TY - JOUR
T1 - Short-term trends in China’s income inequality and poverty
T2 - evidence from a longitudinal household survey
AU - Xie, Yu
AU - Zhang, Xiaobo
AU - Xu, Qi
AU - Zhang, Chunni
N1 - Funding Information:
The research was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 71373012] and the Center for Social Research and Institute of Social Science Survey at Peking University.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Taylor & Francis.
PY - 2015/9/2
Y1 - 2015/9/2
N2 - In the past three decades, income inequality in China has increased rapidly relative to both China’s own past and other countries at similar levels of economic development. Using recent longitudinal data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), this article examines changes in income inequality and poverty prevalence between 2010 and 2012. Surprisingly, we find a modest decline in income inequality as measured by the Gini coefficients in the CFPS data. The urban–rural gap narrowed, with rural families enjoying faster income growth than urban families enjoyed. Income growth was greater for middle-income families than for families with either high or low incomes in 2010. By all measures, poverty was greatly reduced between 2010 and 2012. Two-thirds of families that had been poor in 2010 escaped poverty by 2012.
AB - In the past three decades, income inequality in China has increased rapidly relative to both China’s own past and other countries at similar levels of economic development. Using recent longitudinal data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), this article examines changes in income inequality and poverty prevalence between 2010 and 2012. Surprisingly, we find a modest decline in income inequality as measured by the Gini coefficients in the CFPS data. The urban–rural gap narrowed, with rural families enjoying faster income growth than urban families enjoyed. Income growth was greater for middle-income families than for families with either high or low incomes in 2010. By all measures, poverty was greatly reduced between 2010 and 2012. Two-thirds of families that had been poor in 2010 escaped poverty by 2012.
KW - China family panel studies
KW - income inequality
KW - poverty
KW - trends in China
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U2 - 10.1080/17538963.2015.1108118
DO - 10.1080/17538963.2015.1108118
M3 - Article
C2 - 30416538
AN - SCOPUS:84948764689
SN - 1753-8963
VL - 8
SP - 235
EP - 251
JO - China Economic Journal
JF - China Economic Journal
IS - 3
ER -