Multidimensional poverty alleviation effect of different rural land consolidation models: A case study of Hubei and Guizhou, China

Eradicating all forms of poverty is the goal of sustainable development in the world, and the problem of returning to poverty has received widespread attention from international organizations and various countries around the world. Rural land consolidation (RLC) has achieved sustainable land use by combining with land system reform and policy innovation, thus RLC has become an important means to consolidate the achievements of poverty eradication in China. Under the sustainable livelihood approach, this study reveals the pathways to alleviate multidimensional relative poverty of different RLC models. Based on questionnaire data of rural households from poor areas of Guizhou and Hubei provinces in China, this study constructs a multidimensional poverty indices (MPI), including five dimensions of relative poverty measurement indicators (income, education, livelihood, housing, and employment) and the corresponding critical values, and measures the multidimensional relative poverty status of rural households as well as the change before and after RLC. In addition, the effects of multidimensional poverty reduction of different RLC models on poor households were investigated by the quasi-experimental PSM-DID method. The results show that different RLC models exhibit different poverty reduction effects. A comprehensive analysis of the multidimensional relative poverty indices demonstrates that public-private partnership (PPP) model of RLC can significantly alleviate poverty status of rural household, whereas the government-led model has no significant multidimensional poverty reduction effects. The investigation of each of five dimensions reveals that the PPP model has a significant poverty reduction effect on all the five dimensions (income, education, livelihood, housing, and employment), but the government-led model has a significant poverty reduction effect only on income dimension. Accordingly, this study proposes related policy recommendations, which provides Chinese experience for other developing countries to formulate RLC poverty alleviation strategies.