Abstract:

Poverty reduction in special areas has been recognized as an important issue in the national precise poverty alleviation strategy in China. Based on data from 46,704 rural households collected by the National Bureau of Statistics in special areas,we analyzed the influences that meteorological disasters have on rural poverty in special areas in China from the angle of sustainable livelihood capital. The results indicate that meteorological disasters significantly decrease the income of farmers in special regions and that meteorological disasters have negative effects on agrarian and non-agrarian income for farmers. The impacts of meteorological disasters on poor households are relatively greater than those of non-poor households. The livelihood capital,especially human capital that farmers possess obviously has positive impacts on fighting with meteorological disasters. From a policy perspective,it means that enhancing poverty reduction steadily should be achieved by means of carrying out free training for farmers,improving rural education levels to reinforce the rural human capital of poor households,constructing regional disaster-defense systems,offering agricultural insurance or family property insurance,and providing meteorological information support for migrant workers. There is a also a great need to adjusting the targeting system of poverty alleviation which plays a vital role in pushing forward poverty alleviation policies. Regulating the policy of precise poor helping mechanism is of great significance and bettering ecological compensation policy will be a terrific helper in alleviating poverty. Governments should strengthen poverty reduction strategies steadily by adopting the measures suggested here.

Key words: special type area, meteorological disasters, poverty, sustainable livelihoods, China