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Defining and delivering minimum incomes in China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2017

Michael Adler
Michael Adler*
Affiliation:
Emeritus Professor of Socio-Legal Studies in the School of Social and Political Science, Chrystal Macmillan Building, George Square, Edinburgh, EH8 9LD, Scotland, UK. E-mail: michael.adler@ed.ac.uk.
*
michael.adler@ed.ac.uk
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Abstract

This paper combines an empirical analysis of national and international attempts to deal with the problem of poverty in China with a normative analysis of capability theory, as developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. In this way, it attempts to highlight the centrality of normative approaches to poverty and its elimination. The paper is in five parts. Section I analyses the history, development and effectiveness of social assistance under the Minimum Living Standards Scheme (MLSS) in China; Section II provides an outline of capability theory; Section III analyses the history, development and effectiveness of the United Nations Development Program's (UNDP) Millennium Development Goals, with a focus on the elimination of poverty in China; Section IV emphasises the importance of a capability approach to the measurement of poverty and outlines what needs to be done to reduce poverty in China; while Section V discusses what still needs to be done to promote an effective anti-poverty strategy in China.

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Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Law in Context , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , March 2018 , pp. 157 - 169
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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Footnotes

This paper is based on a lecture given at the South-Western University of Finance and Economics in Chengdu on 22 October 2015. The author would like to thank Dr Xin Zhang for inviting him and the School of Law for its generous support.

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