When assessing whether a household is deemed as poor, analysts as well as statistical agencies have traditionally focused on strictly economic factors: the level of income the household has at its disposal, or its consumption. However, there have been attempts to broaden the basis for poverty assessments in order to cover other aspects of life. For example, the Oxford Poverty and Development Initiative has produced the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) for many countries and for several years. This index is designed to capture the deprivation that each poor person faces with respect to education, health and other aspects of living standards. The MPI reflects both the incidence of multidimensional poverty (the proportion of people in a population who are multidimensionally poor), and its intensity (the average number of deprivations each poor person experiences at the same time). There have also been several attempts to apply a similar framework when assessing poverty in China, and this book by Jing Yang and Pundarik Mukhopadhaya is one.
China's War against the Many Faces of Poverty: Towards a Long New March can easily be divided into two rather different parts. The first, comprising approximately one third of the book, includes an introduction to the growing literature on multidimensional poverty by covering concepts and methodology as well as applications (chapter two). Chapter three gives an overview of income destitution in China based on previous research and also discusses government attempts to combat it. Both chapters are written for relatively broad audiences, and I found chapter three particularly rewarding for readers interested in social issues in contemporary China.
The second and larger part of the book consists of three very detailed research reports (together including more than 100 tables). Chapter four measures multidimensional poverty in China at the national, rural–urban, regional, and provincial levels by using data from the 2010 China Family Panel Studies (CPS) covering 25 of China's provinces. A household's poverty status is based on its members' education, health care and standard of living. The poverty assessment also considers the household's access to social security, and the latter is found to be the single most important contributor to multidimensional poverty at the national level. This study is also reported as an article in the journal Social Indicators Research.
Chapter five investigates trends in multidimensional poverty for the period 2000 to 2011, based on data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) covering nine provinces of China. This data source has been used in almost all previous research on multidimensional poverty in China. In this chapter the definition of multidimensional poverty is based on income, education, health care and standard of living. The many results show, for example, that multidimensional poverty has decreased over the time studied, and that rural households are poorer than urban households.
Chapter six compares the multidimensional poverty of migrants with that of rural and urban groups, using data from the Rural Urban Migration in China (RUMiC) and the China Household Income Project (CHIP) surveys for 2002, 2007, 2008 and 2009. Income per capita, highest level of education, health status and health insurance as well as entitlement to pension insurance are the dimensions of poverty used. The migrant group stands out as extremely vulnerable, largely because most members in the group lack health insurance as well as pension insurance.
It is notable that few previous studies of multidimensional poverty have included access to social security as a dimension of poverty. However, I missed a discussion in the book motivating the decision to include access to social security in the poverty assessment. For example, why not relate it to studies that have investigated dynamic aspects of income/consumption poverty in China?
A second point to note is that the exercises reported in chapters four to six are to a large extent influenced by the available data. One might have expected the authors to provide some recommendations for future data collections to improve the understanding of multidimensional poverty in China. For example, a vital limitation in much of the analysis presented in the book is that the statistical information relates to households as a unit, while to make the most sense, poverty assessments (multidimensional or not) should relate to individuals.
A further concern is how to update criteria for poverty assessment in a rapidly growing economy. Many observers in the developed world have argued that criteria for defining a household and its members as poor have to change when the society in which they live becomes richer. Similarly, the official definition of poverty in rural China (which is based on household income) has become more demanding as China's average income has grown. Why should a similar view not be taken when assessing multidimensional poverty?
To conclude, the earlier chapters of the book can be recommended to those interested in what is meant by multidimensional poverty with respect to contemporary social problems in China. The rest of the book is for a narrow readership.
