# Preventing the Vulnerable From Remaining in the Edge of Development

The “vulnerable groups” are those whose abilities, rights, opportunities and welfare are deprived of so that they suffer from all kinds of poverty: low or no income; inequity or inequality in rights and opportunities of education, healthcare, housing and transportation; being deprived of the rights of getting access to, absorbing and communicating knowledge; suffering from bad living conditions and severe environment; lacking opportunities to express their interests. These groups include unattended children, orphans, elder people, disabled people, the sick, the unemployed, the poor, the laid-off workers, disaster-affected people, farmers who lost their farmland, migrant workers, informal employees, and disadvantaged people in labor relations, etc. Multi-dimensional poverty has manifested itself in various facets of the life of the vulnerable groups, including income, education, housing, transportation, healthcare, knowledge, ecological environment, capacity and rights, etc. The edge of development is where the costs of economic development accumulate. However, vulnerable groups have to “pay” for the costs of economic and social development, which will increase economic and social instability and weaken sustainable development, thus the significance of development cannot be justified.  
The expansion of vulnerable groups is the biggest drawback in the transition period. China is a big developing country with a large population, vast land and unbalanced development, and it is one of the countries that have greatest gaps in natural and human resources, economic development and social development among various regions. At present, the number of vulnerable groups is increasing greatly.  
Statistics showed that the number of migrant workers in China reached nearly 200 million in 2009, about half of which were the offspring of the first generation of migrant workers. From 2005 to 2009, the average growth of the number of migrant workers was 11.4%. Migrant workers are vulnerable workers due to their unstable income and poor living conditions, and yet they cannot get the social security that they deserve.  
According to China Human Development Report 2005 ---Human Development with Equity, it is estimated that the number of farmers who, partly or fully lost their farmland was as large as 40 to 50 million. China Association for Promoting Democracy Central Committee estimated that the number would reach 100 million in 2010.  
According to the 2009 Statistical Yearbook of Chinese Society, there were 4.6103 million disabled people in absolute poverty, 5.3814 million in relative poverty, and 6.4455 million with low income, totaling about 16.4372 million. There was serious impoverishment and fragility among the various groups.  
China Statistical Summary 2010 showed that disaster-affected population increased from 406.54 million in 2005 to 479.34 million in 2009. Statics from the Ministry of Public Security showed that in terms of people affected by fire, over 60% were vulnerable groups including the elder, the sick, the disabled, the widowed and migrant workers.  
In 2009, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security forecast that a total of 24 million people in cities and towns were seeking for jobs, and 11.02 million got one, which means that labor oversupply stood at 12.98 million. Therefore, the number of people who have difficulty in finding jobs remains huge.  
China Health Statistics Yearbook 2010 showed that the ration of people aged above 65 of the whole population increased from 7% in 2000 to 8.5% in 2009. The characteristics of aging society are more and more obvious.  
The expansion of vulnerable groups is not only the expansion of a certain group, but also means the vulnerable groups are more interconnected, making the demographic characteristics of vulnerable groups more complicated. For example, migrant workers are connected with unattended children, unattended rural women and elder people, and landless farmers. China’s economic transition and development has brought sustained economic growth, yet also some new problems of inequity. Most of the costs in China’s transition and development are passed over to the vulnerable groups, resulting in generating more vulnerable people who are weaker and more interconnected. What’s more, there has been greater resemblance between generations of the vulnerable groups, which limits their opportunities for development.

Preventing the vulnerable from remaining in the edge of development.  
The World Development Report 2005 said that China would face severe challenges in widening income gaps. If the trend of uneven income growth between rural and urban households among different provinces kept unchecked, the income gap would widen dramatically. The Gini coefficient would increase from 0.437 in 1999 to 0.474 in 2020. But if we change the assumption by eliminating the differences in economic growth among provinces, and the growth rate of income of various provinces, would reach the goal of 7.2%, both in rural and urban areas and the Gini coefficient would decrease to 0.395. According to the statistics of UNDP 2004, among the 131 countries where Gini coefficient of income is calculated, China ranked the 90th. China has transformed from a country where equalitarianism prevailed to one with huge gap between the rich and the poor, which is worthy of our reflection and vigilance. The first thing we should do is to focus on the vulnerable groups.  
China’s economic development has benefited the greatest number of people in the world. In 2002, the Chinese government brought up with “building a moderately prosperous society in all respects” so as to benefit its large population over a billion. To achieve this, China has to prevent the regional development gap and income gap from widening, and to prevent the vulnerable from staying in the edge of development. China has to improve vulnerable people’s abilities to participate in economic growth, to empower them to obtain and improve human capital and to enhance the quality of their access to the market in order to promote their welfare in global development. Through the policy of income redistribution and the social security system, wealth is distributed to the vulnerable groups through transfer payment, and welfare through the mechanism design.  
Preventing vulnerable groups from remaining in the edge of development requires an outlook of equity in the society. Firstly, security should be provided through mechanisms of income and wealth distribution; secondly, the vulnerable should be vested with equal employment opportunities and indiscriminate salaries, beneficial education standard and distribution of public education resources, and opportunities of development such as access to the public healthcare; thirdly, their rights should be protected through household registration system, social security, tax, state revenues and expenditures system and the mechanism of expressing interests; fourthly, a scientific design should be made for the mechanism of social mobility among the social classes and citizens’ right to participate in government and political affairs. It should be noticed that it is the imperfect system design and tendentious social system arrangement in the transition period will make the vulnerable group weaker. As the Chinese saying goes, “problems can only be solved by those who caused them”. The same logic can be applied to the system reform.  
Preventing vulnerable groups from remaining in the edge of development also requires adopting assistance and development programs for that are suitable for China’s conditions in a planned way, so that vulnerable people can share the achievement of China’s reform and development. It is necessary to eliminate discrimination in employment and society, to protect all strata’s political, economic, cultural and social rights and to involve them in decision-making, to give them enough channels to express their interests and protect their rights so as to help the vulnerable groups accumulate social capital, to remove impediments in the society and to encourage a harmonious society where people help each other. The government should place the issue of income redistribution in a prominent position, and give special attention to low-income and vulnerable people, so that more people can share the achievement of economic growth. In the reform of economic system, equity in social and economic arrangement is to maximize the most disadvantaged people’s benefits. China’s development programs should maximize the benefits of vulnerable groups including the unemployed, the laid-off workers, the poor, the retired, women and the disabled, make compensations to those who have endured losses. These programs are designed to minimize the number of vulnerable people and the costs they bear so that both the economic goals and the social goals in the reform are met. Besides, these programs should be complemented with legislative, executive and judicial protection, and legal assistance and actions to enhance their sense of self-protection should also be added.

The “twelfth five-year” period is crucial in China’s transition, whose characteristics include: migrant workers becoming urban citizens, restructuring of income (basically eliminating absolute poverty, reducing the proportion of low-income population, substantially increasing the proportion of middle-income population) and the social policy transforming from discriminatory one to equitable one. All of these are closely related to protecting the vulnerable groups’ interests. So all people, regardless of sex, age, nationality and place of residence, enjoy all kinds of economic, social and cultural rights endowed by the Constitution of People’s Republic of China and enjoy basically equal public services. It is one of the most important responsibilities of a public-service-oriented government to enable vulnerable groups to enjoy equal rights, opportunities and social welfare.

  
Notes:  
1.Source: China Statistical Summary 2010  
2.Source: China Health Statistical Yearbook 2010  
3.World Bank: China: Promoting Growth with Equity, Tsinghua University Press, 2004, p11.  
4.Hu Angang: Pursuing an equitable long-term prosperity, report of national conditions, 2006 (13)