The pattern of growth and poverty reduction in China

By Jose G. Montalvo, M. Ravallion. 2009

282 citations recorded by the source corpus.

China has seen a huge reduction in the incidence of extreme poverty since the economic reforms that started in the late 1970s. Yet, the growth process has been highly uneven across sectors and regions. The paper tests whether the pattern of China´s growth mattered to poverty reduction using a new provincial panel data set constructed for this purpose. The econometric tests support the view that the primary sector (mainly agriculture) has been the main driving force in poverty reduction over the period since 1980. It was the sectoral unevenness in the growth process, rather than its geographic unevenness, that handicapped poverty reduction. Yes, China has had great success in reducing poverty through economic growth, but this happened despite the unevenness in its sectoral pattern of growth. The idea of a trade-off between these sectors in terms of overall progress against poverty in China turns out to be a moot point, given how little evidence there is of any poverty impact of non-primary sector growth, controlling for primary-sector growth. While the non-primary sectors were key drivers of aggregate growth, it was the primary sector that did the heavy lifting against poverty.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Safety Research, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2c058a0290d889419acf65ea092e8f25f78a2ba6

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Citations in the corpus

Economic Importance of Agriculture for Poverty Reduction (2010, background): “Similarly, Montalvo and Ravallion (2009) find that the primary sector rather than the secondary (manufacturing) or tertiary sectors was the real driving force in China " s spectacular success against absolute poverty.”
A Comparative Perspective on Poverty Reduction in Brazil, China, and India (2009, background): “See Ravallion (2009b) in the context of an antipoverty program in China, though the points made are reasonably generic.”
China’s poverty alleviation over the last 40 years: successes and challenges (2019, unknown): “The sustenance of rapid economic growth is the foundation and driving force behind China’s massive poverty alleviation over the past 40 years (Huang et al. 2008; Wang 2008; Montalvo and Ravallion 2010).”
Spatio-temporal patterns of rural poverty in China and targeted poverty alleviation strategies (2017, background): “, 2015; Liu and Xu, 2016), and the poverty alleviation effect of socioeconomic development (Ravallion, 2001; Ravallion and Chen, 2007; Montalvo and Ravallion, 2010; Barrett and Carter, 2013; Lü, 2015).”