Across a few prohibitive miles: The impact of the Anti-Poverty Relocation Program in China

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Zhang, Li; Xie, Lunyu; Zheng, Xinye
• 署名单位: Chinese University of Hong Kong; Renmin University of China
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3878
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2022.102945
• 发表日期: 2023
• 关键词: MIGRATION; poverty alleviation; Sectoral change

摘要

Many households are confined to remote rural villages in the developing world. This study examines the Anti-Poverty Relocation Program in China, considering the village-to-town relocation from agricultural to non-agricultural sectors induced by the program. While exploring a novel administrative data set on impoverished people in a Chinese county, we discovered that the program significantly increased the participants' income by 9.61%, driven mainly by the increase in wage income. The empirical findings are consistent with the Roy -model perspective, which states that rural households with comparative advantage in non-agricultural sectors could benefit from relocation to nearby towns. This study provides new evidence that mobility barriers across sectors exist even on a small geographic scale in rural areas. The results of the cost-benefit analysis suggest that relocation of households in remote rural areas is a feasible policy tool for overcoming such mobility barriers.