Research on Sustainable Population Development and Rural Anti-Poverty

Author: Li Xiyuan
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-04-01
Features: Poverty is a global issue, and combating poverty is a common historical task faced by humanity. On October 17, 1997, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan stated in a message on the "International Day for the Eradication of Poverty": "In developing countries, there are currently 1.3 billion people living below the poverty line with daily living costs of less than one U.S. dollar; in developed countries, there are also over 100 million people living below the poverty line. Poverty-stricken populations are concentrated in rural areas, particularly in rural regions of developing countries." China is the world's largest developing country and also faces the issue of rural poverty, carrying the historical mission of combating poverty. Therefore, this book is based on a people-centered approach, exploring poverty alleviation through the lens of population quantity, quality, and structure, and elaborating on the demographic perspective of poverty alleviation—population sustainability and poverty alleviation.
Chapter 1: Introduction introduces the background and objectives of this research question. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 discuss poverty theories and the demographic theories of poverty alleviation and population sustainability. Chapter 5 is a field-based poverty survey report, completed by the author through in-depth research in four national poverty-stricken counties—Dingxi, Gansu; Congjiang, Guizhou; Jinzhai, Anhui; and Halinggel, Inner Mongolia—during holidays, utilizing sample surveys to collect data. Chapter 6, "Rural Poverty Status and Poverty Population Issues," examines China's rural poverty status, revealing the trend of declining poverty rates but widening poverty gaps; the distribution of rural surplus poverty populations has shifted toward the western regions and impoverished townships, exacerbating the imbalance in poverty population distribution. Chapter 7, "Moderate Population Size and Poverty Alleviation," analyzes the internal mechanisms and patterns of how poverty promotes population growth and how rapid population growth intensifies poverty. Chapter 8, "Human Resource Development and Poverty Alleviation," reveals the current state of human resources in impoverished rural areas and the key focus areas for development, highlighting the abundance of general labor resources, low health quality, and underdeveloped cultural and educational levels. Chapters 9 and 10, "Population Migration, Urbanization, and Poverty Alleviation," focus on analyzing a fundamental characteristic of rural poverty populations: their isolation and rigidity, as well as the mismatch between human resources and natural resources, economic development, necessitating certain population migration and accelerating the pace of urbanization.