & Li Shi & Hiroshi Sato, 2004. "Can a subjective poverty line be applied to China? Assessing poverty among urban residents in 1999," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 16(8), pages 1089-1107.
    15. Shenjing He & Fulong Wu & Chris Webster & Yuting Liu, 2010. "Poverty Concentration and Determinants in China's Urban Low‐income Neighbourhoods and Social Groups," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(2), pages 328-349, June.
    16. Almås, Ingvild & Johnsen, Åshild Auglænd, 2012. "The cost of living in China: Implications for inequality and poverty," Discussion Paper Series in Economics 21/2012, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Economics.
    17. Glauben, Thomas & Herzfeld, Thomas & Rozelle, Scott & Wang, Xiaobing, 2012. "Persistent Poverty in Rural China: Where, Why, and How to Escape?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(4), pages 784-795.
    18. Gordon Betcherman & Niels-Hugo Blunch, 2008. "The limited job prospects of displaced workers: evidence from two cities in China," Economic Change and Restructuring, Springer, vol. 41(3), pages 187-207, September.
    19. Sylvie Dmurger & Martin Fournier & Li Shi & Wei Zhong, 2006. "Economic Liberalization with Rising Segmentation in China's Urban Labor Market," Asian Economic Papers, MIT Press, vol. 5(3), pages 58-101, Fall.
    20. Cao, Shixiong & Wang, Xiuqing & Wang, Guosheng, 2009. "Lessons learned from China's fall into the poverty trap," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 298-307.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    cultural revolution; social assistance; poverty; China;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty
    • I38 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs
    • P36 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist Institutions and Their Transitions - - - Consumer Economics; Health; Education and Training; Welfare, Income, Wealth, and Poverty

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp2758. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.