Do corporate social responsibility practices alleviate poverty? Evidence from firms’ targeted pairing assistance with counties

Abstract

This study examines the social impact of firms’ Targeted Pairing Assistance (TPA) practices in China, an important yet underexplored aspect of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Leveraging a quasi-natural experiment based on China’s 2016 disclosure mandate for poverty alleviation engagement, this study finds that TPA increases individual income and reduces poverty rates in paired counties, with results robust to endogeneity concerns. Mechanism tests reveal that TPA alleviates poverty through financial empowerment and industrial development, while heterogeneity analyses show stronger effects in counties with greater economic complexity and formal poverty designation under national policies. Moreover, we document a positive spillover effect of TPA on local entrepreneurship. This study addresses the gap in CSR literature by evaluating whether corporate poverty alleviation programs generate measurable social impacts, providing a more granular perspective on the social dimension of CSR.