The assistance that a household receives is equal to the household size times the gap between the per-capita household income and the minimum living standard. The Dibao programme has become the basic social assistance system in China. Before 2007, rural Dibao programme has been piloted in some provinces, and the number of pilot provinces has been increasing until the rural Dibao programme was finally extended all over the country in 2007. The urban Dibao programme developed very rapidly from 2000 to 2002, with the number of beneficiaries increasing from more than 4 million to 20.5 million over that period.