Drivers of Poverty Reduction in Lagging Regions: Evidence from Rural Western China

Using 2000-04 panel data this study analyses the pathways rural households followed out of poverty in two lagging provinces of China, Inner Mongolia and Gansu. Rising labour productivity in agriculture has been key, and still holds much promise. Labour mobility has also been important in Gansu. So far, rural diversification has not proven to contribute much to poverty reduction. Income transfers and agricultural tax abolishment have helped at the margin. Overall, the findings highlight that the scope for reducing poverty in lagging rural regions is often substantial in agriculture, also in countries where non-agriculture drives overall growth.agriculture, migration, rural nonfarm employment, lagging region, poverty

Cumulative ground deformation induced by train operations

With the rapid development of railway construction, many railway projects have crossed the soft soil deposit. In order to obtain ground settlement data after train operation to ensure the safety of railway, the train-track dynamic model and track-ground finite element model were established to predict accumulated deformation of soft soil foundation induced by dynamic train load. Compared to the measured vibration acceleration on the sleeper and ground, the predicted vibration acceleration can match well with the measured vibration acceleration across the full range of time history shown. The results showed that after many times of train operations, the cumulative deformations of the ground at different depth are quite different, it may affect the safety of the railway operation, the foundation reinforcement measures can be considered during construction

Drivers of poverty reduction in lagging regions: Evidence from rural Western China

Using 2000-04 panel data this study analyses the pathways rural households followed out of poverty in two lagging provinces of China, Inner Mongolia and Gansu. Rising labour productivity in agriculture has been key, and still holds much promise. Labour mobility has also been important in Gansu. So far, rural diversification has not proven to contribute much to poverty reduction. Income transfers and agricultural tax abolishment have helped at the margin. Overall, the findings highlight that the scope for reducing poverty in lagging rural regions is often substantial in agriculture, also in countries where non-agriculture drives overall growth

Inequality and Poverty in China during Reform

This paper provides an overview of the evolution of income inequality and poverty in China from 1987 to 2002, documenting significant increases of inequality within China's urban and rural populations. In rural areas, increased inequality is primarily related to the disequalizing role of non-agricultural self-employment income and the slow growth in agricultural income from the mid-1990s onward. Poverty persists, and tied in part to slow growth in agricultural commodity prices. In urban areas, the declining role of subsidies and entitlements, the increase in wage inequality, and the layoffs during restructuring have fueled the growth in inequality within urban areas. Poverty levels, however, are very low. China should give more emphasis on education, training, and other human development efforts in its poverty reduction strategy since return to education increased rapidly and became a major source of inequality. A nationwide "social safety net" and an effective redistributive taxation system should be adopted and implemented to ensure that the poor can benefit from the fruits of rapid economic growth.Income inequality, poverty, welfare, growth, reform, transition, policy, China

Lofty pine and clinging vine: The educational 'Great Gatsby Curve' and the role of house prices

We investigate the heterogeneous and nonlinear intergenerational transmission channels of education and the impact on this of house price appreciation. Using the China Household Finance Survey 2011, we construct household history of property purchases and educational investment over the past 16 years with current filial educational achievement. Using quantile instrumental regressions, we find that through tightening households' credit constraints, rising house prices weaken the paternal intergenerational educational correlation by 38 per cent (from 0.366 to 0.226) but enhance the maternal correlation by 84 per cent (from 0.165 to 0.303). Decomposition analysis indicates the existence of glass-ceiling effects for females and rural offspring aiming to achieve high educational attainment due to narrower opportunities, and also glass-floor effects for urban offspring due to more endowment, which in turn leads to gender and urban-rural educational gaps across generations. The opportunity effect drives increasing intergenerational persistence of education over time

The intergenerational impact of house prices on education: evidence from China

We investigate heterogeneous and nonlinear intergenerational transmission of education and the impact on this of house prices. Using the China Household Finance Survey, we construct household history of property purchases and educational investment over the past 16 years with current filial educational achievement. High house prices tighten the household's credit constraints, resulting in the concave slopes of filial education as a function of father's education. On average one standard deviation in father's (mother's) education accounts for 0.375 (0.098) standard deviations of filial education. Decomposition reveals the “glass ceiling” and the “glass floor” in two tails of education distribution

Ship structure collision experiments and simplified numerical calculation method

ObjectivesAlthough the fluid-structure interaction calculation method can better simulate the ship collision process, it requires a longer calculation time. To address this problem, a simplified numerical calculation method is proposed. MethodsThe local cabin section of a ship is taken as the object to carry out water collision experiments under various operating conditions. Force sensors and non-contact measurement based on high-speed photography technology are used to obtain the collision force and motion time history data of the ship. The collision contact force and acceleration response data are then analyzed, and arbitrary Lagrange−Euler (ALE) coupled fluid-solid numerical computational analysis is carried out on the experimental process. The effect of the water on the impacting ship in the collision process is then simplified to the equivalent mass, and the effect on the impacted ship is simplified to the equivalent resistance, which acts on the non-impacting side of the impacted ship in the form of surface force to hinder the movement of the impacted ship. Numerical calculations that do not involve the water-structure coupling process are then carried out on the basis of the simplified method. ResultsThe results show that the errors between the peak collision force and the experimental values for each condition obtained by the simplified calculation method are within 5%, and the calculation time required by this method is much smaller than that of the ALE fluid-structure interaction algorithm ConclusionsThe proposed simplified numerical calculation method can provide useful references for realizing the efficient calculation of ship structure collision response

Analyzing rainfall effects on agricultural income:Why timing matters.

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