Community-based Development and Poverty Alleviation: An Evaluation of China?s Poor Village Investment Program

Albert Park and Sangui Wang

No 7856, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: We conduct the first systematic evaluation of the world?s largest community-based development program--China?s flagship poverty alleviation program began in 2001 which finances public investments in designated poor villages based on participatory village planning. We use matching methods and a panel household and village data set with national coverage to compare changes from 2001 to 2004 in designated poor villages that began plan investments and in designated poor villages that had yet to begin plan investments. We find that the program significantly increased both government- and village-financed investments. While the program did not increase the income or consumption of poorer households, it did increase the income and consumption of richer households by 6.1 to 9.2 percent. We also find suggestive evidence that governance matters in the distribution of program benefits. Relative gains were greater for richer households in villages with more educated leaders, and higher quality village committees delivered greater benefits to both richer and poorer households.

Keywords: China; Governance; investment; Poverty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H43 I32 O22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-06
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (54)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP7856 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Journal Article: Community-based development and poverty alleviation: An evaluation of China's poor village investment program (2010)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:7856

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP7856
orders@cepr.org

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by (repec@cepr.org).