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Asset Poverty in Urban China: A Study Using the 2002 Chinese Household Income Project

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 July 2013

JIN HUANG ,
MINCHAO JIN ,
SUO DENG ,
BAORONG GUO ,
LI ZOU  and
MICHAEL SHERRADEN
JIN HUANG*
Affiliation:
School of Social Work, St Louis University, 221 N. Grand Blvd, St Louis, MO 63103, USA
MINCHAO JIN
Affiliation:
Center for Social Development, Washington University in St Louis, Campus Box 1196, One Brookings Drive, St Louis, MO 63130, USA email: minchao.jin@wustl.edu
SUO DENG
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, Peking University, Beijing 100871 email: dengsuo@hotmail.com
BAORONG GUO
Affiliation:
School of Social Work, University of Missouri-St Louis, 121 Bellerive Hall, One University Blvd., St Louis, MO 63121, USA email: guob@umsl.edu
LI ZOU
Affiliation:
Center for Social Development, Washington University in St Louis, Campus Box 1196, One Brookings Drive, St Louis, MO 63130, USA email: lzou@wustl.edu
MICHAEL SHERRADEN
Affiliation:
Center for Social Development, Washington University in St Louis, Campus Box 1196, One Brookings Drive, St Louis, MO 63130, USA email: sherrad@wustl.edu
*
email: jhuang5@slu.edu
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Abstract

Defining asset poverty as insufficiency of assets to satisfy household basic needs for a limited period of time, the study examines asset-poverty rates in urban China using the 2002 survey data from the Chinese Household Income Project (CHIP). We find that asset-poverty rates in urban China are lower than those of developed countries, in part due to Chinese households’ strong commitment to precautionary savings and the low poverty standards. However, the liquid asset-poverty rate is five times that of the income-poverty rate in urban China. Notably, the asset-poverty-gap ratio shows that most households in asset poverty have zero liquid assets or negative net worth. Asset building could be an integral part of the anti-poverty agenda to protect the poor from economic hardship and provide them with opportunities for economic growth.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 42 , Issue 4 , October 2013 , pp. 763 - 781
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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