Risk Coping Strategy of Rural Household in the Respective of Vulnerability to Poverty: Evidence from Undeveloped Poverty Stricken Areas in China

The rural household poverty is the "short board" in building a moderately prosperous society in China. Currently China's new poverty alleviation strategy has been focusing on the "11+3" undeveloped poverty stricken areas. These areas face frequent natural disasters, poor living conditions and fragile ecological environment. Risk shocks, vulnerability and the rural household poverty are closely related in such areas. Risk shocks cause rural household poverty, and the poor households become more vulnerable, leading to an interaction of vulnerability and poverty in these areas. This paper theoretically analyzes the interaction of vulnerability and poverty in the undeveloped poverty stricken areas, and through the field survey in these poor areas, it measures the vulnerability to poverty of rural households. Then it explores the poverty factors in such areas, especially such risk shocks as natural disasters and dread disease. It also summarizes vulnerability characteristics in these areas. On the basis of theoretical and empirical analysis, the paper gives suggestions on the risk management strategy of the rural households. It puts forward that not only formal risk coping mechanism such as risk warning in advance, risk mitigation, commercial insurance and social security, but also informal risk coping mechanisms such as risk pooling inside the social safety network should be considered.