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CHAPTER 7
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
The present research focuses on the poverty reduction issue in terms of poverty dynamics in ethnic-minority areas of northwest China and find new implications for poverty reduction policies beyond an understanding of pre-existing poverty but the changing poverty.
according to this, the present research chooses farm diversification, rural labour migration and social capital as the explanatory variables to check the relationship between poverty dynamics and rural household’s behaviour in agricultural production and economic activities.
It firstly aims to check if farm diversification, considered as an important household behaviour and decisions on agricultural production, does play a role in poverty reduction and the transformation of rural household’s poverty status in a short-term (Chapter 3). Using a regional household survey data, this chapter found that rural household’s participation in farm diversification, such as doing fruit-vegetable cultivation, livestock farming and family small business did significantly improve rural household’s income and reduced their poverty in both 2014 and 2016. Moreover, farm diversification was proved significantly effective on the transformation of poverty to non-poverty, that should be understand as it could be helpful for poor rural household’s escaping out of poverty as well as decreasing non-poverty rural household’s probability of falling into poverty.
Rural-to-urban labour migration, is well known as a vital way to promote employment, improve income and reduce poverty in rural China, was selected as another variable of rural household’s behaviour and decisions to check its effect on poverty reduction and the transformation of rural household’s poverty status in a short-term in Chapter 4. The result suggests that rural labour migration still does have obvious effects on increasing rural household’s income and reducing poverty in 2014 and 2016, and a declining effect was found. Rural labour migration is also estimated significantly to be an effective impact for promoting poor rural household’s movements out of the poverty and avoiding non-poverty household falling into poverty as well in term, that should be recognized as a short-lived strategy of both effect of increasing income and smoothing risk.
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Chapter 5 checks whether the social capital does have effect on poverty reduction and the transformation of rural household’s poverty status in a short-term. The result suggests that social capital, which is defined as different reflections of social network, community member interaction and interpersonal relationship, social trust and participation in public, has effect on poverty reduction. While the change of social capital does not present an impact on the transformation of rural household’s poverty status, neither the changing of poverty to non-poverty or non-poverty to poverty in adjacent two periods. Social capital is generally considered as an important determinate of poverty reduction in long-term since it could not change in short-term so that the effects here did not present as excepted.
In Chapter 6, the present research analyses the poverty reduction efficiency of household-level poverty targeting in a dynamic research view as to different projects in different poverty line. Using the three poverty targeting methods, CBT, DR and PMT, to measure the efficiency of poverty reduction as coverage, missing and leakage, the results show that it is significantly better to promote poverty targeting at the household-level poverty targeting.
Comparing the mission rate and leakage rate, we found that CBT is much more effective on identifying poor household in supporting funds for social welfare and government insurance while PMT is better for selecting the target for poverty reduction projects.
According to the results above, the present research firstly suggested that poverty reduction policies and projects by government or NGO could focused on diversifying farm production in extreme poor areas, with supporting basic agricultural tools and agricultural corporatization movements as to encourage more participates. Then, the present research suggest that rural labour migration should be still considered as an important livelihood choice for reduction poverty and policies and social supports for promoting rural-to-urban migration, on concern of the information service and communication, and targeted skill trainings, should be continued in ethnic poverty-stricken areas, keeping in mind the various factors. Besides, we suggest the public activities and public service should be promoted not only one goal for enhancing rural household’s welfare, and used as a political tool to give participates more opportunities to achieve and exchange information. And the social organizations and gathering training, exchange activities in or among villages, especially on agricultural production development, should be supported as to decrease the risk and wide participates’ trusted scorners.
In addition to that, the present research also analysed the difference among ethnic groups.
It is noted that a difference in results among Han and ethnic minorities was found in all analyses. And the household head’s education level, household assets and Party membership impact rural household’s poverty reduction as well. Thus, the poverty reduction policies and projects should care on the particularity related to those variables.
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