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

Li Zhang, Lunyu Xie and Xinye Zheng

Journal of Development Economics, 2023, vol. 160, issue C

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: Migration; Poverty alleviation; Sectoral change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I38 J61 O15 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:deveco:v:160:y:2023:i:c:s0304387822000931

DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2022.102945

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