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New poverty line

(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-12-27 07:58

China will have more poor people to assist in the years to come. The Chinese government has decided to set the nation's poverty line at an annual per capita net income of 1,500 yuan ($226) in 2011. The new threshold is an increase of 25 percent over the 2008 and 2009 standard of 1,196 yuan.

For poor people, this is good news, as the raised poverty line means more poverty-stricken people who had been invisible will now become visible.

For some years, the government has been under pressure to change the requirements for calculating the official poverty line. Current norms have resulted in gross and manifest underestimation of the number of poor, and, consequently, the exclusion of hundreds of millions of people from development programs.

The new poverty line means the government will invest more in helping as many as 100 million impoverished people - more than double the number of the current poverty statistics. It takes courage to increase the number of poor people the government will have to take care of in this way and the government's decision is worthy of praise.

Poverty is more pervasive than we thought. The bedrock poor are mostly farmers and nomads, mainly from ethnic groups in remote areas.

However, the threshold is too low, focusing exclusively on food consumption norms and ignoring expenditure on health, education and other basic needs.

The United Nation's global poverty line has been raised from a-dollar-a-day to $1.25. By this measure, some 254 million Chinese live in extreme poverty. Our new threshold is 63-cents-a-day, in India it is $1.2.

Gas prices are soaring, food prices are going up, for people who can barely get three decent meals a day, housing, clothing and education are also a problem. All of these are areas that the government needs to cover to help the nation's poorest citizens.

Tens of millions more people live in near-poverty conditions. A large number of the rural population is vulnerable to being reduced to poverty due to sudden sickness, natural disaster or economic recession.

As the nation is growing, it must take all the steps necessary to benefit all citizens with its growth.

The Northwest has not developed the job resilience of other regions. It has not overcome the gap in incomes, jobs and educational attainment. It has not achieved the parity sought and promised by many.

The government is duty-bound to distribute wealth equally and come up with a poverty line to meet expenditure requirements with respect to nutrition, education and health.

The new figure will put fresh pressure on the government to move more aggressively to combat poverty. It needs to introduce more effective policies to help the country's poorest people.