West China School of Public Health and West China Fourth Hospital, Sichuan University, No. 16, Section 3, Ren Min Nan Road, Chengdu, 610041, Sichuan, China. [Email]
Illness is the leading cause (44%) of poverty in China. Since 2016, The health poverty alleviation project, an integral component of the Targeted Poverty Alleviation in China, was implemented in 2016 to strengthen financial risk protection against illness for financially backward segments of the population. However, the effects of the health poverty alleviation project on financial risk protection have not been explored in the literature, this paper aims to bridge the gap.