How to combine the rural minimum living guarantee and poverty alleviation policies
Recently, the General Office of the State Council forwarded the Guiding Opinions on Effectively Connecting the Rural Minimum Living Guarantee System with the Poverty Alleviation and Development Policy issued by the Ministry of Civil Affairs and other departments. The opinions make clear that the connection between the rural minimum living guarantee system and the poverty alleviation and development policy should be strengthened in terms of operating mechanisms and management supervision, and focus on making clear provisions regarding the connection of the two in terms of policy, target groups, standards and management.
Jiang Wei, deputy director of the Social Assistance Department of the Ministry of Civil Affairs, said on October 25 that the opinions are an institutional guarantee for implementing the rural minimum living guarantee as a bottom-line measure for poverty alleviation, and that the connection between the two systems should be made routine and institutionalized to form a policy synergy.
"The two wheels must turn together to form a two-wheel drive." Jiang Wei believes that the rural minimum living guarantee and poverty alleviation and development are two important fulcrums of the national poverty alleviation strategy. The rural minimum living guarantee is subsistence assistance, while poverty alleviation and development is capacity enhancement; the rural minimum living guarantee maintains survival, while poverty alleviation and development promotes development. The two complement and reinforce each other.
In the battle against poverty, how can the bottom-line role of the rural minimum living guarantee be brought into play? It is understood that since China's rural minimum living guarantee system was established in 2007, it has been advancing in an orderly manner and has been continuously standardized and developed in recent years. For a long time, China's rural minimum living guarantee system and poverty alleviation and development system have operated independently. As the two most important policy tools in China's anti-poverty efforts, the two systems still have some problems in terms of connecting target groups, connecting standards and information sharing, resulting in insufficiently close connection between the two systems.
The reporter learned that in 2009, the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development and the Ministry of Civil Affairs once issued a notice on carrying out the connection of these two systems, but the actual operating effect was not ideal, and the expected goals were not achieved in terms of connecting target groups, connecting standards and management services. The current rural minimum living guarantee system is tasked with helping a group of poor people who have lost the ability to work achieve poverty alleviation through bottom-line assistance, which is an extremely arduous task. This new situation gave rise to the introduction of the guiding opinions.
The opinions also put forward the requirements of "assisting all those who should be assisted" and "guaranteeing all those who should be guaranteed," reflecting the working principles of seeking truth from facts, applying policies according to household conditions, providing targeted assistance and providing targeted relief, and avoiding setting the two systems against each other or separating them.
"The opinions first require strengthening the policy connection between the rural minimum living guarantee and poverty alleviation, which embodies the spirit of administration according to law and the question of how to maintain policy continuity." Jiang Wei raised two keywords. One is "meeting the conditions," that is, for registered poor households that meet the conditions for the rural minimum living guarantee, they should be included in the minimum living guarantee scope according to prescribed procedures; for rural minimum living guarantee families that meet the conditions for poverty alleviation, they should be included in the registered poverty-stricken household scope according to prescribed procedures, and targeted assistance should be provided according to different causes of poverty. The two systems should integrate with each other. The other is "standardizing procedures," because these two systems have been implemented for many years and both have certain procedures. For example, for the rural minimum living guarantee system, it is necessary to prevent the phenomenon of inclusion in the minimum living guarantee scope without verification of household economic status, and the required procedures such as review and approval must be followed.
In strengthening the connection between the rural minimum living guarantee and poverty alleviation target groups, the opinions propose improving the mechanism for verifying household economic status. In actual work, some families' income exceeds the rural minimum living guarantee standard, and their household property status may not necessarily meet the standard either, but if the family has a person with disabilities or a person with a serious illness, the family's rigid expenditures will be very large, thereby affecting basic life, yet they cannot be included in the rural minimum living guarantee scope.
Jiang Wei pointed out that in order to solve this practical problem, the opinions propose improving the mechanism for verifying household economic status, not only looking at income status or property status, but also appropriately considering household expenditure. "At present, China's rural minimum living guarantee standards are relatively commonly set with counties and cities as units, and the level of provincial-level coordination is relatively weak. In many places, the rural minimum living guarantee standards have actually been 'averaged' by the standards of some developed provinces in the east. At present, many county-level rural minimum living guarantee standards in China are lower than the poverty alleviation standards." Jiang Wei said.
It is understood that although both the minimum living guarantee and poverty alleviation systems examine household economic status, they are not unified in the scope of calculation and calculation methods, and further clarification is needed. Therefore, in strengthening the connection of standards, the opinions propose increasing provincial-level coordination, raising the level at which standards are formulated and reducing regional differences. Ensure that by 2020, all county-level rural minimum living guarantee standards nationwide gradually reach the national poverty alleviation standard.
In addition, in terms of management connection, the opinions put forward requirements in three aspects: implement dynamic management for all rural minimum living guarantee recipients and registered poor households; county-level civil affairs departments and poverty alleviation departments shall share information; and increase information disclosure and consciously accept supervision by society and the public.