About Childhood Poverty in China

           

            According to website of the Childhood Poverty Research and Policy Centre, China has 4.2 million children live in absolute poverty and 8.7 million live in disadvantaged conditions.  Nevertheless, both the absolute numbers and proportion of children living in poverty have dropped over the 1990s.  China's transition from a centrally planned economy to a market oriented economy has helped decrease chronic poverty and disadvantage, but also created new forms of vulnerability and poverty.  Inequality, apparently, is the main form of vulnerability.    Liberalization, resulted by open market economy, has led to massive migration, as over 120 million people have moved to the cities since 1990, in search of better opportunities.  This liberalization though helped to reduce poverty, but its byproducts -- the marketization and monetization of public service delivery -- have resulted the rise of inequality.  For instance, one research in Beijing, China's richest city, found that 75% of poor families could not afford all children's education costs such as tuition fees and stationery costs, while 50% of poor families in Shanghai had no medical insurance because they could not afford it.  

            Some insights gained from studying this poverty issue.  Poverty issue is a wicked problem to tackle.  It is not like math problem where we can apply formulas to solve.  To address poverty issue, it requires the collective and coherent efforts of all parties.  It needs to be treated holistically, rather than in a piecemeal.  Last but not least, poverty seemed not be able to be eliminated.  Another form of poverty emerges when it is eliminated or reduced.

Reference

Childhood Poverty Research and Policy Centre:  http://www.childhoodpoverty.org