Exploring Multidimensional Poverty in China: 2010 to 2014

Abstract

Most poverty research has explored monetary poverty. This paper presents and analyzes the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) estimations for China. Using China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), we find China's global MPI was 0.035 in 2010 and decreased significantly to 0.017 in 2014. The dimensional composition of MPI suggests that nutrition, education, safe drinking water, and cooking fuel contribute most to overall non-monetary poverty in China. Such analysis is also applied to subgroups, including geographic areas (rural/urban, east/central/west, provinces), as well as social characteristics such as gender of the household head, age, education level, marital status, household size, migration status, ethnicity, and religion. We find the level and composition of poverty differs significantly across certain subgroups. We also find high levels of mismatch between monetary and multidimensional poverty at the household level, which highlights the importance of using both complementary measures to track progress in eradicating poverty.

Kemiskinan Perempuan Dayak Benawan di Kalimantan Barat sebagai Bentuk Kolonialisme Baru

“…Lai (2011) (Suyanto, 2001 (Suryawati, 2005 (Barry, 1996). Kedua penelitian ini (Alkire & Shen 2017;Barry, 1996) (Makinuddin, 2005).…”

Poverty Alleviation Research in Rural China: Three Decades and Counting

“…The third section discusses the evolution of research focus and experimental design of the 1 There may have been earlier attempts to document poverty (especially in the Chinese literature), but those articles were excluded from the review for reasons described in the methodology section. 2 The former official definition of poverty is based on the Chinese national poverty cut-off line of RMB 2300 ($362.5) per capita annual income. Criticisms of the national poverty line-in addition to its dismissal of other poverty causes-are centered around its inflexibility.…”

“…However, the integration of multiple poverty indicators is difficult, and empirically measuring such indicators with precision remains challenging. While scholars have come to the consensus that a numeric cut-off line is an oversimplified model of defining absolute poverty 2 , approaches have generally differed regarding poverty identification methods.…”

Poverty Alleviation Research in Rural China: Three Decades and Counting

“…The first attempt to empirically document rural poverty 1 was undertaken by Travers and Ma (1994), who investigated whether agricultural intensification and investment was effective in raising peasant incomes. Since then, rural poverty measurement in the literature has evolved from single-dimensional-that is, purely income-based-to multidimensional 2 , which takes into account social deprivations, the lack of human capital, and vulnerability to enter poverty. However, the integration of multiple poverty indicators is difficult, as empirically measuring many of these holistic indicators, with any degree of precision or consistency, remains challenging.…”

“…While scholars have come to the consensus that a numeric cut-off line 1 There may have been earlier attempts to document poverty (especially in the Chinese literature), but those articles were excluded from the review for reasons described in the methodology section. 2 Especially interesting is that the etymology of the Chinese word for poverty (pin kun 贫困) already implies the multidimensionality of poverty in China. Poor (pin 贫) is defined as "little income," while predicament (kun 困) is defined as a being entangled in a painful state of social captivity or environment.…”