Aging & Social Change: Eleventh Interdisciplinary Conference

Abstract

This article explores how far do “Targeted Poverty Alleviation Social Policy Programs”(TPAP) secure fragile older people from absolute poverty risk in rural China, and how do each field of targeted social policy interact with each other in contributing potential poverty risk in those people. We propose that TPAP secure absolute poverty risk in fragile older people at different level according to different kinds of needs, arguing that the system leave gaps open however to potential poverty risks in fragile older people in rural China. It introduces a multi-dimensional approach to measuring the generosity of TPAP’s social policy programs, investigates the impact of three fields of social policy programs from TPAP system in supporting poor fragile older people to live above absolute poverty threshold in rural China, and explores consequences of social policy programs for contributing potential poverty risk according to fragile older people’s different kinds of needs. The empirical study is based on comparisons of individual profile presentations to describe how far do targeted social policy programs make their impact on specific groups of people in sociological way. Profile data used are from “Rural China Poverty Alleviation Observation Project” (Poverty relief office of the state council, 2013/2019), policy data used are from document analysis of regulations of Targeted Poverty Alleviation Social Policy Programs in China. The findings support argument that generosity condition in different TPAP targeted social policy programs vary in their impact on preventing absolute poverty risk in fragile older people on the basis of different level of needs.