The Dynamics of Relative Poverty in China in a Comparative Perspective

I use household panel data to study the dynamics of relative poverty in China, Germany, the UK, and the US. Compared to the three Western countries, not only is relative poverty more common in China, it is also deeper and more severe. Transient poverty accounts for less than half of the total poverty in Germany or the US, but about two thirds of that in China or the UK. Over three waves, 87 percent of Germans, 78 percent of Brits, 71 percent of Americans, but only 46 percent of Chinese were never poor. Using a multinomial logistic regression model, the determinants of poverty are found to be very similar across the four countries. But the variance explained of that model is much smaller for China than for the three Western countries. The results also raise questions about some regularities reported in previous research on poverty dynamics.