Abstract:
With the elimination of absolute poverty, China is facing the challenge of alleviating relative poverty. It is crucial to develop digital inclusive finance to help reduce relative poverty. Based on a field survey data of 426 households in 3 counties and 9 villages in Ningxia and applying the entropy method and the A-F method, this paper analyzed the impacts of digital inclusive finance on multidimensional relative poverty of rural households and its influential mechanism by the Logit model and the mediation effect model. Results show that: Ningxia has basically eliminated the poverty (pin) on economic dimension, but there were serious relative poverty problems (kun), including health, education, drinking water safety, and toilets. Rural households have been partly involved in the settlement, savings, and credit services of digital inclusive finance, but their participation in deep financial services, such as Internet investment and Internet insurance, was still relatively low. Digital inclusive finance had a significant alleviating effect on relative poverty under different weights, and its poverty reduction effect was increasing with the improvement of deprivation dimension. Digital inclusive finance can alleviate relative poverty by improving farmers’ e-commerce willingness and behaviors, enhancing health awareness and promoting consumption. Therefore, to alleviate the relative poverty of rural households in Ningxia, this paper suggests: to pay attention to the improvement of farmers’ self-development ability and rural living standards, to deepen the depth of digital inclusive finance, and to give a full play to the role of digital inclusive finance in poverty reduction and agricultural assistance.