Abstract: Based on the provincial panel data of the Yangtze river economic belt from 2007 to 2017, and on the basis of panel vector autoregression model, the relationship between tourism industry development and poverty reduction in the Yangtze river economic belt was empirically studied by means of stability test, granger causality test, impulse response and variance decomposition. The results showed that the impact of tourism industry development on the incidence of poverty in the Yangtze river economic belt decreased with the passage of years. The impact of poverty incidence on the development of tourism industry in the Yangtze river economic belt changed from large to small with the year. Under the influence of poverty incidence, the development of tourism industry first increased and then decreased. The impact of the development of tourism industry on the incidence of poverty in the Yangtze river economic belt was greater than that of poverty on the development of tourism industry. Based on this, in order to further enhance the poverty reduction effect of the tourism industry in the Yangtze river economic belt, it is necessary to extend the tourism industry chain and strengthen the poverty alleviation efforts of the tourism industry; Increase investment in regional infrastructure construction to lay a foundation for infrastructure services of the tourism industry; Rational planning and development of tourism resources, while increasing the protection of tourism resources; We will take the road of characteristic tourism development and develop a tourism industry with high characteristic and good service quality.

Key words: tourism industry development, poverty reduction effect, incidence of poverty, panel vector auto-regression model