Who is poor in China? A comparison of alternative approaches to poverty assessment in Rural Yunnan

Despite widespread recognition of the multidimensionality of poverty among social scientists and policymakers, the monetary approach still dominates poverty assessment. However, it is possible that different poverty assessment methodologies identify dissimilar households as poor, leading to disparate policies for poverty reduction. This empirical research applies four approaches to poverty identification to the same population of rural households in Wuding County, Yunnan Province, PRC. These approaches include China's official poverty identification method, participatory poverty assessment (PPA), the monetary approach to poverty assessment, and use of multidimensional poverty indicators (MDI). This study discovered that these four approaches generate different aggregate poverty incidences, identifying different households with distinctly different characteristics as poor. Each approach evaluates different aspects and dimensions, highlighting some characteristics while concealing others. There is very little overlap among the poor households identified by each methodology. This has implications at the conceptual, methodological, and policy levels. The conceptual understanding of poverty should be broadened to include multidimensional and multidisciplinary socioeconomic indicators. Multiple approaches must be applied in order to avoid marginalising some aspects of poverty. Poverty reduction strategies should shift from promoting short-term income-generating activities to a broader combination of strategies that address the inter-linked structural causes of poverty.