Poverty and social assistance in rural China

In transition economies challenged with tremendous structural changes, especially parts of rural population face a high risk of poverty. One of the great challenges of implementing rural welfare relief is the identification of needy individuals and households for monetary or in-kind transfers. This project analyses a program for social assistance in rural China to answer the following questions:

• What are the special challenges of defining and identifying recipients for social transfers and of implementing a social assistance system in rural society in general?
• How efficient are the existing methods of income and welfare measurement of the program in question?
• What concrete policy suggestions for increasing the efficiency of program design and implementation can be given?

• Prof. Linxiu Zhang, PhD (Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy (CCAP), Chinese Academy of Sciences, China)
• Peng Zhan (Beijing Normal University, China)

• German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD)