By Yin Haodong & Ye Xingqing, Research Team on “The Promotion of Poverty Alleviation through Rural Revitalization”, Research Department of Rural Economy, DRC

Research Report, No.140, 2019 (Total 5640) 2019-8-20

Abstract: In developed countries and regions, poverty mainly refers to poor people in a comparative sense and most of these countries and regions define these people with comparative poverty threshold based on median or average income. Poverty in such countries and regions is mainly attributed to structural problems caused by unreasonable economic and social structure and system. The impoverished people live at the foot of the social ladder due to polarized income distribution, and the poor people mainly include women, children, the elderly and special ethnic groups living in urban areas. Developed countries and regions have mainly adopted the following bailout measures to reduce poverty. Based on the comprehensive social welfare system, they offered targeted assistance through special succour policies of classified relief to help the poor in order to shake off poverty through enhanced human capital. They made efforts to reduce people’s reliance on welfare aids and encouraged them to earn a living through their own labor. Besides, they formulated regional development policies in poverty-stricken regions to promote poverty reduction. The poverty alleviation drive in developed countries and regions shows that relative poverty will exist in the long term no matter how advanced the economy has developed. In the future, China needs to focus on relative poverty issue and take care of special impoverished groups.

Key words: relative poverty, features of impoverished groups, measures for poverty alleviation, developed countries