Digital Inclusive Finance,digital Infrastructure And Multidimensional Poverty

With the comprehensive victory of China’s poverty alleviation campaign and the third change in major social contradictions,China’s main poverty reduction goals have gradually shifted from income poverty and absolute poverty to multidimensional poverty that affects people’s needs for a better life,including income,healthcare,education,and living standards.Digital financial inclusion,driven by the development of digital technology,has strong penetration,wide coverage and low cost,and can realize the organic combination of social and commercial aspects of financial inclusion,thus providing important support for multidimensional poverty governance.Based on the theoretical analysis,this paper puts forward the hypothesis of the impact mechanism of the development of digital financial inclusion on reducing the multidimensional poverty level of China’s households.Calculating the multidimensional poverty degree and multidimensional poverty status indicators of 5070 sample households in China based on the China Family Panel Studies(CFPS)data and using the Peking University Digital Financial Inclusion Index of China,this paper empirically tests the impact of digital financial inclusion on multidimensional poverty in China and digital infrastructure’s specific impact mechanism through a two-way fixed effect model.The research conclusions of this paper are as follows:(1)The development of digital financial inclusion helps to reduce the multidimensional poverty level in China.Digital inclusive finance can not only increase the financial accessibility of residents and directly alleviate multidimensional poverty,but also indirectly contribute to the reduction of household multidimensional poverty levels by improving residents’ consumption behavior and enhancing human capital levels.Specifically,regarding poverty issues in various secondary dimensions,digital inclusive finance can significantly alleviate household income poverty and quality of life poverty.(2)The higher the level of digital infrastructure construction,the greater the role of digital financial inclusion in reducing China’s multidimensional poverty level.(3)The impact of digital financial inclusion development on multidimensional poverty in China has regional heterogeneity,which can significantly alleviate multidimensional poverty of families in the eastern region and partially alleviate multidimensional poverty of families in the central region,but cannot reduce multidimensional poverty level of families in the western region.Based on the research conclusions,the article puts forward the following policy recommendations:(1)Actively promote the orderly development of digital financial inclusion,give full play to the enabling effect of digital financial inclusion on multidimensional poverty reduction,and help solve the multidimensional poverty problem in China.(2)Focus on strengthening the construction of digital infrastructure in the western region,and strive to bridge the digital gap in the development of digital financial inclusion in the western region.(3)Focus on employment,health and other people’s livelihood poverty that are less affected by the development of digital financial inclusion.