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Poverty reduction in rural China: Does the digital finance matter?
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...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8675699/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34914740 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261214 |
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author | Chen, Boou Zhao, Chunkai |
author_facet | Chen, Boou Zhao, Chunkai |
author_sort | Chen, Boou |
collection | PubMed |
description | 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 networks, and promoting entrepreneurship. Our findings further complement the research field on financial poverty reduction and offer insights for the development of public financial policies of poverty reduction in other countries, especially in some developing countries. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8675699 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-86756992021-12-17 Poverty reduction in rural China: Does the digital finance matter? Chen, Boou Zhao, Chunkai PLoS One Research Article 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 networks, and promoting entrepreneurship. Our findings further complement the research field on financial poverty reduction and offer insights for the development of public financial policies of poverty reduction in other countries, especially in some developing countries. Public Library of Science 2021-12-16 /pmc/articles/PMC8675699/ /pubmed/34914740 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261214 Text en © 2021 Chen, Zhao https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Chen, Boou Zhao, Chunkai Poverty reduction in rural China: Does the digital finance matter? |
title | Poverty reduction in rural China: Does the digital finance matter? |
title_full | Poverty reduction in rural China: Does the digital finance matter? |
title_fullStr | Poverty reduction in rural China: Does the digital finance matter? |
title_full_unstemmed | Poverty reduction in rural China: Does the digital finance matter? |
title_short | Poverty reduction in rural China: Does the digital finance matter? |
title_sort | poverty reduction in rural china: does the digital finance matter? |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8675699/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34914740 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261214 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT chenboou povertyreductioninruralchinadoesthedigitalfinancematter AT zhaochunkai povertyreductioninruralchinadoesthedigitalfinancematter |