Exploring China's Potential Child Poverty

• Published date: 01 January 2022
• Author: Yangyang Shen,Sabina Alkire
• Date: 01 January 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/cwe.12406

©2022 Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

China & World Economy / 82–105, Vol. 30, No. 1, 2022

82

Exploring China’s Potential Child Poverty

Yangyang Shen, Sabina Alkire*

Abstract

This paper estimates child poverty in China using 2018 data from the China Household

Income Project. Applying the Alkire–Foster drawer approach, we constructed a

multidimensional poverty indicator system that accounted for multiple factors

contributing to a child’s development and well-being, based on which we estimated

multidimensional poverty experienced by children. Children’s poverty varied by age,

gender, rural/urban settings, and geographic region. By extending the Alkire–Foster

drawer approach, two important features of child poverty in China were found, which

had normally been neglected by per capita poverty measures: poor children in nonpoor

families and unequal allocations to different children within the same families. The

results showed that more than 40 percent of multidimensionally poor children lived in

nonpoor families. Unequal resource allocation within families was observed in half of

the families. These two features of child poverty require more policy attention and the

Chinese government should prioritize addre ssing multidimensional child poverty.

Keywords: AF drawer approach, child poverty, multidimensional poverty, poverty-

alleviation policies

JEL codes: I32, I310, I380

I. Introduction

Eighteen percent of China’s total population is under the age of 15 according to the

Seventh National Population Census of the People’s Republic of China. However, rapid

population aging and a declining fertility rate have put pressure on the next generation

of the workforce. Current economic and social development trends require improved

human capital and a more skilled workforce to support the shift away from a labor-

*Yangyang Shen (corresponding author), Assistant Professor, School of Economics and Resource

Management, Beijing Normal University, China. Email: yshen@bnu.edu.cn; Sabina Alkire, Professor, Oxford

Poverty and Human Development Initiative, University of Oxford, UK. Email: sabina.alkire@qeh.ox.ac.uk.

The authors would like to thank Christina Popivanova, Weilin Shi, Tingting Chen, Shahin Yaqub, and Fang

Yan from the United Nations Children's Fund China office, and Ran Wang from the National Bureau of

Statistics in China for their useful comments and suggestions. This research was fi nancially supported by the

National Social Science Fund of China (No. 20CSH062).

©2022 Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

China’s Child Poverty 83

intensive growth model. Investing in children, especially those affected by poverty,

should be a national priority.

Given the evolution of China’s anti-poverty policy strategy, the current poverty-

reduction policies have limitations in addressing multidimensional deprivation affecting

children. Figure 1 shows that the degree of poverty among children is higher than that

among adults, regardless of the type of poverty measurement. Substantial differences in

poverty between children and adults could be seen before 2013.

Figure 1. The dynamics of child and adult poverty in China, 2002–2018

Sources: Calculated based on CHIP 2002, 2013, and 2018 datasets.

Notes: Figure 1 aims to show the long-period trends of child and adult poverty in China. Results for 2002

and 2013 are from Shen et al. (2018). We updated the results for 2018 following their paper by applying

the same multidimensional poverty indicator system. Because Figure 1’s multidimensional poverty

indicator system is slightly different from the system that applied in this paper, Figure 1’s results are not

comparable with the multidimensional poverty of children and adults in the following sessions.

China’s poverty reduction remains largely driven by growth, despite increasing

government investment in improving basic living conditions and public services. Rapid

growth has been accompanied by inequality in wealth and well-being. Poverty reduction

measures that have targeted children have been limited to improving education and nutrition

for children living in income-poor rural households. Children who experience deprivation

in childhood are very likely to face developmental and socioeconomic challenges

in adulthood, which will also affect their own children (de Neubourg et al., 2012).

It is therefore crucial to help children overcome barriers to their development along

different dimensions to break the intergenerational transmission of poverty.

With its achievements, opportunities, and challenges, China is about to embark

on a new period of development. In October 2021, the Chinese government published