Measuring child poverty in rural China: Evidence from households with left-behind and non-left-behind children

Abstract

China has achieved a comprehensive victory against extreme poverty, yet whether every individual has been lifted out of poverty remains relatively unexplored. Children are the most susceptible to intra-household inequality as their consumption is primarily controlled by their supervisors, making the standard per-capita indices unsuitable for assessing their poverty. This paper employs the DLP model to estimate children's resource shares and poverty rates among various household types in rural China. Based on a representative sample, we demonstrate that left-behind children (LBC) receive approximately 5 % fewer resource shares and are ten times more likely to fall into poverty than non-left-behind children (NLBC). Girl children, compared to boys, generally reside in larger families with more children, resulting in smaller portions of household consumption and higher poverty rates. Further analysis strengthens the validity of our identification and indicates that our measure of child poverty is largely consistent with household consumption patterns. While most rural children have been lifted out of extreme poverty, child poverty remains severe when assessed against the standards of developed countries.