What are the causes of family poverty?

1. Historical reasons. Most Chinese and foreign scholars who study poverty agree that poverty in developed countries is often caused by practical reasons, while poverty in developing countries is usually accumulated by history. China is a developing country. If the poverty and backwardness in old China is the main reason for the poverty in new China, then the poverty at this stage obviously has the influence of decades of reform and opening up, including a large population, mistakes in decision-making, long-term low production efficiency and the household registration system that imprisons people's thoughts. As a result, most rural residents have been in extreme poverty for a long time, and urban residents have a low living standard because they only receive low wages for a long time. These historical factors and their poverty consequences cannot be eliminated in a short time, especially the backwardness of ideas and skills is a long-term constraint. According to relevant data, 84. 1% of rural poor families in Hubei province still live on traditional agriculture, that is, planting, and migrant workers in poor areas only account for 65.438+02.5% of the total labor force. (Note: Zhang Zaiquan, Lou Cegui: Study on Cross-century Poverty Alleviation Strategy in Hubei, statistics and decision, 1999(6), 1 1. For example, in the past, water conservancy construction rarely considered the lives of immigrants. According to the survey and statistics of the World Bank, there are currently 3-6 million immigrants in the reservoir area in China who are in poverty for a long time. (Note: World Bank: China:1Poverty Alleviation Strategy in 1990s, Chinese version, 44 pages, Beijing, China Financial and Economic Press, 1993. Therefore, although there are many realistic factors that affect the poverty problem that China is currently facing, the accumulation of urban and rural poverty in the past few decades has made the poverty problem more prominent, and some poor people still live in historical poverty. Of course, with the sustained development of social economy and the implementation of the government's anti-poverty policy, historical poverty, as an influencing factor leading to the real poverty problem in China, has been declining in importance after nearly 20 years of reform and opening up. In 10-20 years, historical poverty will be eliminated from the causes of poverty in China.

2. Natural causes. Marx's theory of differential land rent reveals the difference in income and land rent between fertile land and poor land. For urban and rural residents, the natural environment and corresponding conditions are also important factors restricting their income and living standards. According to the list of 592 national key poverty alleviation counties determined by the "Eighth Seven-Year Plan", it can be found that almost all of them are areas with poor natural environment, such as mountains and plateaus, among which 307 are concentrated in the southwest, northwest and central mountainous areas, and the poor population accounts for about 60% of the total poverty-stricken population in the country. For example, western Hunan and western Hubei are poverty-stricken areas in central Hunan and Hubei provinces; Up to now, poverty-stricken counties are almost all areas with harsh natural environment, especially areas where most ethnic minorities live in concentrated communities, making the poverty-stricken ethnic minorities, which account for less than 10% of the country's total population, account for 40% of the country's rural poor population. (Noe: Tang. China's Theory of Poverty and Anti-poverty, pp.34,5, Nanning, Guangxi People's Publishing House, 1995. In terms of poverty intensity index, 1994 is 2.77% in Ningxia, 0.66% in Henan and 0.03% in Guangdong. (Note: Duan Qinglin: Basic Characteristics of Income Gap of Rural Residents in China, statistics and decision 1999(6), 22 pages. Ningxia is 92.33 times that of Guangdong, and this gap is widening with the faster development of developed areas. Floods, earthquakes, typhoons, fires, pests and other natural disasters are another important cause of poverty. According to statistics, more than 200 million people are attacked by various natural disasters every year in China. No matter how effective disaster relief measures are taken, there will still be some people in trouble due to the disaster. Even if 1% of the victims live in difficulties, more than 2 million people will fall into poverty every year due to natural disasters. Therefore, natural conditions cannot be easily changed, and natural disasters are even more inevitable. They make the poor poorer, make those who have been out of poverty return to poverty, and even make some people with higher living standards fall into poverty, which is the long-term reason for poverty in China.

3. The reasons of unbalanced regional economic development. Unbalanced regional economic development is an important feature in the process of China's economic development. The eastern, central and western regions have always developed in the same shape. Since the reform and opening up, the state has implemented the economic policy of focusing on developing the eastern region, which has led to the rapid expansion of the gap in economic development level between the eastern, central and western economic zones. A direct consequence of unbalanced development is the imbalance of residents' income level, which is an important reason for the high proportion, deep degree and large number of poor people in the central and western regions. According to the sampling survey conducted by the Urban Dispatch Corps of the National Bureau of Statistics, the urban poverty rate was 4.2% in196, and the poor population was10/760,000. Among them, the urban poor population in the eastern region 1.88 1.600, accounting for1.6%; There are 6,585,600 urban poor people in the central region, accounting for 56%, and 3,292,800 urban poor people in the western region, accounting for 28%; The per capita annual income of urban poor families in the eastern region is 20 12.98 yuan, of which the highest is 329 1.46 yuan in Guangdong Province and the lowest is 1429 yuan in Hainan Province. The per capita annual income of urban poor families in the central region is 1545.93 yuan, of which the highest in Anhui Province is191.82 yuan and the lowest in Inner Mongolia is 1259.46 yuan. The per capita annual income of urban poor families in the western region is 17 14.85 yuan, with the highest being 20 17.99 yuan in Yunnan province and the lowest being175.82 yuan in Ningxia. This shows that the distribution of poor people is closely related to the overall level of regional economic development. (Note: Yin: China's current urban poverty, 34 ~ 36, 196, Nanchang, Jiangxi People's Publishing House, 1998. Therefore, the state should also make appropriate adjustments to regional economic policies and take narrowing the development gap between the central and western regions and the eastern regions as a major strategic measure to solve China's poverty problem.

