Abstract: Reducing the relative poverty of farm families is a crucial step in achieving the objective of collective prosperity because China’s approach to combating poverty has moved from eliminating absolute poverty to targeting at relative poverty. The Probit model and the mediating effect model are used to systematically evaluate the impact of noncognitive ability on the relative poverty of farm households from both objective and subjective criteria and the mechanism underlying the impact. Based on the new human capital theory, this analysis builds a comprehensive index of noncognitive ability from five dimensions: rigor, extroversion, conformity, openness, and emotional stability. According to the findings, farmers’ objective and subjective relative poverty decreases significantly as their noncognitive ability improves. For every unit increase in noncognitive ability, the probability of objective and subjective relative poverty decreases by 28.54% and 20.89%, respectively. Additionally, the five dimensions have various implications for the relative poverty of farm families, both objectively and subjectively. When the aforementioned results are examined using instrumental factors, propensity score matching, and placebo testing, they remain valid. Further research shows that noncognitive ability has very different effects on farm households’ objective and subjective relative poverty, depending on their level of economic development, household head gender and educational level. For example, noncognitive ability has a stronger inhibitory effect on the relative poverty of male-headed and well-educated farm households in eastern China. According to the mechanism test, noncognitive ability reduces objective relative poverty via off-farm employment and social capital, but off-farm employment reduces subjective relative poverty. The aforementioned results provide fresh justifications and supporting data for reducing the relative poverty of farm families and fostering shared prosperity.

Key words: noncognitive ability, relative poverty of farm households, off-farm employment, social capital, mediating mechanism