The Trend in Urban Income Inequality in Two Chinese Provinces, 1986–90

Abstract

This paper discusses to what extent the economic growth in China in the 1980's has improved the economic well‐being in urban regions of the provinces Sichuan and Liaoning and whether or not the economic growth has been attained at the cost of increased inequality. The study is based on individual household data from the State Statistical Bureau's Urban Household Survey during the 1986–90 period.

Which Regional Inequality? The Evolution of Rural–Urban and Inland–Coastal Inequality in China from 1983 to 1995

“…In addition, all of these measures are not designed for reflecting the living standards across different regions and differ from commonly used measures of income or expenditures. In the literature related to within-rural or within-urban inequalities, e.g., Hussain et al (1994), Khan et al (1994), Chen and Ravallion (1996), and Aaberge and Li (1997), income and expenditures are more often used as measures of the standard of living. Generally speaking, expenditures are more appropriate than income for measuring the living standard because they are usually less subject to short-term fluctuations and proxy permanent income better than other measures (Grootaert, 1995).…”

“…The trend of within-rural or within-urban inequality is investigated using detailed household surveys, but coverage is limited to particular provinces. Aaberge and Li (1997) find that urban Gini coefficients increased slightly from 1986 to 1990 in two provinces; Chen and Ravallion (1996) conclude that rural inequality increased slightly from 1985 to 1990 in four southern provinces; Rozelle (1994) finds an increase in rural inequality during 1984 to 1989 in Jiangsu Province; Tsui (1998b) observes a modest increase in rural inequality in the second half of the 1980's.…”

Data for studying earnings, the distribution of household income and poverty in China

“…Our subjective impression from having contact with NBS staff for some time is that they have high ambitions at every step of the process. Unfortunately, however, NBS has not produced many documents describing the various 2 See for example Tsui (1998), Yang (1999, McCulloch and Calandrino (2003), Kung and Lee (2001), Aaberge and Li (1997), Aaberge and Zhu (2001), Coady and Wang (2000) and Fang et al (2002). 3 See for example Zhang et al (2005), Li et al (2006), Chi and Li (2008), Meng (2012) and Meng et al (2013).…”

How does the Economic Reform Exert Influence on Inequality in Urban China?

“…Another focuses on the factors of income inequality using conventional decomposition methods. In these decomposition studies, some analyze the influence of various income sources on total income inequality (Hussain et al, 1994;Gustafsson & Li, 1997, 2001bAaberge & Li, 1997;Coady & Wang, 2000;Khan & Riskin, 2001) by applying the income factor decomposition method (Shorrocks, 1982(Shorrocks, , 1983 or the concentration coefficient (Rao, 1969). This approach devotes its attention to income sources to clarify their contributions to total inequality rather than attention to individuals' characteristics.…”