Policy Gains or Household Need? The Allocation Logic of China's Dibao Program
政策收益还是家庭需要:中国低保项目的分配逻辑
When social assistance is scarce, should it prioritize households in greatest need or those expected to benefit most? Using panel data from the China Household Finance Survey, we distinguish allocation principles by combining predicted policy gains with entry into China's Minimum Living Standard Guarantee (Dibao). We estimate heterogeneous predicted gains in consumption and education and then recover the conditional priorities revealed by recipient selection. Predicted gains…