Evaluating and Alleviating Multidimensional Poverty among Older People in Rural China Based on Big Data

Abstract

China has made great progress in poverty alleviation in past 40 years. However, older Chinese rural residents, who have been identified as a doubly vulnerable group, still experience much different kinds of deprivations. This study firstly evaluated the multiple deprivations and multidimensional poverty experienced by Chinese rural older people with the Alkire and Foster (AF) measure. It then discusses the poverty alleviation based on big data. It finds that integrated multidimensional poverty declined in four components of deprivation among the aged population, but this trend was limited in a broad sense in terms of the mean poverty intensity and the poverty severity index. Although there was a 6.2 percentage point decrease in poverty incidence, the poverty intensity increased 0.7 percentage points. Deprivations in the financial insecurity, health and loneliness dimensions also increased. Based on big data, this study gives the poverty monitoring and poverty reduction path based. Also, the principles and the data collection paths will be discussed.