By Zhang Liang, Institute of Public Administration and Human Resources, DRC; Liu Yicheng, Tianjin Municipal Development and Reform Commission

Research Report, No.337,2021 (Total 6402) 2021-11-15

Abstract: As one of the major supporting polices, work-relief policy (i.e. give people work in place of relief subsidies), since its implementation, is playing a significant role in promoting employment, increasing the income of poverty-stricken people, and enabling them to create self-generated impetus to reduce poverty and set on a road to prosperity. It has been carried out proactively by many local governments in the following aspects. One, work has been done to unfold construction projects planning and supervision in an integrated fashion, and strengthen the systemic guarantee for related projects; two, tailored measures have been made to strengthen the weak links in farmland water conservancy and irrigation facility construction projects so as to refine the development foundation and flesh out the supporting infrastructure for characteristic industries, aiming to accentuate the advantages for development; three, attention has been paid to expand the income channels of the people by exploring new ways to implement work-relief policy; four, efforts have been made to innovate fundamental infrastructure cooperation model and fully utilize key factor resources. But it needs to be noted that there still exist some problems, such as insufficient capital supply, the relatively limited scale and narrow coverage of related projects and the lack of relevant supporting policies. For the next step, it is advisable to give full scope to the enthusiasm and self-reliance of local governments and masses, pay more attention to providing comprehensive supporting policies, strive to enhance the connectivity mechanism in a systematic way and underline the combination of the roles of the market and the government so as to give further play to work-relief policy.

Keywords: work-relief policy, practice, existing problems, countermeasures and policy options