Recently, the paper "Direct Assistance or Empowering? The Impact of Social Protection on the Subjective Well-Being" by Professor Lu Yuanping, Executive Director of the 111 Center, Researcher Zhou Qiang, and their collaborators was published online in the Journal of Development Studies, an internationally authoritative journal in the field of development economics.
Highlights
"Give a man a fish" or "teach him how to fish"? This paper investigates the differentiated subjective well-being effects of two transfer payments: providing direct assistance to the poor (Type-A policy) and empowering the poor to aid themselves (Type-B policy). Exploiting China's Targeted Poverty Alleviation (TPA) policy as a quasi-natural experiment, the study uses data from the China Household Finance Survey (CHFS) and applies a fuzzy regression discontinuity design (RDD) for causal inference. The study finds that the Type-B policy substantially improves the subjective well-being of the poor, while the Type-A policy shows no statistically significant effect in 2017 and 2019. Mechanism analysis suggests that among impoverished households, direct assistance is limited to meeting immediate subsistence needs, and its effect wanes over time due to hedonic adaptation. Conversely, empowering policy promotes sustained improvements in well-being by catalyzing human capital development. These results offer novel evidence that different types of transfer payments activate distinct tiers of psychological needs, with their effects on subjective well-being shaped both by the way resources are mentally allocated (mental accounting) and by the constraining force of hedonic adaptation. The paper provides new evidence for evaluating the welfare performance of social protection policies and important insights for refining the design of social security systems and establishing happiness-responsive poverty reduction policies in developing countries.
About the Authors
Lu Yuanping is a Wenlan Distinguished Professor, Doctoral Supervisor, Director of the Academic Affairs Office, Dean of the School of Public Finance and Taxation, and Executive Director of the Center for International Cooperation and Disciplinary Innovation of Income Distribution and Public Finance supported by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Science and Technology at Zhongnan University of Economics and Law (ZUEL). Professor Lu is a Young Top-notch Talent of the National Talent Program and a Young Top-notch Talent in Hubei Province. He serves as a member of ZUEL's Academic Committee, executive director of the China Association of Labor Economics and the Hubei Population Association, and an expert in the Social Security Talent Pool of the Ministry of Finance. Professor Lu studies income distribution, social security, fiscal taxation policy, happiness economics, etc. He has presided over 20 national, provincial, and ministerial projects, including major projects of the National Social Science Fund of China, general programs and young scientists fund projects of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, projects supported by the Humanities and Social Sciences Fund of the Ministry of Education, and the ministry-provincial cooperation projects of the Ministry of Finance. His research results have been published in journals such as Economic Research Journal, Journal of Management World, China Economic Quarterly, Journal of Financial Research, Chinese Rural Economy, Finance & Trade Economics, Economic Perspectives, Cities, Journal of Happiness Studies, China & World Economy, and The Social Science Journal. He is an anonymous reviewer for journals such as Economic Research Journal, Journal of Management World, China Economic Quarterly, China Industrial Economics, Journal of Financial Research, Finance & Trade Economics, Journal of Happiness Studies, and China Economic Review, and a communication review expert of the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
Zhou Qiang serves as Associate Professor at the School of Economics, ZUEL; Researcher at the Center for International Cooperation and Disciplinary Innovation of Income Distribution and Public Finance supported by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Science and Technology, Doctoral Supervisor, a Young Top-notch Talent in Hubei Province, a Young Scholar of the Wenlan Scholar Program, and Director of the Department of Digital Economy. His research areas include development economics, common prosperity, and income distribution. In recent years, he has led two general projects of the National Social Science Fund of China, one general program of postdoctoral research, and six university-level research projects. As a key contributor, he has participated in nine collaborative research projects at the national, provincial, and ministerial levels. Moreover, he has published six academic monographs (including two co-edited works). His research findings have been published in over 30 prominent academic journals, including Economic Research Journal, Statistical Research, and the Journal of Quantitative & Technological Economics. Several papers have been reprinted in China Social Science Excellence. The relevant research results have won six awards at or above the provincial and ministerial level, such as the Second Prize of the 8th Award for Outstanding Scientific Research Achievements for Higher Education Institutions (Humanities and Social Sciences) (2020), the 8th Zhang Peigang Outstanding Achievement Award in Development Economics (2020), and the Second Prize of the 14th Hubei Provincial Social Science Outstanding Achievement Award (2025). He has also been awarded the university-level "Wenlan Research Rising Star Award" twice. Furthermore, he was selected as a core member of the third batch of the Ministry of Education's "Huang Danian-style Faculty Teams in China's Higher Education Institutions: Theoretical Economics" (2023) and received honors such as the university-level "Rising Star Award for Teaching and Education" (2025).