Targeted Poverty Alleviation for the Livelihood Improvement of Poverty-Stricken Households: A Case Study of Wuxi County, China

This paper explores the effects of different types of policy measures on poverty-stricken households’ (PSHs’) livelihood strategy transitions in China’s targeted poverty alleviation (TPA) system. Considering the connection between TPA policy measures and PSHs’ livelihood improvement, this paper identifies three types of policy measures, namely, safeguard-oriented, employment-oriented and ability-oriented policies. The data utilized in this paper were tracking data collected from 1298 PSHs in Southwest China in 2014 and 2020. A multinomial logit model was adopted to explore the effects of different types of policy measures on the trajectory of PSHs’ livelihood strategy transitions. The results show that employment-oriented policies could effectively prompt the upwards movement of PSHs’ livelihood strategies. Likewise, safeguard-oriented policies hinder the downwards movement of PSHs’ livelihood strategies. However, due to the effectiveness and time effects of policies, ability-oriented policies offer only limited benefits for the movement of PSHs’ livelihood strategies. These findings are valuable for other developing countries seeking to accelerate the progress of rural poverty reduction by providing targeted and effective policy measures.