Can Anti-poverty Policies Improve Livelihood Sustainability? An Empirical Study from the Perspective of Farmers' Perceptions

In recent years, an ambitious development policy named the targeted poverty alleviation policy has been implemented in China, and it has achieved remarkable success. But whether the smallholder farmers raised out of extreme poverty due to this policy have achieved sustainable livelihoods remains uncertain. This study developed a livelihood sustainability index that can comprehensively assess farmers' livelihoods, constructed an analytical model of the direct and indirect impacts of policy measures on livelihood sustainability using the farmer's perceptions of those policies as a mediator, and created a policy perception elasticity factor to screen the contributions of policy measures to the improvement of livelihood sustainability. Based on these theoretical advances, a case study of an indigenous community on the Tibetan Plateau was conducted. The results show that this policy has contributed to improving farmers' livelihood sustainability in the case areas, especially in terms of livelihood assets and livelihood outcomes, through direct encouragement and indirect influences based on the vulnerability context. In China's era of “post-targeted poverty alleviation”, the findings from this case study indicate that relevant future policies should attach importance to institutional reform and staff management, and establish practical actions to cope with the uncertainty of the vulnerability context.