Does empowering women benefit poverty reduction? Evidence from a multi-component program in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China

• Main Authors: Rui GU, Feng-ying NIE
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2021-04-01
• Series: Journal of Integrative Agriculture
• Subjects: women; empowerment; poverty reduction; Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region
• Online Access: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2095311920634360

Ending poverty is a top priority of the international development agenda, and governments worldwide have attached great importance to poverty alleviation measures. However, poverty reduction policies have mostly focused on men, which has widened the gap in productivity and income between men and women and increased gender inequality. This paper aims to determine the impacts of a multi-component program on women’s empowerment and poverty reduction, and explore the role empowered women play in poverty reduction. The dataset used in this study was collected in nine poor counties of Ulanqab City in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China at the end of 2014, yielding a sample of 900 households. Recall questions were used to reconstruct the baseline data and build a panel dataset. Smaller groups of rural households were further identified to better target the women in the beneficiary group. To control the selection bias, propensity score matching, inverse probability weighting, and the difference-in-differences matching method were used to analyze the effect of the program and undertake robust checks. The results show that the program has positive effects on women’s empowerment and poverty reduction simultaneously. Empowering women also has positive effects on poverty reduction, and the women who were the beneficiaries have contributed to increasing the incomes and living standards of households. Training, microfinance, and associations are common means or strategies to empower women to address poverty. This paper provides new empirical evidence that women can benefit from a gender-focus program through portfolio intervention such as training, cooperatives, and credit. Empowered women further improve the livelihoods of poor households and help lift them out of poverty. The results suggest that researchers and policymakers need to pay more attention to poverty issues from the perspective of gender.