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Arid Land Geography ›› 2022, Vol. 45 ›› Issue (2): 650-659.doi: 10.12118/j.issn.1000–6060.2022.244

• Regional Development • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Comparison of spatial poverty trap formation mechanisms in different geographical environments: A case of Dabie Mountains and Loess Plateau

SUN Jianwu1(),GAO Junbo2,3(),MA Zhifei1,3,YU Chao1,3,ZHANG Xinyi1,3   

  1. 1. School of Geographic Sciences, Xinyang Normal University, Xinyang 464000, Henan, China
    2. School of Tourism, Xinyang Normal University, Xinyang 464000, Henan, China
    3. The Center of Targeted Poverty Alleviation and Rural Revitalization, Xinyang Normal University, Xinyang 464000, Henan, China
  • Received:2021-05-26 Revised:2021-09-21 Online:2022-03-25 Published:2022-04-02
  • Contact: Junbo GAO E-mail:sunjwx@163.com;gaojb@igsnrr.ac.cn

Abstract:

With the success of the fight against poverty, the focus of poverty governance has shifted to relative poverty. The overlap between the absolute and relatively poor shows that concentrated contiguous areas with extreme poverty will remain the main battlefield for China to solve the poverty problem. The causes and mechanisms of poverty of poor farmers in different natural geographical environments are quite different. Analyzing and comparing rural poverty-causing factors and differentiation mechanisms under the same scale and different geographical environments can more clearly show the outstanding problems of regional poverty and the common problems of comprehensive regional poverty. Taking the Xinxian County of Dabie Mountains and Yanchang County of the Loess Plateau as examples, taking the incidence of poverty as the dependent variable, selecting independent variables from the three dimensions of “person, origin, and land” comprehensively using spatial autocorrelation, geographic detectors, and other methods to analyze the characteristics and mechanism of the spatial differentiation of poverty in different geographical environments. The results are as follows. (1) The spatial agglomeration of poverty in the Dabie Mountains is mainly distributed in dots and clumps, whereas the Loess Plateau is mainly distributed in clumps. The level of spatial poverty agglomeration in the Loess Plateau is significantly higher than that in the Dabie Mountains. (2) The two dimensions of “land” and “industry” in the Dabie Mountains significantly affect spatial poverty, whereas the three dimensions of “people, industry, and land” in the Loess Plateau are relatively balanced. However, the incidence of poverty in the Loess Plateau is lower than that in the Dabie Mountains, indicating that the occurrence of spatial poverty is independent of the dimensions of poverty-causing factors, but more importantly, its mode and depth of action. (3) The distance to the county center ranks first in the determinative power of each factor in the Dabie Mountains and Loess Plateau, with 0.179 and 0.198, respectively. Additionally, the total population of the village in the Dabie Mountains (0.124), distance from the township government (0.070), and proportion of migrant workers’ income in the income structure (0.070) are the main influencing factors. In the Loess Plateau region, the proportion of children under 15 years old (0.162), the proportion of crop income in the income structure (0.159), per capita net income (0.159), and the proportion of primary school education or above (0.140) are the main impact factors. (4) The difference in subsistence pressure brought about by the abundance of “land” resources in the carrying space is the source of the difference in poverty formation mechanisms between the two places. The Loess Plateau has formed a three-dimensional negative circulation accumulation in a relatively closed space based on sufficient living resource. However, the Dabie Mountains area is under the effect of lack of resources, and individual survival rationally chooses to go out to work; thus, breaking the cycle of accumulation of poverty.

Key words: spatial autocorrelation, geographic setector, Dabie Mountains, Loess Plateau