4. Family and personal reasons. On the one hand, from the perspective of family structure, single-parent families, families with disabled people, seriously ill patients and elderly people without old-age security often have a heavy economic burden and are easy to fall into poverty (in developed countries, single-parent families often become the main targets of government relief or assistance); On the other hand, from the perspective of personal factors, lonely old people and orphans, disabled people, seriously ill people and people with low education are usually the basic members of the poor population. They are either helpless, have no work income or have extremely low income. According to statistics, disabled people who need help account for about 5% of the total population of the country, and there are more than 60 million disabled people in the country; (Note: Zheng Gongcheng, Zhang Qilin and Xu Feiqiong: Charity in China, 13, Guangzhou, Guangdong Economic Publishing House, 1999. 1997, there were 58.56 million traditional social relief recipients (including families with difficulties, no ability to work, no fixed income, no immediate dependents and retired workers in the 1960s). (Note: Ministry of Civil Affairs: China Civil Statistics Yearbook 1998, pp. 193, 179, editorial department of China Civil Statistics Yearbook, 1998. In rural areas 1997, there are 3 million households with only five-guarantee households, of which 2.003 million households are collectively supplied. (Note: Ministry of Civil Affairs: China Civil Statistics Yearbook 1998, pp. 193, 179, editorial department of China Civil Statistics Yearbook, 1998. ) According to the sampling survey conducted by the Urban Dispatch Corps of the National Bureau of Statistics, 1990, 80.3% of all poor families are headed by poor families with high school education or below. Compared with 1990, the proportion of poor families with junior high school education and primary school education increased by 14. 1 and1.3 percentage points, respectively, thus (Note: Urban Dispatch Corps of National Bureau of Statistics: A Study on Poverty of Urban Residents in China, in Urban Management. The differences between family structure and personal situation cannot be unified at any time, which also means that poverty caused by the above situation is inevitable. When the government implements poverty alleviation and poverty alleviation policies, it should not only consider the family as a unit, but also consider personal factors.

5. Reasons for unemployment. Workers who fail in the employment competition and are forced to lose their jobs mean losing their sources of income, and the unemployed and their families may fall into difficulties in life. In recent years, with the adjustment of state-owned economy, China is at the peak of unemployment and laid-off. Taking Wuhan as an example, the poor population caused by unemployment and laid-off has become the main part of the poor population in this city. Among the 1998 people who receive subsistence allowances in this city, the family members of laid-off workers who are unemployed account for 63% of the total number of recipients, and the number of laid-off workers who receive subsistence allowances in seven urban areas is 13653 (6007 in state-owned enterprises and 7646 in collective enterprises). (Note: Wuhan Civil Affairs Bureau: Reply to Proposal No.569 of the Second Session of the Ninth CPPCC, 2 pages,1July 7, 999. It can be seen that the focus of the government's assistance to the urban poor is undergoing a major shift, that is, from the traditional aid target to the families of unemployed and laid-off workers. It is worth pointing out that the reasons leading to the failure of employment are not only the low quality of the losers themselves, but also the poor interpersonal relationship. Some of them are layoffs caused by the whole economic recession, some are affected by the national industrial policy, and some are due to the failure of enterprise management (such as bankruptcy and merger). Therefore, the national anti-poverty policy should fully consider this change of urban poor population groups, and it will be the best anti-poverty measure for cities and towns to incorporate the adjustment of employment policy into anti-poverty countermeasures and provide as many employment opportunities as possible.

6. Reasons for income distribution. The impact of income distribution on poverty is mainly manifested in two aspects: unfair distribution in industries and changes in distribution factors. The unfair distribution of industries is reflected in both wage income and extra-wage income. Finance, insurance and other industries not only have high wage income, but also have high extra-wage income. Foreign-related units and some joint-stock enterprises can provide employees with high wages; The low income of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, fishery and water conservancy industry leads some employees and their families to become low-income classes and live in poverty. Second, as new elements, property ownership or capital and technology will enter the distribution field, which will inevitably further widen the income gap of residents. Although capital and technology, as the entrance to the distribution field, are the requirements of the times and the needs of competition and development, the wealth created in a certain period is always certain, and those who have capital and technology will have a sharp income expansion effect, while those who can only earn income through labor will naturally reduce their share. The widening gap between the rich and the poor will directly affect the basic trend of poverty in China in the future, which should attract the government's attention and require effective measures.

There are many reasons for poverty. For example, if the enterprise's efficiency is not good, it can't pay wages or default on wages, and some losses and pensions for retired employees of closed enterprises can't be guaranteed (for example, according to the joint statistical bulletin of the Ministry of Labor and Social Security and the National Bureau of Statistics,1at the end of 997, the national pension was in arrears of 3 billion yuan (note: China Labor and Social Security News, 1999-009). ), families or individuals get into trouble because of investment failure, and become poor because of family members' bad hobbies such as gambling and drug abuse, and so on.