ABSTRACT
Helping all rural people living below the poverty line shake off is the most difficult task to build a moderately prosperous society in all respects. Based on 2014 China Household Panel Data Survey, this paper evalu-ates the effects of catastrophic health expenditure ( CHE ) on poverty in the rural areas of China by calculating the CHE and households poverty incidences, the poor families’ proportions, and the poverty incidence due to CHE and other indicators. According to estimated results, we recommend that CHE households should be regarded as the main target population to be shaken off poverty in the rural areas by the national health department. In order to maximize the poverty reduction performance, it is necessary to take into account both the poverty alleviation accuracy and cov-erage while setting the CHE criteria.