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Welfare Participation and Family Consumption Choices in Rural China

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Abstract

Using household survey data among 9107 families from five provinces of central and western China in 2010 and a propensity score matching method, this article investigates the effects of receiving welfare benefits from China’s largest social assistance program, Dibao, on family expenditure patterns in rural areas. We find that families receiving Dibao prioritised spending on healthcare rather than making ends meet. However, rural Dibao receipt was unable to help lift family expenditure on education. We also find some evidence that Dibao receipt was associated with decreased spending on social participation, an unintended negative effect of this large social assistance program. Future reforms of rural Dibao and other social protection programs should address such adverse effects to avoid intergenerational transmission of poverty and social exclusion, taking into consideration the unique tradition, culture, and context of rural China.

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Notes

  1. In 2011, the Chinese government set a new official national rural poverty line at per capita 2300 annual yuan. After adjusting for CPI, this line amounted to per capita 2424 yuan in 2013.

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Acknowledgments

We acknowledge funding support from the Asia Development Bank and China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs, which supported the collection of the data used in this project. Huawei Han acknowledges funding support from the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (grant number 2012WYB14) of China. We thank Professor Qiao Dongping in the School of Social Development and Public Policy, Beijing Normal University, for great efforts in the implementation of the survey that provided data for this research. We are grateful for helpful comments from Dorothy Solinger, Fuhua Zhai, the editor, anonymous reviewers, and participants of the session on “social protection & income maintenance” at the 12th East Asia Social Policy (EASP) conference, July 30-31, 2015, Singapore.

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  1. School of Social Development and Public Policy, Beijing Normal University, 19 Xinjiekou Wai Street, Beijing, 100875, People’s Republic of China

    Huawei Han & Yuebin Xu

  2. School of Social Work, Columbia University, 1255 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY, 10027, USA

    Qin Gao

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  1. Huawei Han
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Correspondence to Qin Gao.

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The data used in this study were collected with funding support from the Asia Development Bank and China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs. This study was also funded by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (grant number 2012WYB14) of China.

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All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Conflict of Interest

The data used in this study were collected with funding support from the Asia Development Bank and China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs. Author 1 received funding support from the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (grant number 2012WYB14) of China. All the other authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Han, H., Gao, Q. & Xu, Y. Welfare Participation and Family Consumption Choices in Rural China. Glob Soc Welf 3, 223–241 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40609-016-0066-0

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