悬崖效应
在脱贫攻坚实践中，一些地方自觉不自觉地把扶贫标准拔高，甚至不同地区之间互相攀比看谁的标准高，对贫困户做了一些不切实际的承诺，设置的地方性考核指标明显超过了“两不愁三保障”标准。这些做法使得贫困户和非贫困户待遇差距太大，出现“悬崖效应”。一些地方对贫困村、贫困县的退出，规定了很多硬性的验收指标，验收指标也存在层层加码的问题，有些指标确实与“两不愁三保障”，以及基本公共服务主要领域指标接近全国平均水平没有太直接的关系。这导致为了完成这些硬性指标，一些贫困县确实尽力而为，但是没有量力而行，甚至不惜举债搞贫困村建设，有的贫困村一次性就投入一两千万元资金，贫困村和非贫困村出现了“悬崖效应”。
对于这些问题，2018年发布的《中共中央 国务院关于打赢脱贫攻坚战三年行动的指导意见》明确要求，脱贫攻坚要量力而行，既不能降低标准，也不能擅自拔高标准、提不切实际的目标，避免陷入“福利陷阱”，防止产生贫困村和非贫困村、贫困户和非贫困户待遇的“悬崖效应”，留下后遗症。
"Abyss Consequence"
In poverty elimination, some localities have intentionally or inadvertently raised their poverty thresholds, and some have even tried to compete with others in their standards, making irrational promises to impoverished households. As a result, their local assessment norms have come to exceed the national standards for basic living needs and for access to compulsory education, basic medical services and safe housing. This has led to an unreasonable gap between poverty-stricken households and other villagers, which is known as the "abyss consequence."
Some localities have set irrational standards for poverty elimination in poor villages and poor counties, while at each level the standards are raised in evaluation. This is irrelevant to the national standards for poverty elimination and to the main indicators of basic public services. To meet such mandated requirements, some poor counties try their best, but it is beyond their actual capacity. Some even borrow funds to support their poor villages. In the worst case, 10 million to 20 million yuan has been invested in one poor village, thus creating an "abyss consequence" between poor villages and non-poor villages.
Addressing these problems, the Three-year Guideline on Winning the Battle Against Poverty, issued by the central leadership in 2018, demands that poverty elimination must be pragmatic. The standards shall neither be randomly lowered nor irrationally raised, so as to avoid the "welfare trap" and the "abyss consequence" between poor and non-poor villages and between poor and non-poor households, and other unfavorable consequences.
