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. 2014 May 13;111(19):6928-33.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.1403158111. Epub 2014 Apr 28.

Income inequality in today's China

Yu Xie  1 , Xiang Zhou  2
Affiliations

Income inequality in today's China

Yu Xie et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

Abstract

Using multiple data sources, we establish that China's income inequality since 2005 has reached very high levels, with the Gini coefficient in the range of 0.53-0.55. Analyzing comparable survey data collected in 2010 in China and the United States, we examine social determinants that help explain China's high income inequality. Our results indicate that a substantial part of China's high income inequality is due to regional disparities and the rural-urban gap. The contributions of these two structural forces are particularly strong in China, but they play a negligible role in generating the overall income inequality in the United States, where individual-level and family-level income determinants, such as family structure and race/ethnicity, play a much larger role.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Trends in Gini coefficient of family income in China and the United States. Gini coefficients from UNU-WIDER and CHIP 2007 are based on household disposable income per capita. Gini coefficients of family income in the United States from 1967 to 2012 are provided by the US Census Bureau (19). Trends in both countries were fitted using LOESS. The official figures in China were not included in fitting the LOESS curve.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
GDP per capita and Gini coefficients of family income in 136 countries and their trends in China. GDP per capita are measured by purchasing power parity (current international dollar). Historical data on GDP per capita in China are provided by the China Statistical Yearbook 2012 (34). GDP per capita and Gini coefficients for different countries are provided by the CIA World Factbook (24). The relationship between log GDP per capita and Gini coefficient in China was fitted using LOESS. The Kuznets curve was fitted as a quadratic function:
Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.
Bivariate and partial R2 for different predictors of income in China and the United States. The dependent variable is log family income per capita. All regressions were weighted by family size.
Fig. 4.
Fig. 4.
Residual variances for different models of logged income in China and the United States. The dependent variable is log family income per capita. All regressions were weighted by family size.
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