Thresholds, Financing, and Beneficiaries

Chapter 3 uses administrative data to describe the patterns in Dibao thresholds, financing, and beneficiaries and discuss its decentralized implementation. The chapter reveals that both urban and rural Dibao have undergone significant expansions in their thresholds, benefit levels, expenditures, population coverage, and number of beneficiaries over the years, with expansions occurring more rapidly and in more dramatic fashion in rural than in urban areas. However, the Dibao thresholds, or Dibao lines, remain low relative to average consumption levels, manifesting Dibao’s fundamental role as a last-resort, bare-minimum safety net program. Despite decentralized implementation and the requirement for local governments to commit a budget, Dibao expenditures have been heavily subsidized by the central government. Dibao’s population coverage in both urban and rural areas increased rapidly during the early stages of implementations but has leveled off in recent years.