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PurposeWhilst the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate financial performance has been well documented, CSR has rarely been studied from the perspective of corporate poverty alleviation. This study aims to test whether participation in targeted poverty alleviation (TPA) affects firms' market value and to explore how the magnitudes of market value vary in different CSR environments.Design/methodology/approachBased on recent Chinese TPA initiatives and on 108 TPA announcements of Chinese-listed firms from 2016 to 2020, this study adopts an event study method to investigate the impact of firm's TPA announcements on the firm's market value. Then, the authors construct a cross-sectional regression to analyse different CSR factors that may affect market reactions.FindingsThe results demonstrate that TPA announcements can increase a firm's overall market value. Additionally, the results show that TPA way and firm ownership significantly moderate the market reaction, namely the positive reaction is more significant when the TPA announcements involve charity poverty alleviation rather than industrial poverty alleviation and for privately owned firms rather than state-owned firms.Practical implicationsThe empirical results help TPA practitioners obtain a nuanced understanding of whether and when to participate in poverty alleviation is worthwhile. This study also provides a reference for poverty alleviation work in countries with similar backgrounds.Originality/valueThis study not only provides empirical evidence for the consequences of poverty alleviation behaviour of firms in developing countries, but also complements the field of CSR research in developed countries.

[Purpose/Significance] Consolidating the achievements of targeted poverty alleviation and building a relative poverty reduction mechanism will be the key problem for Chinese government after 2020; information poverty alleviation is expected to play a key role in the future poverty reduction in China. [Method/Process] Based on a systematic literature review and an on-site investigation, this study made an in-depth analysis on the policy documents issued by Chinese government in past decades to shed light on the governance and intervention on information poverty. [Results/Conclusions] Although China's information poverty reduction policy has made remarkable achievements, there are still some problems, including \"to pay too much attention on the information infrastructure construction instead of the how to use them\", \" investment, but not evaluation, is put on the top priority\", \"the content of information poverty reduction project remains vague\", \"compared to social level information resource allocation, individual level information poverty intervention is ignored\", and \" emphasizing too much on the coverage of information sources instead of identification of those vulnerable people in the information society\". Thus, based on an analysis of logic association between information poverty and economically relative poverty, this study puts forward some policy related suggestions and potential research items for future research.

We examine the impact of a government-initiated CSR project on corporate misconduct using the unique setting of China’s Targeted Poverty Alleviation (TPA) program. The difference-in-differences estimates show that firms participating in the TPA program engage in fewer misconduct activities than do their counterparts. This finding is robust to the parallel trends test, the placebo test, alternative regression specifications, alternative research designs, the reverse causality analysis, and the bivariate probit model with partial observability. Further analysis shows that TPA participation enhances the ability of external financial professionals to monitor performance by stimulating the dissemination of TPA-related incremental information, thereby contributing to the decline in corporate misconduct. The cross-sectional heterogeneity analysis shows that the impact of TPA participation on corporate misconduct is more pronounced in firms with higher information asymmetry, with weaker political connections, and with weaker internal governance. Furthermore, we find evidence that TPA participation improves corporate financial performance but does not deteriorate information transparency.

China is undergoing a campaign which is called “The Targeted Poverty Alleviation Policy” to eradicate extreme poverty from rural China until 2020. Though poverty in rural China has been studied intensively in different objective dimensions, little attention has been paid to poverty line settings and subjective poverty, which are hinged to the policy effects. In order to fill in the research gap, this study employs a nationally representative survey of rural households in 2016, to measure subjective poverty in rural China, and analyze the determinants as well. Our results indicate that the mean subjective poverty line of the rural households is 8297 yuan per capita, which is far higher than the national poverty line (2800 yuan). Statistically, 29% of the surveyed rural households who are not objectively poor feel subjectively poor. The objective poverty line cannot fully reflect the subjective poverty perception. Thus, how to reduce the subjective poverty perception could be a major policy agenda in rural China after 2020, when extreme poverty is no longer a problem.

In an effort to mitigate ecological environments and improve human well-being, the Chinese government’s largest-ever relocation and settlement programme is underway. Measuring livelihood resilience and further assessing its impact hold the key to strengthening adaptive capacity and well-being in poverty resettlements. Using a household survey of contiguous poor areas in Southern Shaanxi, China, this research proposes a framework to examine livelihood resilience and its impact on livelihood strategies in the context of poverty alleviation resettlement. To provide more comprehensive empirical evidence, we drew on three dimensions of the previously proposed livelihood resilience framework: buffer capacity, self-organizing capacity, and learning capacity. The results show that capital endowments, social cooperation networks, transportation convenience, and skills acquired from education and rural–urban migration can significantly affect the construction of livelihood resilience. The resilience of households that were relocated because of ecological restoration is the highest, followed by households relocated because of disasters; households relocated because of poverty reduction attempts have the lowest resilience. As for indicators of livelihood resilience, physical capital assets and previous work experience play a major role in household livelihood strategies for pursuing non-farming activities, while household size, stable income, social capital, and information sharing result in diversified livelihood strategies. These findings provide policy implications for enhancing livelihood resilience capacities and improving the scope of available livelihood strategies to emerge from the poverty trap and to adapt to the new environment.

