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ABSTRACT:
We employ a new method to estimate China's income distributions using publicly available interval summary statistics. We examine rural, urban and overall income distributions from 1985-2001. We show how the distributions change directly as well as examine trends in equality. Using an inter-temporal decomposition of aggregate inequality, we determine that increases in inequality within rural and urban sectors and the growing rural-urban income gap have been equally responsible for the growth in overall inequality over the last two decades. However, the rural-urban gap has played an increasingly important role in recent years. We also show that urban consumption inequality rose considerably.

SUGGESTED CITATION:
Ximing Wu and Jeffrey M. Perloff, "China's Income Distribution, 1985-2001" (February 1, 2005). Institute for Research on Labor and Employment. Institute for Research on Labor and Employment Working Paper Series. Paper iirwps-117-05.
http://repositories.cdlib.org/iir/iirwps/iirwps-117-05