Early Warning of Vulnerability to Re-Poverty in China: Integrating Regional and Household Perspectives

The establishment of an accurate early warning and intervention mechanism for re-poverty (i.e., returning to poverty) is a valuable tool for consolidating the achievements of the Chinese government in poverty alleviation and the effective connection with rural revitalization since completing the task of eliminating absolute poverty. The occurrence of the re-poverty phenomenon is closely related to the vulnerability characteristics of the subject. This paper constructs a vulnerability to re-poverty analysis framework that integrate regional and household perspectives based on "capital-capacity-welfare". Zherong County was selected as the case study where the vulnerability assessment model and GeoDetector were adopted to undertake an early warning and Interactive detection analysis respectively. The results show that: (1) The degree of vulnerability to re-poverty of most townships and households in Zherong County is relatively low after the withdrawal of absolute poverty; (2) At the regional level, among 9 townships of Zherong county, the social welfare is more vulnerable than geographical capital and economic capacity, and the degree of vulnerability to re-poverty of Fuxi and Zhayang are relatively high, with warning level III; (3) Among the 737 low-income households registered, 98.4% of them aligned with warning level I and II, only 1.6% of them aligned with warning level III. However, households' livelihood capital vulnerability is generally relatively high, and the improvement of household self-development motivation is still insufficient; (4) Household vulnerability to re-poverty is influenced by both regional and household factors, and the interaction between the two factors can enhance each other's explanatory power to HVRI. We divided the risk into four types and proposed corresponding policy implications based on the coupling of regional and household vulnerability to re-poverty early warning.