ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the official means of identifying the poor by the local government in Jiankang Villagers’ Committee, Wuding County, Chuxiong Yi Nationality Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province. Poverty incidence statistics and the numbers of poor obtained from national-level rural household surveys do not convey who and where the poor are. How then does the local government identify the poor for poverty alleviation interventions? Section 4.2 reviews how the poverty incidence derived from the national rural household survey links with the official poverty identification procedure done by the Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development (LGOPAD). Section 4.3 examines the official list used to identify the poor households and how such identification is accomplished at the village level in a local government and village-level process. Section 4.4 discusses who the poor are on the official poverty list. Section 4.5 looks at the characteristics of the households officially designated as poor and the patterns of poverty found in them. Section 4.6 analyses the dynamics of poverty. Section 4.7 evaluates how the villagers view the official poverty identification process and the problems that exist in the official identification of the poor.