Purpose Poverty alleviation is a global challenge. Human society has never ceased to fight against poverty. China was once the developing country with the largest rural poor population in the world. Remarkable achievements have been made in China’s antipoverty program over the past decades, shaping a unique poverty reduction strategy with Chinese characteristics. The purpose of this paper is to first review the history of China’s rural reform and antipoverty, and then analyze the related policy systems, mechanism innovations and future challenges in poverty alleviation and development. At last, some specific policy implications were provided. Design/methodology/approach Literature on China’s antipoverty history was reviewed and mechanism innovations on targeted poverty alleviation strategy were investigated. Findings Along with the deepening of the rural reform, the poverty alleviation and development in new China have undergone six stages, and experienced a transformation from relief-oriented to development-oriented poverty alleviation. The object of poverty alleviation has gradually targeted with a transformation from poor counties/areas to villages/households, and the effectiveness of poverty alleviation is also gradually improved. However, the increase in the difficulty of antipoverty, fragile ecological environment, rapid population aging and rural decline poses challenges to the construction of a well-off society in an all-round way in China. Specific antipoverty measures were put forward based on the investigation. Finally, the authors emphasize the importance of strengthening the study of poverty geography. Originality/value This study investigates the history of China’s antipoverty policy and analyzes the future challenges for implementing targeted poverty alleviation policy. These findings will lay a foundation for the formulation of China’s antipoverty policies after 2020, and provide experience for poverty alleviation in other developing countries around the world.

Qualifying the official minimum of “Two no worries and three guarantees” (certainty of food and clothing, guarantees of compulsory education, basic medical care, and housing) is essential to evaluate the targeted poverty alleviation program since 2013 in China. Using the poverty monitoring dataset and the multidimensional poverty indicator system, the uneven dynamics and regional disparity of multidimensional poverty and its driving factors in poverty-stricken areas in China during 2014–2018 are explored in this paper. The incidence rate of multidimensional poverty was reduced by 61.72%, and the poverty reduction rate within the six dimensions ranged from 52.29 to 76.36%. Multidimensional poverty and its six dimensions displayed narrowing regional disparity. Impoverished and moderately poor areas shrank, whereas low-poverty areas expanded. All 22 provinces have become low-poverty areas in 2018. The contribution of each dimension to multidimensional poverty varies for different types at different stages. Income and expenditure contribute the most to poverty status, followed by transportation, housing conditions, education, communication, and medical care and health. The contribution of each indicator among different dimensions varied with different trends from 2014 to2018. This paper helps incorporate the official minimums of “Two no worries and three guarantees” into a more operational evaluation system to promote sustainable policies for governments at all levels by 2020 and beyond, as well as provide valuable references for poverty alleviation in other developing countries worldwide.

Tourism development is often used as a strategy to fight poverty, but in the tourism literature it remains controversial as a tool for poverty alleviation in a poor region. This study adopts a multidimensional framework to measure regional poverty. Specifically, we examine four dimensions, including economics, education, social security, and medical service, to reflect poverty alleviation for a region. Then we establish econometric models to explore the link between tourism and poverty alleviation. The result shows that tourism development has a positive influence on multidimensional poverty alleviation in 73 counties in Guizhou province, a typically poor region in China. The consideration of the multidimensional nature of poverty in this study is more convictive to conclude that tourism can reduce poverty. This study further demonstrates that political pressure, indicated by the time period near the end of the fight-against-poverty campaign and by whether a county has red-culture heritages, affects tourism-led poverty alleviation in China.

Poverty is no longer a problem of income alone. Healthy poverty and capacity poverty have become key factors affecting the poverty reduction effectiveness. Based on \"double cut-offs\" multidimensional poverty identification method of Alkire and Foster (J Public Econ 95(7–8): 476–487, 2011), this paper proposes a \"triple cut-offs\" identification method of multidimensional poverty reduction effectiveness, and construct the chronic multidimensional poverty reduction index combined with chronic thinking of Foster (in: Addison T, Hulme D, Kanbur R (eds) Poverty dynamics: interdisciplinary perspectives. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 59–76, 2009). And this index can comprehensively and systematically measure the China's multidimensional poverty reduction effectiveness in terms of both poverty alleviation and poverty returning. In this paper, we find that China's chronic multidimensional poverty alleviation index is greater than the country's chronic poverty returning index, and the chronic multidimensional poverty alleviation/returning index in rural and western regions is greater than that in its cities and other regions in China. The chronic poverty alleviation of per capita net income and medical insurance have contributed a lot to the overall chronic multidimensional poverty alleviation of China's rural residents, while poverty returning caused by health and housing difficulties has contributed a lot (48.14%) to the chronic multidimensional poverty alleviation of the country's urban residents. These findings can provide more targeted guidance for poverty governance.

The aim of poverty alleviation relocation is to break the vicious cycle of poverty and ecological degradation. The improvement of human capital, specifically women’s human capital, is important to realize the poverty alleviation and sustainable development of relocated peasant households. Based on the survey data of 902 peasant households in southern Shaanxi in 2020, using the PSM model and the mediation effect test model, this paper explores the impact of participation in relocation on human capital from the perspective of gender differences, and the mediation effect of fuelwood consumption in the effect of participation in relocation on the human capital of peasants with different genders. The results show that firstly, in general, participation in relocation effectively improves the human capital of peasants. Secondly, there are gender differences in the improvement of the human capital of relocated peasants. Compared with male peasants, the health level of female peasants is significantly improved. Finally, fuelwood consumption plays an important mediation role in the impact of participation in relocation on human capital and the mediation role is more significant in improving the human capital of relocated female peasants.