Social programs for the urban working class in China: unemployment insurance and the minimum livelihood guarantee scheme

One of the most outstanding achievements of modern China is lifting millions out of poverty via various institutional reforms and poverty alleviation policies after the 1980s. It was estimated that between 1981 and 2004, the number of absolute poor in China had been drastically reduced from 652 million to 135 million. In terms of the size of the urban poor, however, it has increased dramatically since the 1990s. In 1990, the number of urban poor was only about 1 million. It was estimated that there were over 70 million urban residents in poverty in 2003 (World Bank: 2009).