China increases poverty line to about $1.83 PPP per day and launches new anti-poverty programs

Economist- China raised its rural poverty line to 2,300 yuan a year. The World Bank’s poverty line is not set at market exchange rates. It’s $1.25 in 2005 Purchasing-Power-Parity (PPP) dollars.

According to the World Bank, 5.46 yuan in China in 2005 stretched about as far as $1.33 in America in the same year. (That’s using the 2005 consumption PPP rate of 4.089.) So by that calculation, China’s new poverty line is eight cents higher than the World Bank’s.

However, China deems a person poor if their income is less than $1.33 (at 2005 PPP) a day. The World Bank says they’re poor if their consumption is less than $1.25 a day.

In China, the PPP estimates are biased. They looked at prices in 11 Chinese cities. But China’s cities are much more expensive than China’s villages. China’s new poverty line is equivalent not to $1.33 per day, but to $1.83 per day (1.334*1.37) in 2005 $PPP.

China has declared a target to provide every Chinese person with enough to eat and wear, as well as basic education and housing by 2020. China aims to remarkably reduce the number of poor people in four years time, and fundamentally eliminate poverty by 2020.

China Daily – The revision will boost the number of people deemed poor to 128 million from 26.88 million last year. The enhanced poverty line will enable more rural households who were previously considered “low income” (but not poor) to gain access to benefits and programs for poor households.

The average per capita income of China’s urban residents was 3.23 times that of rural residents in 2010, he said in an interview with Xinhua.

China increased its spending on poverty reduction from 12.75 billion yuan in 2001 to 34.93 billion yuan in 2010, representing an average annual growth rate of 11.9 percent

China will be implementing the “New Progress in Development-oriented Poverty Reduction Program for Rural China 2011-2020”

China’s average standard for a rural subsistence allowance is 117 yuan per person per month, and the average subsidy is 74 yuan per person per month. The state provides the five guaranteed forms of support (food, clothing, housing, medical care and burial expenses) for old, weak, orphaned, widowed or disabled rural residents who are unable to work and have no family support.

Vocational training – Since 2004, the central government has appropriated a total of three billion yuan in poverty reduction funds for the “Dew Program,” which focuses on training labor force from poor rural families in technical skills and practical agricultural techniques so that they can find better-paying jobs. By the year 2010, more than four million people from poor rural families had received such training, and 80 percent of them found jobs outside agriculture.

If you liked this article, please give it a quick review on ycombinator or StumbleUpon. Thanks