Anti-Poverty Effectiveness of the Minimum Living Standard Assistance Policy in Rural China: Evidence from five Provinces of Central and Western Regions

Content introduction：

This paper studies the implementation and anti-poverty effectiveness of Rural Minimum Living Standard Assistance (RMLSA) using large sample household survey data from  five provinces of central and western regions in 2010. Descriptive analyses suggest serious problems of targeting error and assistant inadequacy during the implementation of RMLSA. Employing robust method of poverty measuring and policy simulation strategy, we evaluate the observed and simulated anti-poverty effectiveness of RMLSA in central and western regions of China. Conclusion: the simulated anti-poverty effectiveness is much larger than observed anti-poverty effectiveness after removing the effect of targeting error and assistant inadequacy.  This demonstrates that the role of RMLSA in rural anti-poverty may be strengthened through improving the targeting mechanism and increasing the level of assistance.