Targeted poverty alleviation and households’ livelihood strategy in a relation-based society : Evidence from northeast china

Sun, Zhe and Zhao, Liang and Wang, Shuyue and Zhang, Hongyin and Wang, Xinyu and Wan, Zherui (2021) Targeted poverty alleviation and households’ livelihood strategy in a relation-based society : Evidence from northeast china. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18 (4). 1747. ISSN 1661-7827 (https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18041747)

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Abstract

Although China is experiencing a transition from a relation-based society to a rule-based society, relationships among acquaintances still play an important role in resource allocation, such as the allocation of policy resources. This is particularly true in rural China, where targeted poverty alleviation is prevalent and a relation-based social structure still dominates. However, it is still un-known how relationships affect the livelihood strategy of households in rural China and how poverty alleviation policies plays a role between them. Therefore, this paper embeds poverty alleviation into the relation-based society and explores how households respond to the policy in this specific context. Using grounded theory research method and the sustainable livelihoods approach (SLA) framework, this paper contains in-depth interviews and field observations from three poverty-stricken villages in Northeast China. The results show that relationships have a significant impact on the households’ livelihood strategy. In other words, the households’ livelihood strategy is em-bedded in the relation-based society. The types of relationships induce households to choose main-tained or developmental type livelihood strategies, while relationships influence how the poverty alleviation policies affect the livelihood strategy. This study is not only an extension of the SLA in the research context, but also provides a significant perspective for enriching the long-term mecha-nism of targeted poverty alleviation by building a theoretical model of the relationships between a relation-based society, targeted poverty alleviation and the livelihood strategies of households.

ORCID iDs

Sun, Zhe, Zhao, Liang ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8481-9926, Wang, Shuyue, Zhang, Hongyin, Wang, Xinyu and Wan, Zherui;
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)