Geo-environmental and socioeconomic determinants of poverty in China: an empirical analysis based on stratified poverty theory

Abstract

According to the stratified poverty theory, poverty includes individual (people) and regional (place) poverty. Understanding the interaction mechanism between individual poverty and regional poverty is crucial to achieving the UN goal of poverty eradication by 2030. However, at present, the relevant empirical research is still limited by the availability of data. To fill this important gap, based on the multi-source data of poverty census, geo-environmental and socio-economic data of China’s 1587 counties in 2013, we used exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA) and spatial econometric models (spatial-lag and spatial-error model) to identify determinants of individual poverty and regional poverty in this county. Results show that the spatial distribution of the rural poor in China had strong spatial dependence (Global Moran’s I = 0.574). There was a high degree of spatial overlap between individual poverty and regional poverty. The poverty-causing factors were complex and varied across regions and individuals. Disease of family members was the leading factor driving rural areas in Northeast, Central, and Southwest China. Northeast China was mainly affected by the illness and lack of labor skills of family members. The complex terrain conditions were the determinants driving rural poverty in most areas of China. Improved transportation can greatly reduce rural poverty. Geographical isolation or lack of geographical capital caused by complex terrain conditions, backward transportation, and regional closure promoted regional poverty. In turn, regional poverty-causing factors further restricted the improvement of rural residents’ self-development ability and aggravated individual poverty. Our findings indicate that individual poverty and regional poverty have different poverty-causing mechanisms and poverty reduction priorities. Effective poverty reduction strategies require the coordinated promotion of individual and regional poverty reduction. The reduction of individual poverty should focus on enhancing the livelihood capital of the poor through differentiated policy intervention, while regional poverty alleviation should focus on creating a favorable development environment by increasing infrastructure investment and public service supply.

Further complications to poverty of place: daily poverty dynamics across space

“…Beyond simply pointing out this complicating issue underlying our understanding of poverty—and really any measure tied to place of residence—we have also illustrated that these diurnal patterns are not random nor evenly distributed across space nor society. When considering the extant research on poverty and its determinants, the correlates of diurnal swings in poverty are in many ways similar to the correlates of poverty generally (Baker, 2020; Brady et al, 2017; Zhou & Huang, 2023). We find the highest levels of relative nighttime poverty in principal cities and the highest level of relative daytime poverty in the metropolitan fringe.…”

“…Importantly, growing up in a neighborhood with high rates of poverty is a key predictor of poverty later in life (Chetty & Hendren, 2018). Given the clear importance of poverty of place on individual well‐being (Zhou & Huang, 2023), understanding trends in the diurnal nature of poverty is key and will provide much needed evidence to policy aimed at alleviating poverty and addressing its underlying causes.…”

“…It is also worth noting that these frameworks can be used in concert. For example, recent scholarship in the context of China has attempted to merge the varying perspectives of the causes of poverty under a framework called stratified poverty theory, which draws on cultural, structural, and political frameworks and attempts to explain individual regional poverty in‐tandem (Zhou & Huang, 2023; Zhou & Liu, 2022). Given the focus of our analysis is broadly descriptive, we do not tease out these distinctions or the specific determinants of poverty, and instead adopt a broad structural viewpoint where we use our novel data on commuting patterns to further problematize behavioral linkages between exposure to high poverty and negative outcomes.…”

Research on the Capability to Prevent Returning to Poverty and Its Enhancement Path for the Ecologically Fragile Areas: A Case Study of Enshi Prefecture

“…Social support encompasses various aspects, including material economy, life care, medical support, and psychological and emotional comfort. It is categorized into formal and informal types, where formal support refers to governmental assistance and other official aid, while informal support involves assistance provided by family, friends, and volunteers [72]. This research is designed to assess the capability to prevent returning to poverty in areas targeted by poverty alleviation, specifically focusing on the role of formal social support.…”

A Case Study of Farmers’ Behavioral Motivation Mechanisms to Crack the Fractal Multidimensional Relative Poverty Trap in Shaanxi, China

“…Relative poverty emphasizes that the poverty of individuals is below average. Multidimensional relative poverty includes dimensions such as "spatial poverty", "intergenerational poverty", and "hidden poverty" [28][29][30], whose dynamic characteristics need to be taken into account. Existing studies have examined the dimensions of income, education, health, housing, livelihood, and assets [3,31]; some scholars have also introduced information technology levels [32] with infrastructure development [33], food nutrition structure [34], energy [35], and residential deprivation [36] dimensions.…”