Evaluating Poverty Alleviation by Relocation under the Link Policy: A Case Study from Tongyu County, Jilin Province, China

Abstract

Land, nature, and the social environment in contiguous poor regions are harsh and difficult to change. The poor adaptive capacities of the socio-ecological systems of these regions are the main causes of deep, persistent poverty. In February 2016, the Chinese government issued a policy proposing to promote poverty alleviation by relocation (PAR) by means of the "Linking increases in urban construction land with decreases in rural construction land" policy (or simply, the "Link Policy" or LP), which intends to realize the sustainable social and economic development of local villages. Since then, many pilot projects have been carried out across the country based on local resources, environment, and economic development; however, few related studies on these cases have been conducted. After a review of poverty alleviation policies, this paper first introduces the unsustainable conditions of poor rural areas and the implications and advantages of PAR under the Link Policy; we then analyzed the complete PAR process, including formulation, implementation, and completion, by taking Tongyu County in Jilin Province as an example. The study found that the "whole village relocation" model practiced in Tongyu County was relatively successful in terms of improving the living environment, income, and public services of local villagers. On the other hand, there were three main problems: first, many follow-up industries were dominated by the village collectives and heavily dependent on government support or subsidies; second, the newly built village faced the dilemma of "re-hollowing" due to the out-migration of young people and the aging population; third, it was difficult to achieve a true requisition-compensation balance of farmland.

Effects of the poverty alleviation relocation program on diet quality among low-income households

“…Some research find that relocation reduces poverty incidence (Liu et al , 2019; Wang et al , 2018) and improves livelihood conditions (Liu et al , 2018; Guo and Li, 2019). A few studies find that the PAR program changes livelihood strategies and habits of low-income households (Zou et al , 2019; Wilmsen and Wang, 2015). However, none of these studies evaluated impacts of the relocation program on diet quality.…”

Explicating the responses of NDVI and GDP to the poverty alleviation policy in poverty areas of China in the 21st century

“…The general practice of the descriptive evaluation method is to provide representative descriptive results by using random sampling survey data and estimate the impact of policy intervention [29][30][31][32][33]. Zou et al [34] used three data accumulation methods (field investigation, key information interview, face-to-face and questionnaire survey) to select representative data to evaluate the effect of the relocation poverty alleviation policy in Tongyu County, Jilin Province, China. The common method of quantitative evaluation uses a series of mathematical functions (such as regression) to approximate the causal relationship between poverty alleviation policies and the affected factors and draws a conclusion about whether the policy effect is rigorous or not [35,36].…”

Performance Evaluation of Precision Poverty Alleviation with the Assistance of Wireless Communication Technology for Rural Revitalization

“…Then, the whole process of poverty alleviation policy, including formulation, implementation, and completion, was analyzed. It was found that the whole-village relocation model was successful in improving the living environment, income, and public services of local villagers [7]. Li et al proposed a method for decision-making test that can analyze the relationship between standards and find the key factors in the evaluation system and then analyze the key factors affecting the evaluation system [8].…”