Causes of inequalities in China, 1952 to 1999

This paper presents a comprehensive picture of inequality in China on the basis of provincial data. It decomposes overall inequalities into intra and inter components. Rural-urban inequality dominated overall inequality in the past and will continue to do so in the future. Meanwhile, in recent years inter-regional inequality has grown rapidly and become an important component of inequality. We find that the pattern of inequality is quite different in the pre-reform and reform periods. Our results show that overall inequality in China is large by international standards and that it has grown worse during the past half century.