We in this paper argue that the Chinese official poverty line substantially misestimates theactual rural poverty situations. We recalculate the rural poverty lines following Ravallion (1994) with rural household survey data of China¡¯s two provinces, Hubei and Inner Mongolia. The results...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to yield more plausible rural poverty lines for China and then assess the determinants of rural poverty using these newly revised rural poverty lines. Design/methodology/approach – In this paper it is argued that the Chinese official poverty line...