China’s primary public assistance program, Dibao, has been implemented in urban areas for over 20 years and in rural areas for 7 years. It provides a monthly cash subsidy to families whose income falls below the local poverty line. A growing body of research has examined its effectiveness and impacts from multiple dimensions, especially in contrast to the conditional cash transfer programs widely implemented in Latin America as well as some parts of Africa. However, one aspect of Dibao that has not been much evaluated is its impact on health and education among children, especially in rural areas. Using the newly available China Family Panel Study (CFPS) 2010 data and a propensity score matching method, this paper provides updated evidence on how receiving Dibao subsidy might help improve health and education for children in urban and rural China. We evaluate several sets of outcome variables, including family consumption on health and education for children, health care services utilization, and educational outcomes such as school performance and self-esteem of children. We find that while public assistance is unable to significantly boost health and education spending for children in low-income families across urban-rural boundaries, receiving the monthly subsidy helps enable these children to have greater access to health care services and lead to better educational outcomes. More rigorous methods and richer outcome measures can help provide more solid evidence for improving the public assistance policy in China and other developing and transitioning countries.