Community-based energy revolution: An evaluation of China's photovoltaic poverty alleviation Program's economic and social benefits

We use a unique micro dataset from the period of 2014–2021 to evaluate China's Photovoltaic Poverty Alleviation (PVPA) program. By employing a difference-in-differences strategy, we find that the community-based PVPA stations distributed in China are anti-poverty facilities that can reconcile equity and efficiency. The PVPA program not only significantly increases the total income of treated households, but also reduces the within-village inequality and encourages off-farm labor supply. Heterogeneity analysis suggests that the effect of PVPA is more substantial for households with a high dependency ratio and in villages where officials are well-educated. The benefit-cost ratio of a village-level PVPA station is greater than one, indicating that the community-based PVPA program is cost-effective.