Abstract

Urban poverty is one of the major challenges confronting China due to the increasing number
of retrenched workers and rural migrants since the 1990s. Recent economic inquiries into this
problem have relied on the Basic-need Poverty Line Approach, which neglects the
demographic and consumption characteristics of different households. Outside of China, the
Capabilities Approach and Participatory Poverty Assessment (PPA) have been widely
applied. Since this project will focus on community groups and seeks to gather an insiders’
view, PPA will be applied. This qualitative approach will be augmented with an additional
quantitative approach. These approaches together (Q-squared) will help us to consider both
the outsiders’ and insiders’ views of Chinese urban poverty in order to generate effective
anti-poverty policies Since inadequate emphasis has been given to this historical economic
issue, further study is needed to inform current economic transition in the western region,
especially the state-owned enterprise problem.