The Evolution of Income Inequality in Rural China

Benjamin, Dwayne; Brandt, Loren; Giles, John

doi:10.1086/428713

Cited by 228 publications

(146 citation statements)

References 31 publications

(37 reference statements)

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“…The sons born into the parents in non-farm occupation have gained in schooling attainment irrespective of the parental education level which suggests that higher income has played an increasingly important role in their educational attainment (recall that the low educated non-farm households have higher income than the better educated farmer households). This is consistent with the evidence that non-farm occupations have contributed significantly to the increase in rural inequality in 1990s (Benjamin et al (2005)). …”

Section: (42) Do the Children Of Reform Have More Educational Opportsupporting

confidence: 91%

“…For insightful analysis of inequality in post-reform period see, among others, Shi et al (2013), Benjamin et al (2008), Gustafsson et al (2008), Khan et al (1999), Ravallion and Chen (1999), Griffin and Zhao (1993). Benjamin et al (2005) provide an in-depth and comprehensive analysis of the evolution of inequality during the transition in rural China. An important finding in Benjamin et al (2005) which is partly responsible for our focus on non-farm occupations is that non-farm income has 13 As we discuss later, the farm and nonfarm distinction carries different meanings before and after the reform, because the policies implemented during the Maoist era (in particular the cultural revolution) were aimed at enhancing the social position of peasants and improving educational mobility of their children (see, among others, Hannum and Xie (1994), Sato and Li (2007), and Hannum et al (2008)).…”

Section: (2) Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

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Are the Children of Uneducated Farmers Doubly Doomed? Farm, Nonfarm and Intergenerational Educational Mobility in Rural China

Emran

Sun

2014

SSRN Journal

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This paper relaxes the single factor model of intergenerational educational mobility standard in the literature, and develops a research design to study the effects of parents' education and occupation on children's schooling. We use survey data from rural China that cover three generations and are not subject to coresidency bias. The evidence from recently developed matching and propensity score weighted estimators shows that the mean effects of parents education from the standard model miss substantial heterogeneity. Within the low education subsample, a son (girl) attains about 0.80 (0.60) years of additional schooling when born into a non-farm household compared to a farm household, and among the farming households, a child gains a one year of schooling when at least one parent has more than primary schooling. Having nonfarm parents, however, does not confer any advantages over the farmer parents if the farmers are relatively more educated, even though nonfarm households have significantly higher income. This suggests that income plays a secondary role to parental education. Estimates of cross-partial effects without imposing functional form show little evidence of complementarity between parental education and non-farm occupation. The role of family background remains stable across generations for girls, but for boys, family background has become more important after the market reform.Key Words: Educational Mobility, Inequality, Rural China, Nonfarm, Education and Occupation, Family Background, Heterogeneity, Complementarity, Market Reform, Gender Gap JEL Codes: O12, J621 We would like to thank Li Shi, Zhan Peng, and Song Jin for help with the CHIP survey data, and Matthew Lindquist and Forhad Shilpi for helpful comments and/or discussions. (1) IntroductionIncreasing inequality despite sustained economic growth and poverty reduction in last few decades has become a central policy issue in both developed and developing countries (Stiglitz (2012), Rajan (2010), Picketty (2014)). Inequality and its negative effects have also been high on the agenda of the Chinese policymakers in recent years. 2 There is a broad consensus among the policy makers and academic economists that education is one of the most important policy instruments to make the playing field level for children from the poor socio-economic background, and moderate the inequality generated by market reform. It is thus important to understand potential disadvantages faced by children from a poor socio-economic background in attaining the education and skills required in an increasingly globalized and skill-based labor market.The economics literature on intergenerational educational mobility has focused on parental education as the relevant indicator of family background for understanding intergenerational linkages (see Bjorklund and Salvanes (2011) for a recent survey, and on China, see, among others, Knight et al. (2013), Sato and Li (2007), Emran and Sun (2011)). This emphasis on parental education is eminently appropriate when the goal is...

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Section: (42) Do the Children Of Reform Have More Educational Opportsupporting

confidence: 91%

Section: (2) Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Are the Children of Uneducated Farmers Doubly Doomed? Farm, Nonfarm and Intergenerational Educational Mobility in Rural China

Emran

Sun

2014

SSRN Journal

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“…Table 2 presents the poverty lines used in the following econometric analysis. 4 The sample collection proceeds in a stratified way for the village data: First, every county is subdivided according to annual net income per capita into upper, middle, and lower levels (Benjamin, Brandt, & Giles, 2005). Second, the respective village is chosen from the three county groups according to geographic (plain, hilly or mountainous area), location types (city, suburb or not) and economic features such as production characteristics.…”

Section: Table 1 Around Herementioning

confidence: 99%

“…We use individual household data which are linked to a village level survey over the (2006) and Benjamin, et al (2005). Furthermore, the village survey provides information on the respective village's resource endowment, number of working days of inhabitants and aggregated production as well as welfare and social indicators.…”

Section: Table 1 Around Herementioning

confidence: 99%

Persistent Poverty in Rural China: Where, Why, and How to Escape?

et al. 2012

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“…First, economic growth has also seen a sustained rise in income inequality and falling absolute incomes at the bottom end of the income distribution in rural areas (Benjamin et al, 2005). This may have reduced happiness because individuals prefer equal society i.e.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Subjective well-being in China, 2005–2010: The role of relative income, gender, and location

Asadullah

Xiao

Yeoh

2018

China Economic Review

138

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I EIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. We use data from two rounds of the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) to study the determinants of subjective well-being in China over the period 2005-2010 during which selfreported happiness scores show an increase across all income groups. Ordered probit regression analysis of well-being reveals large influence of gender, rural residency and household income. After controlling for demographic attributes, health, unemployment status, household size, agricultural hukou (household registration identity) and education status, household assets, the influence of past and future income and province dummies, we find that women, urban residents and people with higher income are happier in China. More schooling, better health and being employed are positively and significantly correlated with well-being. Sub-sample s reveals that the rich only care about relative income whereas the effect of absolute income dominates in case of the poorer section. The influence of absolute income is larger among women compared to men and in turn explains why women, despite being poorer, are happier in China, conditional on socio-economic differences. On the other hand, rural residents are poorer than urban residents so that conditional on having the same income, there is no rural-urban happiness gap. Our results suggest that while further decline in poverty will enhance well-being in China, policies that reduce rural-urban and gender inequalities are also likely to boost well-being. JEL C...

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The Evolution of Income Inequality in Rural China

Cited by 228 publications

References 31 publications

Are the Children of Uneducated Farmers Doubly Doomed? Farm, Nonfarm and Intergenerational Educational Mobility in Rural China

Are the Children of Uneducated Farmers Doubly Doomed? Farm, Nonfarm and Intergenerational Educational Mobility in Rural China

Persistent Poverty in Rural China: Where, Why, and How to Escape?

Subjective well-being in China, 2005–2010: The role of relative income, gender, and location

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