Poverty reduction in rural China: Does the digital finance matter?

ABSTRACT: As digital finance is widely spread and applied in China, this new format of financial technology could become a new way to reduce poverty in rural areas. By matching digital financial indexes of the prefectural-level cities with microdata on rural households from the China Household Finance Survey (CHFS) in 2017, we find that digital finance significantly suppresses absolute poverty and relative poverty among rural households in China, which is supported by a series of robustness tests, such as the instrumental variable approach, using alternative specifications, and excluding extreme observations. Additionally, we provide evidence that the poverty reduction effect of digital finance is likely to be explained by alleviating credit constraints and information constraints, broadening social

SUBMITTER: Chen B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8675699 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature