Help! I'm looking for *any* statistics on poverty in China before 1990. Our World in Data and World Bank start only at 1990, when the poverty rate in China starts going down dramatically.
But what about before that? I want information on how the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution affected poverty rates.
Or is it simply accepted among historians that China before 1990 is a black box, and we'll never have solid data for that period?
Thanks,
Terra
Martin Ravallion collected poverty indices going back to 1980 using the household survey system, tracking them along the old Chinese poverty line, the new poverty line, and the $1.25 a day international benchmark. In 1980, the % of the population in each category was:
Old Poverty Line: 24%
New Poverty Line: 53%
$1.25 a day: 86%
This is the earliest data that I'm aware of due to it being after the 1979 adoption of the household responsibility system, where households were responsible for the profit and loss of their farm. Before this date, the collectivized Chinese economy effectively had no meaningful "poverty rate" as resources were relatively evenly distributed and either "everyone" was impoverished or no one.
Sources:
Ravallion, Mark and Chen, Shaohua. China's (uneven) progress against poverty.