Extending Social Assistance in China: Lessons from the Minimum Living Standard Scheme

In 1999 the State Council of the People's Republic of China (PRC) introduced the Regulation on the Minimum Living Standard Scheme (MLSS, [Formula: see text] or dibao) for urban residents in China. Policy learning from different parts of the world significantly shaped the formation and expansion of the MLSS, and Chinese social policy researchers have drawn conclusions about the experiences of these multiple regions. Through expert interviews, we discovered that the Chinese social assistance scheme has been influenced by the US ideas of “social investment” and “workfare.” Furthermore, the European values of “universal entitlement” and “social citizenship” have also been internalised by the Chinese actors behind the scheme. In addition, Hong Kong's social assistance scheme has inspired Chinese policymakers to explore a model consisting of various categories that target the country's enormous special welfare needs. Thus, scholars and policymakers from China have used values and ideas outside China to create a hybrid model of social assistance that is characterised by broad coverage, a low benefit level, and a highly provincial administrative structure.

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Elderly Poverty in Vietnam: Trends and Determinants

Journal of Population and Social Studies ◽

10.25133/jpssv292021.033 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 29 ◽

pp. 526-543

Author(s):

Linh Hoang Vu ◽

◽

Thuy-Anh Nguyen ◽

Keyword(s):

Rural Areas ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Social Assistance ◽

Ethnic Disparities ◽

The Elderly ◽

Policy Implications ◽

Living Standard ◽

Determining Factors ◽

Elderly Poverty ◽

Urban And Rural Areas

Adopting data from the 2010 and 2016 Vietnam Household Living Standard Surveys, this paper identifies factors of elderly poverty incidences and depth in Vietnam. Our analysis shows that overall, elderly poverty is lower than the overall poverty headcount in Vietnam. Yet, some elderly groups are more vulnerable to poverty than others. In particular, the elderly living in rural areas are more susceptible to poverty than those living in urban areas. The ethnic minority elderly are likewise more vulnerable to poverty than those who belong to the Kinh-Hoa ethnic majority. We found several determining factors for elderly poverty in urban and rural areas, including region, ethnicity, education, and household age composition. Remittances and social assistance are also crucial in reducing elderly poverty in rural areas. With these findings, this study proposes several policy implications, including improving the social assistance support for the elderly, reducing regional and ethnic disparities, and supporting the employment of older people.

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The Brink of Poverty: Implementation of a Social Assistance Programme in Rural China

Journal of Current Chinese Affairs ◽

10.1177/186810261604500105 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 45 (1) ◽

pp. 75-108 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Lena Kuhn ◽

Stephan Brosig ◽

Linxiu Zhang

Keyword(s):

Rural Areas ◽

Rural China ◽

Rural Households ◽

Social Assistance ◽

Living Standard ◽

Distribution Method ◽

Implementation Gap ◽

Assistance Programme ◽

Monetary Transfers ◽

Additional Monitoring

The Rural Minimum Living Standard is an important component of social security in rural areas of China, as it provides social assistance to poor rural households. The country's size and large development heterogeneities, however, make the policy's implementation a challenging task. Using quantitative and qualitative data from rural households and administrators in five provinces, we identify the pitfalls of multi-level implementation along with the difficulty of measuring income in rural, underdeveloped areas as key sources of an implementation gap that has led to a considerable degree of misallocation of monetary transfers. Changes in the budgeting process and the distribution method might improve the anti-poverty effect of social assistance without having to carry out additional monitoring.

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Synthesizing disparate ideas: How a Chinese model of social assistance was forged

Global Social Policy ◽

10.1177/1468018117704381 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 17 (3) ◽

pp. 307-327 ◽

Cited By ~ 14

Author(s):

Lutz Leisering ◽

Tao Liu ◽

Tobias ten Brink

Keyword(s):

Rural Areas ◽

Western Europe ◽

Central Government ◽

Social Assistance ◽

The United States ◽

Living Standard ◽

Policy Model ◽

Minimum Income ◽

Policy Experimentation ◽

Chinese Model

In 1993, the Shanghai government introduced a minimum income security program, causing contagious imitative behaviors in scores of local pilot projects in China. Invigorated by such local policy experiments, the central government in 1999 set up a Minimum Living Standard Scheme covering all urban regions and, from 2007, rural areas. In the process of designing this scheme, the Chinese epistemic social policy community translated foreign ideas into the national context to facilitate the social assistance reform through policy experimentation and reinterpretation of external ideas. This article argues that Chinese actors in the field of social assistance have synthesized disparate ideas from two world regions – the United States and Western Europe – and from Chinese traditions to forge a Chinese model of social assistance. It thus complements the existing literature on diffusion, which tends to assume that countries import or adapt a ready-made policy model from another country or from an international organization.

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